Ugly America

Recall the scene in the movie A Christmas Story where Ralphie is hit with a snowball thrown by the neighborhood bully?  As the bully taunts and belittles his victim, Ralphie breaks down in tears but finally explodes in rage.  Against all odds, he tackles the bully and pummels him.  Ralphie had had enough, and his reaction became anger, and his anger led to a refusal to be further victimized.

While enduring Trump’s hegemony, many of us are reaching the stage Ralphie found himself in, despair, fear, and exhaustive anger.  How many insults and injuries to human decency can we accept?  If Trump and his far-right purists get their way, our nation will slide into the muck of fascism. 

Most political pundits conclude America does not satisfy the definition as a fascist nation because we enjoy a robust two-party system.  However, as a symptom of burgeoning autocracy, Trump’s neofascist regime is trying its darndest to crush all opposition and skip constitutive obstructions.  Trump employs vindictiveness, fear, plus a dash of animus to achieve his bully-boy ends.  Likely, we know how the Trump nightmare will end by referencing Benito Mussolini, Adolph Hitler, and Marshal Philippe Pétain.  The afore mentioned fascists were forcibly strident in humiliating the opposition, and all had tenures which ended in disgrace.  We are in early stages of becoming a fascist nation, headed by neo-fascist Donald Trump.  Unthinkably, we are becoming what we have always opposed.  Under Trump’s control, our country is cuddling up to Putin and other authoritarian regimes while betraying the democratic values we have long espoused.  Trump aligns closely with dictators and shuns our longtime democratic friends and allies.

Fascists have the practice of calling their opposition evil, which is exactly what Putin calls Ukrainian leadership.  Likewise, Trump uses a similar rhetorical pattern and has for years—if one calls him a corrupt influence, he returns the insult against whomever did the calling, “I’m not corrupt; you’re corrupt!  Plus you’re a traitor!”  Trump always returns fire and doubles down on the insults.

Add his neofascist inclinations to his complicity with Christian nationalism and we arrive at someone who spits on the text of the Sermon on the Mount.  For Trump and his disciples, revenge against anyone who opposes Trump’s creed is compulsory.  Little compassion exists in the quasi-religious crusade, only humiliation and punishment dealt to “losers” and “scumbags” who are not true patriots or Christians (i.e. Trump supporters).  It’s touchy stuff borne from Trump’s puerile perception of payback and power.

More, his tactless need to chasten the media and political insurrectionaries (unless they are white supremacists) spits on the Constitution.  It is impossible for him to “turn the other cheek.”  He’s the middle school bully who steals lunch money from the weak and others whom he deems rivals because he, Trump, is the most-popular-kid-on-the-playfield.  If another child tells him he sucks, he replies, “You suck, and so does your mother.”  And he won’t forget any insult.  With a lack of moral standards and empathy, he believes he is the shrewdest guy in the classroom, even though he is, at best, a middling student, and possibly less than that.

To use the same strategies of name-calling and disrespect which Trump employs merely serves to mimic the nasty strategies of MAGA devotees and their leader (“nasty” is a tag he uses when any outspoken woman challenges him).  In the main, Trump’s Christian nationalist followers demonstrate little modesty, scant humility, no forgiveness, and hardly any compassion.  According to Trump’s former consigliere and fix-it lawyer, Michael Cohen, Trump labeled Christianity as “bullshit,” and the boss went on to say most Christians are “fools” and “schmucks.”  He has shown no noticeable church attendance or affiliation, no spiritual tradition, no understanding of sacred texts, and has a habit of using religion as his political mule, a beast of burden to carry him to power.

If anything, his religion is money.  He is the transcendent leader of a newfangled cult, Trumpism, based on Trump and rich people getting the lion’s share of power and money, and in the process exposing the evils of “wokeness.”

Early exposure to the Marble Collegiate Church headed by author and clergyman Norman Vincent Peale surely influenced young Trump.  Child Trump attended the church with his family.  Peale, the New York Times bestseller author wrote The Power of Positive Thinking, preached the value of personal fulfillment, the fundamentals of prosperity gospel, which became hugely popular once television provided a platform for the likes of Jim and Tammy Bakker, Oral Roberts, and Pat Robertson, among others.  Adjacent to that thought, I’m reminded of Adlai Stevenson’s comments when asked about Peale’s ministry, his health and wealth gospel: “Speaking as a Christian, I find the Apostle Paul appealing and the Apostle Peale appalling.”

Following in the footsteps of the money-centric mass media clergy, Reverend Ike became, perhaps, the most blatant example of the gospel of prosperity.  He repeated an appeal which went something like this: "Close your eyes and see green," the minister suggested. "Money up to your armpits, a roomful of money and there you are, just tossing around in it like a swimming pool."  Didn’t I hear him say, “I love money.  I want money.  I need money. Amen.”

Trump, heretic pope of the Immaculate Church of Trump and a budding neofascist, dreamer of holding office for a third and fourth term, a felon who shows contempt for anyone who opposes him, is the man to who brings shame to America.

He is just like the bully who pelted Ralphie with a snowball.  Because the bully represents us, we have become, deservedly, ugly.

In Defense of Farce

After years of regarding human behavior as magical, godlike in its triumphs and pardonable in its defeats, I had an epiphany which demanded deep-thinking adjustments.  Of course to think anyone might care about my viewpoint is preposterous, farcical even.  Forgive me, then, for the following assertion.

Farce, I now admit, is the nutmeat of “all-the world-is-a-stage” metaphor and should be considered the prevailing leitmotif of human activities.  Don’t we witness buffoonery and absurd behavior on every screen, every news release, each precinct through which we travel?  Don’t we observe people presenting themselves to be something they are not?  Don’t we hear it when we are told “to run, not walk, to the nearest Ford dealership for savings of the century”?  To better tolerate the world and its creatures, wouldn’t it be amenable to consider God’s whole stagey creation as if it were a Moliere play, the humor of it taking center stage?  Bada bing bada boom!

Absurdity is not the turning point of our existence, as Camus claimed.  His conclusion was life is absurd because the world (however one wants to define it) is indifferent to meaning, which may be blindly absurd, as well as farcical, don’t you think?  No, surely our existence is more farcical than absurd, if you’ll allow my attempt at semantics to parse the difference.  

Farce is funny, of courbut also dead serious in its fundamental insinuations.  We laugh at the roughshod horseplay and buffoonery of The Three Stooges, though getting slapped and clunked on the head, “nyuck-nyuck-nyuck,” is no laughing matter.  And think of the Marx Brothers and their farcical take on Hitler, high society, pretentiousness, and just about everything else their audiences took seriously.  Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, an apt example, is farce from start to finish; it is also satire and alarmingly sober in its conclusions.  Tears of laughter seem appropriate even though you may weep for what the theme portends.  Waiting for Godot yet another example of absurdity capturing our attention and applying farcical suggestions, leaving us somewhere between laughing and weeping.  Because, at its core, funny is what we are, how we act from day to day.  We are an up-to-date Punch and Judy show, complete with smacks in the face and a howling audience.

MacBeth’s poetic claim seems to apply: “Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”  Sure we may be sad figures as we stride across this stage, but at heart we would do well to laugh at the absurdity of our strutting and fretting as we melt away to the wings during our cameo appearance speaking our mostly silly and vainglorious lines.

In its raw state, politics is a decent (or indecent) example of farce, something like a clown show featuring sex, violence, and all the seven deadly sins demonstrated for our risible gratification.  Election season brings out the exaggerated and ridiculous in all of us, and we get an extra helping of mistruths.  This we know.  Biden’s verbal stumbles and his obliviousness to his diminished capacities are funny if taken in context.  As Kamala Harris took the baton from Biden, she believed her constituents, educated people along with fed up underclass people would carry the day by a landslide.  She drew knee-slapping chuckles from Republicans and crushing dejection from many Democrats.  Detached, it’s kind of funny, isn’t it?  Trump’s need to humiliate his rivals by using a stream of fabrications is funny if one considers how brazen and clownish he is, posing as he does in a blue dress suit, red tie, and topped by his ridiculous red baseball cap, as if he is one of the good old boys.  Posterity will likely judge him in the same category as we view Alfred E. Newman, a consummate buffoon and laugh-provoking ass.  Take a close look at the cast of characters in Washington D.C.  the ultra “woke” crowd, George Santos, Ted Cruz, Tommy Tuberville, and Paul Goser—all these seemingly thoughtful figures are entertaining because they are serious about what they do and say.  If they stood before a mirror and could somehow see how others viewed them, how they acted and heard what they said, they might consider starting new careers as stand-up comics.  Bada bing bada boom!

What does it all mean?  What purpose do we serve if farce is the thesis of everything?  What is the purpose of darn near anything at all.

Maybe not much, but on close analysis, absurdity and all that, great and fleeting value must be found in family, kindness, faith, and whatever the work of the moment is.  Even if it is all—all of it—sort of funny.

Honor

Whether you believe Jimmy Carter was an effective president or not, an accord among friends and foes alike is that he was an honorable man.  He spent a lifetime serving his community, his faith, his country, and the world.  In dealing with others, he showed humility, integrity, graciousness, and honesty—the core ingredients of honor.  Those qualities, however, are not presently top priorities in our culture where power and sharp elbows draw most the attention and applause.  Our culture prizes winning, materialism, celebrity, and smash-mouth NFL football (America’s new religion).

Placed on the plinth of celebrity and power is Donald Trump, someone who receives low marks on the scorecard measuring humility, graciousness, integrity, and honesty.  His attributes run counter to what has long been considered honorable conduct.  Trump is mendacious, a vulgarian, a braggart, a draft dodger, a womanizer, an adulterer, a swindler, a felon, a four-flusher, a bully, a racist, is as pitiless as Lady MacBeth, and has an appreciation for fascists.  In every instance, he is the opposite of Carter.  Trump is dishonorable and, I’m guessing, cares more about his idea of success than ethical standards.  Americans, too, care little for honor as they vie for winning and money.  Honor has not been a top priority in our culture.  It just hasn’t been.  The American ethos has little to do with “lifting others up, (and) not ourselves,” as found in Romans 12:10, “Be devoted to one another in love.  Honor one another above yourselves.”

Like Trump, much of America’s electorate value winning above all else, so honor may take a seat in the back of the room.  As the cliché goes: losing is not an option.  Truth is, though, losing is always an option for all of us even though we may not want to discuss the possibility.  If we refuse to lose, as Trump does in every case, we become twisted in our self-importance and in our empathy. Apparently, Trump’s soul is undisturbed by his aggressive me-first behavior.  His solipsism is complete.  His thinking is the only reality—nothing else matters.  The danger of a solipsist can be seen clearly in Moby Dick, Ishmael being the only survivor of Captain Ahab’s destructive thinking.

Samuel Johnson concluded that virtuous conduct and personal integrity are essential elements of honor.  Selfless service to others.  Staying good to one’s word.  Integrity, honesty, ethical conduct: these are the earmarks of honor which have been practiced for centuries.  Often associated with military and communal values, honor is seen as the opposite of baseness and self-serving conduct.

Even so, some part of us likes an iron-willed dictator who makes choices for us, a bully whom we want to please against all odds.  In Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy,” she writes, “Every woman adores a Fascist / The boot in the face, the brute / Brute heart of a brute like you….”

Sounds as if her Daddy was, in fact, very much like Trump!

School Shootings

Schools are in session, so it’s time for a maladjusted classmate to shoot a bunch of his or her classmates.  Shootings on school property are as common as pop quizzes.  And there is nothing we can or will do about it.

“Here we go again,” my spoken reaction after hearing news of the school shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia.  We’ve been expecting this and are presently waiting for another shooting (one happened yesterday) and another will probably happen next week, or maybe a couple of weeks from now.  Killings are lining up like planes waiting to depart LAX.  There will be more shootings because we live in a disturbed and sick society, and, of course, dead to rights, we are an unashamed gun culture.  We have no remedies and no plans to address this self-inflicted horror.  These shootings will continue because we value the Second Amendment above human life.  One wonders if and when the shift in that value might change?  What if we killed 8oo children a day?  How about 1000 a day?  At some point we may run out of children to kill, but certainly not guns with which to kill people.  For every 100 citizens in our country there are 120 guns, the highest per capita gun ownership in the world.  No other country is even close.   https://www.statista.com/aboutus/our-research-commitment     

Fear of being shot and killed is a stark anxiety to nearly everyone in America, especially those students in K-12 schools and in colleges and universities where developing brains gather.  That’s where the young are clumped together and become easy to pick-off, something like shooting fish in a rain barrel.  That’s where interpersonal conflicts and small humiliations turn into lethal remedies for the shooters and nightmares for the rest of us.  And that’s where active shooter drills scar thousands of students for a lifetime of mental health damage and low-grade angst afflictions.  But, hey, we don’t really care, do we?

If I were a parent of a school-age student today, I would consider alternatives to public schools (home schools, virtual schools, private schools, Waldorf schools, even unschooling) because the odds of physical and/or emotional harm is too large a risk in the daily scrum called public schooling.  Though, frankly no school seems safe.  Private schools, too, have had recent shootings.  Tag me overprotective but opting to keep a child’s life protected from the dangers of our disturbed culture ought to be priority number one.

Though not in my lifetime, and probably not yours either, robust gun control laws are needed to allay the self-harm results of the Second Amendment.  The 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment (imposing prohibition), so it is theoretically possible to alter our sacrosanct Second Amendment for our own good.

The Second Amendment needs remodeling to suit the context in which we live, not the time when we traveled on horseback, and muskets and flintlock pistols were used to protect us from tyranny.  An intelligent discussion is needed to assure the Second Amendment is updated and honored but changed to protect us all.

War Whoops

Shortly before kickoff, players huddle on the sidelines for their fire-up routine, a flamboyant shout-and-scream ritual meant to amplify motivation.  They jump up and down as if riding pogo sticks and raise fists while yelping battle cries.  Crazed and demonstrating signs of fierce aggression, players playact unconstrained fervor.  “Let’s go” and “No prisoners,” “It’s Our Time,” and guttural grunts befitting hunting dogs about to be unkenneled to kill rabbits.  Getting the players amped-up is the goal.  It is a shameless display of combatant preparation.  Hearts beat faster.  Blood gushes to muscles and vital organs.  Breathing quickens, and pulse rates gallop.  Pumped-up motivation.  Battle cries. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.  Leave it all out there on the field.  Et cetera.  Invented hysteria.  The pre-game custom reminds one of the preface to cockfight, nothing refined like the rousing elegance of the Saint Crispin's Day speech (“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers”) from Shakespeare’s Henry V.  No, what we witness before an American football game is hormone-driven and savage, an all-in drink the Kool-Aid sacrament, silly hormone-hoisting stuff to precede acts of violence. 

As long as humans have been indulging in battle, screaming and carrying-on have been part of preparation.  Confederate soldiers employed the rebel yell (a half scream, half bark) to intimidate the enemy and to boost morale.  Scottish war chants, Gaelic battle cries (“Faugh A Ballagh”), and the Texas Revolution (“Remember the Alamo”) among hundreds more battle screams meant to stiffen resolve and to “get ready to rumble.”  Similar posturings before battles have been a tradition among cultures for thousands of years.  Shouts of “Deus hoc vult!” (“God wills it!”) came from the crusaders in their spiritual quest to capture the Holy Lands from Muslim rule.  If it’s not necessary, it’s ridiculous.  Probably both.

A call to arms before the clash melds American football and war, our side versus theirs.  Football is unavoidably violent, combatants crashing into one another, knocking each other down, and struggling over territory.  As humbling as it is, it seems battling over territory is a human trait.  Football, a contest mimicking larger war, past and present, is fought with shoulder pads and helmets rather than with swords and battle axes .  Let’s face it.  People enjoy a good fight.

But isn’t it savage to relish primal screams and contorted faces?  Do we still need to display such behavior before a game?  Can’t teambuilding do with a gentler pregame ritual?  Okay, probably not because much of what we are is what were, the tribal response to threat.  But as a default ritual before each game, well, it does not much recommend the human family, does it?  

Hyping people seems to be a human need.  A fierce and rousing demonstration of haka offers another kind slant on preparation to fight, or simply as a demonstration paying homage to an event or to a person.  Typically haka is performed as a war dance but also serves as an homage to community and as an honor on special occasions, stemming from the Māori culture.         

Though the haka performers appear fierce and frightening when—feet spread wide, face leaning forward—they growl and extend their tongues down to their chins, they are executing a choreographed ritual.  Give them credit for making us smile as they prepare for a crowning event while working themselves into a state of excitement, which somehow seems more sophisticated than the American way of pumping up our warriors.

Because football has become a religion of sorts in America, small wonder we see so much violence on our mean streets.

We are what we do. And our rituals define us.

To Disagree Disagreeably

Well, now we’ve done it.  We opened the doors and windows for evil to take over.  No way around the harm the 2024 presidential election will have on our communities and the world.  Metaphorically, Trump and his nest of rat snakes have slithered up the tree trunk and are about to consume the fledglings and nest eggs.  The predators will devour whatever they can get away with.  But, hey, we let our guard down.  Yes, Trump is evil in the same way El Duce Mussolini and Generalissimo Franco were evil.  Fascism, loosely defined, proposes an extreme nationalism as opposed to liberal democracy which encourages individual rights and political dissent.  Fascists, sad to admit, are now in control and about to run (ruin) our country.

Many pundits, podcasters, and peacemakers assert we should embrace Trump as our leader (he won, didn’t he?) and politely oppose him, if we must, in the spirit of loyal opposition.  Or they claim Biden and Harris got about what they merited because inflation and blah, blah, blah.  Political commentators enjoy analyzing the electorate’s will and motivation.  They pluck at the trends and outcomes like baboons grooming cohorts’ parasites.

Dang, they say, Harris lost but we all must refresh America together.  Let’s shake hands across the aisle.  Make America Great Again!

Nonsense!  Should we consort with evil?

Nope.  Trump is and always will be a sex abuser, racist, swindler, liar, womanizer, felon, braggart, draft dodger, and narcissist.  In short: unbefitting to lead our country or even the local Kiwanis Club.  So far his choices for cabinet offices and advisors are predominantly sycophants and scoundrels of their own making.  In voting against the elites, sadly we elected uber elites: Musk, Ramaswamy, Burgum, Lutnick, Bessent, McMahon, as well as those (Zuckerberg, Bezos, Altman) who have been donating millions on bended knee to get the blessings from the self-centered buffoon whom we elected as our leader.  Why would anyone want to consort with scoundrels?  We should be cautious about the company we keep because, as the adage goes, “If you lie down with the dogs, you’ll get up with fleas.”  No, I won’t cooperate with the enemies of our country, which happen to be the leaders of our country.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren summed up Trump’s cadre of sottocapo and consiglieri recently to the Washington Post, “He’s nominating his ‘rich-as-hell’ buddies to run every facet of our economy, corrupting our government at the expense of ordinary Americans.”

But here we are. 

Which recalls the modern martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran pastor, anti-Nazi dictatorship writer, and vocal critic of Hitler’s “Final Solution” project to eliminate Jews, Gypsies, people with disabilities, gay men, lesbians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other undesirables, all of whom kept the “master race” from dominating the world.  You might think of it as a “Make the Third Reich Great Once and for All.”  As you may know, Bonhoeffer’s ethical obligation restrained him from condoning evil.  He believed the mandate from his faith compelled him to act.  Though he recognized different religious and political claims, he decided he could not live in the “shadow of Cain.”  To be a responsible Christian, he claimed, one must not comply with evil.

Well said, Dietrich, we should not conform to evil even though we gave it license.  True, Trump and his posse are not as extreme as Hitler and Mussolini, not yet, but they are heading toward fascist rule as they mount a campaign to consolidate power.

43,000

       Imagine if 43,000 people were killed in commercial airplane crashes each year in the USA, roughly 120 deaths each day.  Imagine a 747 or jumbo Airbus disaster about once a week, perhaps two or three each week.  From sea to shining sea, planes crashing in flames with thousands of passengers killed.  Imagine the outrage, yeah.  Would we accept the carnage without taking immediate measure to stanch the carnage?  Congress would hold hearing after hearing to study and then to stop the slaughter.  Immediate steps would be taken to ground aircraft until air travel once again proved safe.  Political fallout would cause the restructuring of the FAA.  U.S. Secretary of Transportation would resign before committing suicide.  Travelers would opt for train travel or no travel at all.  We’d turn to a new cable channel dedicated exclusively to airline crashes.  Casinos would take wagers on the over/under number of travelers killed each month.  Later, historians would describe America as entering an era of self-harm brought on by extreme nonfeasance and misfeasance.

       What we would never tolerate in air travel, we do indeed tolerate on our highways.  Because we drive too fast and care too little about mandating highway safety, over 40,000 people die each year on America’s highways.  If we even care, ending the bloodbath on our highways and byways will take a societal attitude adjustment.  We hear of a fatality or two every day, and our normal reaction is expected: too bad!  Wha’da’ya going to do?  Each time we start the car and leave the garage we face our greatest quotidian danger.  Without complaint, we are a dedicated car and gun culture.  Cars are king.  Guns ride shotgun.  We go fast.  We have guns and will travel.  Stay out of the way or you’ll get hurt.  Even if you drive carefully and stay out of the way, you may get hurt or killed.  Tough luck.  That’s the way the cookie crumbles.  That’s America.  It is what it is, isn’t it?  Problem is, it is harder each day to stay out of the way.  Each day the odds go up you will get hurt if you hazard to enter a car and drive to the local Safeway.  Why, oh why, do we so blithely accept the yearly slaughter on our highways?  Why?  Adding to the horror, gun violence contributes generously to the death count, another 40,000 deaths each year.  Unthinkingly we tolerate more avoidable killings than reason ought to allow.  As the rate of killing increases, figuring both traffic and gun related deaths together, soon we will surpass 100,000 dead each year.  There it is.  That’s America.  Too many thoughts and prayers to heap onto the piles of burial flowers.

       Solutions are available to curb most traffic deaths, but generally we choose to overlook remedies.  Sadly, we simply don’t care enough.  Change, of course, would come if we had the will to use tools available.  And plenty of tools are available.  Already we have produced safer cars but not the streets on which they travel.  Roads need reengineering to discourage speeding and dangerous driving.  Speed cameras ought to be common on most highways, and traffic circles ought to be constructed at intersections where crashes have repeatedly occurred.  Recently here in the Pacific Northwest three fatal crashes were caused by drivers zooming over 100 mph.  No car, not even emergency vehicles, should be capable of going that fast.  Speed limits on interstates should be 50 mph at best, and the arguments from the trucking industry should be rebuffed.  Rural two-lane highways should have 40 mph limits, and city and urban roads ought to post limits no greater than 25 mph.  We need to slow down.

       Sounds outrageous, I know, but think of all the wasted lives.  Hiring more traffic cops is not the answer.  Enforcement helps some but does not provide a long-term solution.  What can be done quickly?  Because they reduce crashes, speed safety cameras should be as common as traffic lights.  According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, speed safety cameras work and save lives.  Traffic calming engineering also ought to be employed nationwide, and DUI convictions should be elevated from misdemeanors to felonies.  Sorry ACLU but measuring devices and smart highway systems are coming soon and privacy issues must yield a notch or two to save lives, thousands of lives.  More can be done with technology to assure safe passage on our roads.  Biometric technology and V2X technology promise huge advances in road safety.  Technology, which can be put in place almost immediately, can be used to assure safer driving.  For instance, a moving violation as measured by V2X systems may be issued to any driver travelling ten MPH over the speed limit.  Meaning all traffic will be always monitored for safety.  And all traffic will communicate with each other by exchanging data and recognizing potential hazards.  It’s not future science.  It’s possible now.

       Sound draconian?  Sure.  But lives are at stake; your life and mine stand in the balance, don’t they?  And slowing down and allowing our vehicles to be monitored will not impede freedom.

Choosing a Narrative

Your story began at your birth and continues as long as your legacy remains.  You turn a new page every day.  Whether you have control over your narrative, good fortune or bad, is an open question.  Your story is yours and no one else’s. As Margaret Mead said, “Always remember that you are absolutely unique (sic).  Just like everyone else.”

       Of course, whatever you encounter registers through your senses; hence, as Plato argued, your reality is projected to your brain (It’s all in your head).  Happiness and sadness, internal experiences, come from what we tell ourselves, the conditions and stories we repeat.  What we reason is real and is found on the stage of the mind.  That’s one view.  Aristotle’s view of reality finds its place in the concrete world and then transfers to the mind.  It may be an oversimplification to say Plato’s view of reality is abstract while Aristotle’s view is empirical.  Okay, sure, sorry, it is an oversimplification.

       Consider, though, for a moment your role as an actor playing yourself.  The blocking and the lines are your choosing.  As an apt example, Donald Trump has spent a lifetime bending reality to fit the narration he prefers, the one he invents.  “This is what happened because I say it happened,” is his schtick.  He goes with his gut because his feeble powers of intellect do not support whatever discharges from his mouth.  Once he concludes Obama was not born a US citizen, that a group of young Black men was guilty of a crime in Central Park, a weather system is moving the direction that he wants it to go (Sharpiegate), Hillary Clinton is an evil agent of chaos, and whatever else he invents along the way, especially the one about winning the election in 2020, he then refuses against all evidence to change his mind.  Once wet cement dries, it will never again be malleable.  Done deal.  Trump says, “Everybody knows I won the election.”  Well, no they don’t, but a good number of his followers line up for a ticket to his theater while many of his lemmings line up near the jump-off verge of the cliff.  Most mindful citizens know he lost the election, but Trump, the declarer of truth and nothing but the truth, declares what is real, what is false.  His lies take root, and he will never say he’s wrong or sorry because only losers apologize.  Losing is not an option.

       Nothing erudite about how we conclude what is real and what is not.  Using our senses, the doors and windows to the world around us, we build what we consider real and subsequently construct the landscape.  That’s the way it works, right?  Of course, our sensory perceptions are limited.  In a recent prize-winning book An Immense World by Ed Young, the author advances the notion we easily fool ourselves in believing our senses grasp all there is to know.  Of course, our senses are limited.  Other creatures, he shows, sense so much more than humans can garner.  In some ways, we are solipsists, that is anything outside our thinking is unsure.  The landscape, the people and world around us is merely a setting we create.  We are the directors of the theatre of the mind.

       Before getting carried away with casuistry, I admit the Greeks, Plato in particular, tabbed reality as something beyond what is physically experienced by the senses.  It also included the world of ideas.  In context of current events, fabrications and exaggeration may form what is real.  Not only Trump and his followers claim falsity is truth, but a growing crowd round the world conclude their certainty is the greater reality (dominant world views in China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and so on).  More, myth and religion play important roles in what people conclude is fundamentally real.

       I suppose, reality is a rumor.  Nothing more.  Too much of a muddle to find a concrete truth.  But one truth is certain: Trump is a harmful liar.  That’s truth. My truth.

Deliver Us From Evil

Unity schmoonitty.  Let’s get it over with—fight until lots of people kill lots of other people, okay?  Why?  Because our country will be ruined forever no matter who wins, right?

E-gad, America’s political/cultural divide grows broader as we approach the November presidential election.  A sober view of the extremes of the political spectrum suggestions a civil war is coming.  To make matters worse, if possible, MAGA devotees continually mention an armed uprising in the event the election winner is not Donald Trump.  Meanwhile, hard-left voices may be heard threatening to relocate to foreign shores if Harris does not capture the White House.  It is hard to exaggerate the severity of the schisms.  And threatening calls for wide-spread violence are heard daily from the sidelines.  What once was a surly exchange between the two major parties has become vile and malevolent.  Added, this presidential election is the most consequential one since, well, ever.

After the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania, both major parties hoisted the unity flag.  “Let’s not allow our differences to fly out-of-bounds,” they agreed.  “We are one country after all,” they said, “so let’s come together and be cordial and respectful while we disagree.”  Took a couple of days to dump the Pollyanna babble.  Now the parties are back to schoolyard acrimony and spiteful language sure to get folks fighting mad.

The climate is toxic!  Common ground is required.  Without proof, I’d say most folks are fed-up and emotionally drained by political fighting, especially the repulsive sort which makes us all anxious and eager for the election to deliver its verdict so we can move on.

Though the major political parties have long held sharp disagreements, the chasm of 2024 seems about the size of the Mariana Trench.  What’s different this time?  Cable television news has divided the nation into teams of us and them.  Social media, racism, class—lots of dividers keep us from confronting the tough issues.  We don’t get together for civil exchanges at the Chautauqua events anymore; we go online and grumble among a chorus of others who share similar views, thus reinforcing and weaponizing our positions.  In many ways we are isolated in the confines of social media, separated from the larger community on which we all depend.  This election cycle each major party claims the country will be harmed in unsalvageable condition if their party loses.

Vitriol and contempt greet us each day via our parochial sources of information.  Blame and polarization follow, leaving open wounds.  Echoes from the French Revolution and the ensuing Reign of Terror come to mind, an era in which committees of surveillance were appointed to identify and execute suspected subversive elements in society.  Further echoes from the McCarthy Red Scare of the 1950s also come to mind when loyalties were doubted and careers ended because of alleged anti-American activities.

It is an old paybook.  Sell fear to the public, spread suspicion and hatred, and identify adversaries to be punished.

Deliver us from the evil of our own making.  And lead us not into further hatred.

Fat Butt America

Nah, I’m not fatphobic, but it is close to impossible to say a word about a person’s body size without giving offense, without being guilty of body shaming or worse, without being labeled as bigoted, or worse.  Fact, no matter what one may say or write about a person’s body shape or weight, someone will be affronted and will want an immediate apology, file a lawsuit, or propose a law.  When discussing someone’s body, the only safe reaction is silence.  However, I’ll risk disapproval from all those who choose to police correctness.  I plead nolo contendere.  Forgive me before the fact.

The other day while out shopping, it occurred to me that America is loaded with fat-assed people.  They, we, are everywhere.  Every aisle, every queue, especially in the section of the store featuring soda pop and beer.  We are crowding in front of bakery cases, parking shopping carts the length of the chip and cookie aisle and opening doors in the frozen food lane while reaching with our chubby arms to score a family-size tub of ice cream.

Forgive me if you think I am fat-shaming.  I’m not harassing or ridiculing overweight people.  Heck, I’m overweight, as are about 74% of all Americans according to the CDC.  A more troubling statistic is 40% of all folks in this country are obese.  Statistics aside, I’m merely pointing to the size, collectively, of our rear ends here in calorie-devouring, fat-butt America.  Some nations are known for having shapely, curvaceous cabooses (Brazil, Columbia, Egypt) as marks of beauty.  Some places (Micronesia areas) have diets and cultural traditions which lead to high Body Mass Index (BMI) numbers.  Other nations, Mexico, US, Saudi Arabia, and others, have a high percentage of obese people owing to sugary and fatty food consumption, too little exercise, and, of course, too much time lounging on the sofa while binging on fried or sweet yummies and marinating in television’s blue rays.  Even so, Americans collectively, and rightly so, deride themselves for bad dietary habits and for planting their keisters in the La-Z-Boy recliner for an afternoon and evening of NFL football.  If it weren’t for bathroom breaks and runs to the kitchen during commercials for a fistful of Oreos, we’d never have to stand up and move our legs.  We should criticize ourselves.  We could do better.  The size of our beltlines is always a part of the American conversation.  But too often we go beyond decency in our assessment of body types.  Shame on us for bad habits and subsequently for pointing them out.

Not long ago, Donald Trump, in a classic schoolyard bully move, called Chris Christie a “big fat pig.”  Trump said, “Christie, he’s eating right now, he can’t be bothered.”  Now that is vicious and flat-out fat-shaming.  And shame on the unashamed and shallow-minded Trump for unabashed name-calling.  Okay, now I will do a little fat-shaming about Trump as a pointed example of what not to say.  I’m sorry.  Here goes.  Donald, look in the mirror, fatso.  Next time you finish riding your golf cart over those 18 holes at one of your golf courses, think about hitting the salad bar in the clubhouse rather than ordering your typical meal (according to a former aid): “a full McDonald’s dinner of two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, and a small chocolate shake – a total of 2,430 calories.” [1]  The pot calling the kettle black adage here applies, for certain.  No, I don’t feel terrible for calling Trump a certified fatso.  Because, let’s face it, he has a fat ass as well as a reputation as a metaphorical ass.

Certainly America has a new norm when considering attractiveness.  Recently, perhaps because of Kim Kardashian’s tooshie, surgeons have performed thousands of Brazilian Butt lifts, an augmentation procedure that makes one’s fanny bigger and more well-rounded than its previous shape.  Ah, vanity!              

Body sculpting aside, among developed countries in the world, the US ranks either first or second (Kuwait may top us) in obesity, with Mexico coming up the rear.  Roughly two of three Americans are overweight, and the obesity figures are rising each decade.  Other countries could make a case for being more obese than America, but does it really matter?  The point is we are fat and getting fatter.  The result, in the end, may be measured by the girth of our ends.

Used to be people would work in the fields, ride bicycles or walk from home to school and back again, eat non-processed foods, and the workday did not include sitting at a computer.  Obesity rates have tripled over the last 60 years in this country (USAFacts, 2023).  We should worry about climate decline and nuclear war, sure, but another menace to the human family is found in the McDonald’s drive-through!

[1] NeswIdea, 24 Feb.2020

Overcoming Adversity While Having Fun

The NFL, America’s three-ring circus has it all: drama, violence, heart-warming personal interest stories, and big-stage festivities.  As such, the buzz, in-season and out, is all about draft picks, trades, injuries, and analytics.  Sport talk shows attract large audiences while commentators discuss a player’s arm length or time in the 40-yard-dash.  Year-round yakety-yakety-yak pouring from our televisions and radios, all, I suppose, for our sport loving edification.  America has an obvious football culture, which may explain more about us than we wish to reveal.  Eugene McCarthy, former congressman, senator, and candidate for president, poked fun at Washington D.C. said, “Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.”

The gag-inducing pregame schlock for Super Bowl 2024 had all the makings of Hallmark programing.  Critics crowed, “fans were deeply moved.”  I did it my way, however, and had to look away from the off-putting saccharine manipulation pouring into living rooms across the nation.  “I Did It My Way,” an Old Blue Eye’s song, provided the intro, which was intended to bring tears and a lump in one’s throat as viewers considered the fitting way the football season ended while showcasing the American spirit of independence and blah-blah-blah.  Cathartic.  Honey smeared on sugar cookies.  We curmudgeons don’t much care for sappiness.  While fans reached for tissues, I and those like me choked back disgust at the emotional insult and exploitation used as a preface to kickoff.  It seemed to take forever for the preliminaries to conclude and the game to get underway.  Then--

Time to throw bodies around the field.  Time to smash people.  Time to go to war!  While blood pressures soared, some of us puzzled over the marriage of patriotism and football as military planes roared over the stadium after we all sang the national anthem and maybe a few stanzas of “God Bless America.”  Also, we were wondering about the affinity pop music has to football, for the halftime show drew our attention on the fifty-yard line with celebrities bouncing and kvetching all over the stage.  Then, of course, the climax of the afternoon, comes the grand attraction of the final half of NFL football violence delivered to the beer-sipping, chicken-wing eating viewers.

That’s America’s yearly unabashed party, the good and the bad and the puzzling.  Football is undeniably an American center ring attraction.  As such, it is loaded with circus acts and accompanying flapdoodle.

I’ve wondered why football has enjoyed primacy in American life.  Maybe it’s the violence we love.  Probably is.  NFL football may be terrifyingly enjoyable to watch but is littered with triteness and mind-numbing commercials.  Truly, more commercials spill into our living rooms than football plays if one were to use a stopwatch to measure time spent watching NFL broadcasts from start to finish.

Speaking of triteness, more than once an erstwhile Seattle Seahawks’ football coach said, “Good football plays are made by good football players.” He also made it a point to mention the team will play to win and losing was not an option.  But, he asserted, they had to play one game at a time.  Imagine that.  We never thanked him for his deep-dive analysis.  In case you haven’t noticed, football coaches often say funny things.  As Coach Chuck Knox said, “Most of my clichés aren’t original.”  Add to the chuckle-inducing quotations from football folks this gem from former Redskin QB Joe Theisman, “Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.”

But what has struck me lately about NFL football is the “overcoming adversity” response coming from the mouths of every other coach and two of three players.  When asked for their take on the game, everyone seems to find value in overcoming adversity, meaning God-knows-what.  Who knows?  Might be an injury or a bad call.  Might be a string of close defeats.  Maybe a star player came from an underprivileged family.  Perhaps the lineman smacked his girlfriend in the face and had to attend anger management training.  Could be anything.  To the point, I don’t know any person who hasn’t faced adversity.  Have you?  Most of us have tried and succeeded in overcoming whatever we call adversity.  And, of course, heartache and failure often produce fine lessons and improvements as they challenge us.  Wonderful!  We appreciate the sentiment.  But enough is enough, as Bernie is fond of swaying.  The tear prompting formula begins with adversity (an ankle sprain, a fumble, a charge of domestic violence, a grandparent’s death, a sore throat, a pimple on the tip of one’s nose, and so on) and ends with the team or specific player doing well on the field, thus overcoming adversity.  Applause please.

After overcoming adversity, of course, the player announces he just wants to go out there and have fun.  True, football does allow players a sense of community and provides a platform for enjoyment in doing well on the field.  But the goal is not and never has been fun.  Don’t believe it.  “Sure, we did lose by 36 points, but, oh boy, did we ever have fun.”

An ancillary motive in playing the game to overcome adversity and the just have fun is the often mentioned: “We just want to prove the skeptics wrong.”  Okay, so a few beer-sucking critics claimed your team wasn’t much good.  The revenge factor is now in play.  Go prove the silly critics were wrong.  That’s motivation to prove them out of bounds and flat out wrong.  Big deal!  Just play the game and leave the kibitzers alone.

For now I’m taking a knee on NFL football.  But still, because we all care, I’ve just released my mock draft for the year 2030.

Alternative Facts and Post-Truth

Recent polling, you may have heard, predicts Donald Trump will win the 2024 presidential election in a landslide, every state’s electors casting votes for him in an unprecedented clean sweep.  I stand by my impromptu polling techniques as both accurate and fair, regardless of the small sample size and lack of regard for scientific method.  Trump’s thumping of Harris will be greater than Franklin D. Roosevelt’s defeat of Alfred M. Landon in the 1936 election, in which Landon won just 8 (Vermont and Maine) electoral votes.[1]

       While answering polling questions, any respondent may, with confidence, know nothing about the issue or context.  Oftentimes knowledge is inconvenient, isn’t it?  Ask a question, and folks give an opinion even if they have no idea what the hell you are talking about.  We all enjoy bestowing our views whether we know the topic under discussion or not.  Knock and a door will open.  For my poll, I asked a handful of MAGA craps their take on the 2024 presidential election, and they all agreed that Trump will slaughter Harris (my poll was taken shortly after Uncle Joe dropped out).  Asked whether Mike Pence should be hanged, they all thought that would be a pretty good idea.  Further, they proved their servile loyalty to Trump by claiming that the people crossing the border unlawfully are in fact not really people at all.  Adding to these revelations, a majority believed Democrats are communists (or worse) and are known human traffickers.  Though I strongly doubt their conclusions, results of my poll are certain, so put that into your pipe and smoke it.

       Sure, I know, some polls, more than others, are accurate reflections of people’s political views.  But a snapshot of an election a few months before the votes are recorded will at best show a trend, not a conclusion.  Adding to the confusion are samples sponsored by foreordained groups wanting to influence races more than wanting to measure accuracy.

       Having shown a definite loyalty to autocratic leaders, former president Trump ostensibly agrees with Joesph Stalin’s conclusion concerning elections: “Those who vote decide nothing.  Those who count the vote decide everything.”  Despots and wannabe despots have known that conclusion for as long as voting has been a favorite of ersatz democracies.  I doubt most MAGA devotees believe the Dems had their thumbs on the scales during the last election as much as they’d like to have theirs on the scales for the next election, in which case they cannot lose.  Because Trump has made a rule of never losing, he will not accept losing anything, ever.  If he calls “heads” and the coinflip comes up “tails,” he insists on two out of three or whatever number it takes for him to win.  Only losers lose.  And Trump is a winner, every time.  Case closed.  Exactly how he got his followers to line up and march with him through the public square, escapes all logic, but there it is.  I suppose it is easier for all of us to take orders rather than give them.

       We are now entering the post-truth age, where facts are less important than public opinion.  Perhaps we’ve been there for some time.  In other words, if a fact does not conform to a hearer’s beliefs, even a scientific fact (should it make a difference), well then, of course, there must be an alternative fact which supports the hearer’s beliefs.  Flat-world advocates have been around since long before Galileo declared the earth a sphere, which, of course, was a conclusion he had to abjure once the governing powers at the time decided to charge him with apostacy.  What did he do?  He swore to an alternative fact—okay, the world is flat.  I’m sure he had his fingers crossed behind his back because he would surely rather live on a flat earth than die on a spherical one.

       Post-truth is now a thing since we learned Obama was not a citizen and was born in Africa, since Trump’s crowds were larger than any other in history, since Trump claimed he graduated first in his class at Wharton School of Finance of the University of Pennsylvania (the commencement program does not have him listed as receiving honors at all), and since, well, just about everything he says is a lie, isn’t it, or as he phrases it, “truthful hyperbole.”  The Washington Post’s fact-checkers counted 30,573 false or misleading claims during his presidential term.

       Question: How do you know when Trump is lying?  Answer: Whenever he opens his mouth.  He’s got an alternative fact or a “truthful” hyperbole ready to serve his purposes.  And he doesn’t care if you do a fact-check or not.  So, again, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

[1] This poll is specious because I asked a dozen people who don’t keep up with current events.

Scams, Blackmail, and Online Predators

Everything is for sale in America.  Everyone is a buyer or a seller or, probably, both.  Distilled, we are one enormous market full of barkers, entrepreneurs, rubes, financiers, marks, and suckers.  That’s the American way.  Maybe it’s the way of humanity.  Embedded in about everything we do is a sales pitch.  “Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and get the deal of a lifetime.” “Come on down, friend, and meet the best car dealership in the world and beyond.”        

The way I figure it about half the people in the world are prey to the other half, most of whom are swindlers, blackmailers and liars.  Each day, everywhere one turns, someone is looking to pick a pocket or beg for money.  Cybercrime is as common as germs on door handles.  Billions of spam emails are sent and received every day, and a giant portion of those fall in the category of borderline criminal activity rather than marketing pitches.  Most days, I feel like a zebra sipping at a watering hole on the savanna, because I know that nearby a lion or hyena or leopard is preparing to pounce.  Those of us who are not on the daily take have become targets and must endure constant pressure to be on the lookout for predators and tricksters, a wearisome position which does not recommend humanity.  Research from Symantec indicates nearly 85% of all emails are spam or malicious.  Each day we require protection from all the toxic trash we must wade through.

I am amazed at how many packages addressed to me are waiting for me to claim if I simply click through with my private information.  I marvel at all the freebies I am offered every day.  I have been selected to receive bargains for insurance, magazines, wet vacs, rain gutters, tummy tucks, ED treatment, credit cards, Yeti equipment, hearing aids, window replacement, lawn services, and, oh well, just about everything under the sun.  Should I mention the women who want to meet me immediately for a meaningless relationships?  Even though I don’t know them and don’t want to know them, they say explicitly what they want me to do to them.  Marketers have chosen me to go on free vacations, to receive free installation of a hot tub, to get a free chicken dinner simply for listening to a presentation on the value of timeshares, to get a free inspection of our crawlspace, and to win a smartphone just for answering a short survey.  Then I read the emails informing me I have renewed my subscription to Mcafee (notice the typo) Total Protection in the amount of $577.77, which of course I didn’t buy.  Mind you, I also have packages waiting at FedEx, UPS, and every other delivery service in existence.  Apparently I have won stuff from about every store at every strip mall in the country, and all I need to do to get everything is click a tab and fill-in my checking account routing numbers and so on. 

Dubious offers, of course, go directly into the junk folder as well as just about all others, though recently I have gotten disturbing emails from criminals, not unethical marketing types, no, rather people applying blackmail and extortion to their would-be victims.  Don’t know how these stinkers got my email address, but, let’s face it, information is easily found in the public square, and the scroungers take aim and prey on the weaknesses of people.  The following email I recently received comes from one of thousands of fraudsters in Indonesia.    

On Apr 22, 2024, at 5:48 PM, coaxy@vps.sman1rongkop.sch.id wrote:


188-5104

I'll be brief. I prepared all the content with your participation for publication.
Don't look at the subject, I had to get your attention somehow.
My e-mails that I sent to you remained without reaction.

I will tell you about one of the surprises. In addition to intimate videos and questionable correspondence.
I'm also going to publish audio recordings I made on your phone of you bad-mouthing very important people in your life.
Let them know what you say about them when they can't hear it.

Good luck to you and I'm sorry this is happening, but like I said, it's nothing personal, it's just my job.
By the way, you keep believing everything the mass media says and writes on the internet.
You learned how to use a search engine, but you still can't use your head. But things don't always go as planned, do they?

I'll start with social media, and you can search there if you're interested.
And I'll make sure everyone who needs it gets a private message with the information I've gathered.

You have one last chance, if you make it in time. Otherwise, you'll see and hear for yourself.
My BTC wallet is the same: 17kKeNTEsqB2cASARSTSjL1Phu2TeujW1p
Amount $696.
I won't give you any more time.

I'll delete the information as soon as I receive payment.
"Hasta la vista, baby."

Sextortion and other extortion scams have gained favor among the criminal elements over the last ten years according to the FBI, and the posers do not discriminate when it comes ton their marks.  We are all ripe fruit for the picking.

The line in the extortion note that grabs my attention most is: Good luck to you and I'm sorry this is happening, but like I said, it's nothing personal, it's just my job.

“It’s just my job,” the extortionist says.  Yup, in a world where a sucker is born every minute, a new job title is in play.  Cheating others is now an ordinary job.  Perhaps it always has been.

Democracy, Not So Much

We are, as we know, a constitutional republic, not an unalloyed democracy.  So what?  Those who devalue the predominance of democracy are usually eager to point out the structure of our power sharing.  We understand.  Good thing we are not a fully enrolled democracy because our latest rating on the 2020 Worldwide Quality of Democracy Ranking slotted the USA at number 36, just below Israel and far behind Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Germany.  Hard to claim bragging rights about being the world leader of democratic values.  Because, let’s face it, we’re not!  We think of ourselves as a democracy because at our foundation citizens make critical political choices, voting in or out those who represent us in public offices even though the machinery of government allows for several pillars of authority to support the weight of our nation.  Okay, we know who we are and how we are governed.  The debate over how we label our system of government is unproductive twaddle, especially when democracy itself is under attack.

Putting semantics aside and tipping our hat to literalists on either side of the silly controversy over which category we enjoy, republicanism or democracy, fair to say we are both.  And we should be proud of it.  Why quibble?  Historically we have always defended democratic principles because they are at the core of who we are.  But our democratic ways are uniquely American, flaws and all.  You may recall those idealists who marched for this or that or whatever chanting, “Power to the People.”  That’s the nut inside the shell of democracy, majority rules.  But wait, in our system the majority doesn’t rule.  We have checks and balances, a system which loses much in efficiency but gains a measure of favor in circumspection.  And the flaw is as obvious as the crack in the Liberty Bell.

Turns out our democracy has given excess power to those who contribute the most money to the few who have the largest say in government.  Once the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was amended and weakened by the Supreme Court, a few states can once again make it difficult for disenfranchised voters.  As it happens, my email inbox is filled with requests for money or else everything—state, nation, world—will fall directly into fiery hell.  Those requests arrive four, five times a day.  Always urgent, the pleas for money demand immediate contributions.  Tonight is the deadline.  If you don’t respond right away, you’ll harm the nation, the people, God’s plan for America, blah-blah-blah.  The opposition is ahead of us in money.  We need to run more ads.  Send money now.  Make your contribution a revolving gift.  Let’s save democracy for our children and grandchildren.  Each month we’ll take your money.  America’s brand of democracy is all about money, money, money, which leads to votes.

This is no way to run a railroad or a country.  Let’s face it, we are less a democracy or a republic than we are a plutocracy, a nation governed by a wealthy few.  Not surprisingly the top-shelf folks have the microphones, the daises, the pulpits, and their thumbs on the scales.  The rest of us have our prie-dieu for devotional requests and an infinitesimal chance to win the lottery.  In our system, the enormously rich cajole and coerce lawmakers to provide legislation favoring the wealthy, resulting in a government, to paraphrase Abe Lincoln, of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.  We are disdainful of Russian oligarchs because they are Russians who own superyachts, but we have our own squadron of American oligarchs who have even bigger superyachts, and they get to sit at the head of the table and dictate rules.  Our president loops medals round their necks.  Billionaires scrape crumbs from their linen tablecloths to the famished unfortunates who supplicate beneath their feet.  You have probably read about the stunning inequities of wealth.  According to some figures, the richest 1% control twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together (Oxfam International , 2023).  It’s reported the richest 130,000 families own nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.  With money goes power.  And, of course, the powerful aim to keep the scales of balance tilting in their favor.

Safe to say, our political system is off kelter.  The odds, now, are against democracy making a comeback in America.

Push Polls

The past few months I’ve been getting four or five text messages daily from political candidates requesting money.  Though they often claim to want opinions about one thing or another, it’s clear these polling requests come from people who don’t care in the least about my views.  They care about money.  They are not doing polling.  They are soliciting votes, money, or both under the guise of conducting a poll.  I consider all such enquiries to be akin to push polling.

Push polling started as phone call campaigns masked as research.  They were, in fact, clever and dishonest ways of politicking.  For example, the caller may report she is a concerned citizen who wants you to know that So & So who is running for congress is a communist, a drunk, and a drag queen.  Would you vote for such a person?  Well, yikes, since you put the question to me in those terms, gee, I doubt I’d vote for So & So.  The caller doesn’t want an opinion, does she, for the message, certainly false, is a blatant manipulation.  Such polls were and are unethical, and, of course, not polls at all, are they?  No, they amount to bald-faced deceit.  Just yesterday I received a message asking if I thought America should adopt socialism as our form of government.  I don’t know who sent the message, and I don’t care.  I do know the question is disingenuous, so I erased it.  Data gatherers are everywhere when elections draw near, and they are shameless when it comes to their mission, which is often not transparent.  The political topography is littered with landmines.

Next will come loads of deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence.  You might get a phone call from Elvis or Musk or John Wayne asking for your support for whatever cause.  “Hello, friends, this is Oprah asking you to vote for my lifelong neighbor, Donald Trump, the most honest man I’ve ever met.”  Of course, though the voice matches Oprah’s, the call is bogus.  Use of AI can have a critical influence on an election if, for instance, a leading candidate voice, say an AI voice sounding like Jimmy Carter, calls millions of voters telling them all to suck rotten fruit and go to hell.  To date, such a ploy would be grossly unethical and recently deemed illegal.

Another example of dishonest polling may go something like this:

     “Are you planning to vote for Biden or Trump in the next election?”

     “I’m leaning toward Biden.”

     “Would it make a difference in your decision if you knew that Joe Biden has dozens of lesbians working in his White House staff and has a serious issue of falling asleep during daily briefings?

     “Well, I….”

“Thank you for your time.  Goodbye.”

     George W. Bush used a similar dirty trick in 1994 in his bid for the governorship of Texas against Ann Richards, claiming she had an office dominated by lesbians.  Apparently Texans have a long-standing prejudice aimed at gay people.  Go figure.

     I somehow ended up on Trump’s chump list because, in my capacity as an English teacher, I sent a text message to correct a word choice of a Republican congressman who used “hung” (people are hanged and pictures are hung) when he should have used “hanged.”  Now I get junk mail from both the GOP thinking I am a loyal MAGA follower as well as the Dems because I have sent small donations to a couple of congressional candidates.  Consequently, I get streams of requests and lots of pleading from candidates in all parts of the country, up and down the tickets.  Woe is me to have peeked inside Pandora’s box.  It’s not pretty.

     Sure some polls are genuine and useful, but it is hard to tell what an ethical pitch for voters’ views is and what is an effort to influence unethically.  Donald Trump wants to know if I’ll be his VP.  Biden wants to know if I want to meet for lunch with Obama, Clinton, and Biden himself because they all want to meet me.  But first Trump and Biden want me to contribute to their campaigns to qualify for their insincere offers.  They all hope I will make donations on a revolving monthly basis so the money may be efficiently drawn from our accounts as a steady revenue stream.  Understood.  But I don’t want to be Trump’s VP.  I don’t even want to be in the same room or county with that felon and sex abuser.  And though I wouldn’t mind having lunch with Biden and the boys, I would rather spend my time in Washington DC browsing through the Smithsonian.  For the moment, I don’t want to contribute to anyone who tells me it is critical I send money now because the deadline to save the world is tonight at midnight and my money will be matched up to 600%.  One hapless politician, always addressing me as “friend,” sends three or four requests for money each day—never fails.  E-Gad!

Our system of electing leaders is cumbersome and fraught with unsustainable beggary.  Most of us in the Northwest dread it when the president or vice president show up at Boeing Field.  We know that traffic will be tied up for hours and police will be in full force on overpasses and along highways leading to homes of billionaires in Medina or Mercer Island.  They, our leaders, are here to pass the hat to well-moneyed folks so they, our leaders, can continue to maintain power and beg for money for four more years. The reason many of us are annoyed is because the visit to our part of the world has nothing to do with government business.  No, Medina and Mercer Island are ATMs where the big money people live, where the fundraisers take place while we, the hoi pollo, sit in traffic grinding our teeth.

Which brings us back to push polls and general dishonesty embedded into the fabric of the way we do elections.  A fair conclusion is we are doing democracy all wrong.  As things stand, our officials must spend a large portion of energy raising money, slinging mud at their opponents, and gaming the system.

This is no way to run a railroad.

Or a country!       

Ballots or Bullets

Not long ago, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee issued a forewarning.  The author, former candidate for president, television commentator, and Baptist preacher said if former President Trump doesn’t win the upcoming presidential race, the 2024 will be the last election “decided by ballots rather than bullets.”  In context, the remark sounded like a threat more than a prediction.  Much to his discredit, Huckabee has long exhibited a chest-pounding alpha male bearing, followed by throwing dung at those threatening his role as Oracle.  He is one of those Christian spokespersons who spreads anti-Christian views as he promotes division and hatred so frequently exercised by hard-right blabbermouths.  In many ways he is the apotheoses of the evangelical insurgence into the mainstream political environment.  A Christian nationalist, Huckabee wants his religion to assert preeminence over our laws and governance.  His detractors have labeled him a racist and anti-Christian in his hate-filled political stances.  The least assessment pegs him as a firebrand and provocateur.

He's not alone distorting his religion away from forgiveness and humility toward animus and sinful pride.  In fact, he’s one of millions, probably hundreds of millions, worldwide using religion as a club rather than a gift of grace.  He, along with his cohort, have chosen radical idolatry ahead of their religion.  Hatred and harm come from people like Huckabee.  With him, love takes a seat on the bench to loathing.

Political dynamics point to the possibility of an imminent civil war breaking out later this decade if MAGA forces do not get their way in the 2024 election.  Donald Trump recently warned a “bloodbath for the country” is on the horizon if he is not elected.  At the same rally he dehumanized undocumented immigrants by saying, “I don’t know if you call them people…In some cases they’re not people, in my opinion.”  Really?  Though he wouldn’t mind inviting a few immigrants to our country if they come from “nice” countries, naming Denmark as a place having nice people.  Most of the third world nations he labels as “shithole” countries.

What’s going on here?  MAGA folks anticipate violence if they don’t win the coming elections.

“Nice country you have here.  It would be a shame if anything bad were to happen if we don’t win the election.  Do we understand each other?”

First Thing: Kill All the Lawyers

       --"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers".  William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part II, Act IV, Scene 2

Like hyenas, personal injury attorneys flock near figurative watering holes looking for the injured and infirm to rip apart and devour before the big carnivores (insurance companies) move in for the kill.  Forgive the analogy, but our tort law system resembles, roughly speaking, an African Savannah survival of the fittest drill.  And it’s an ugly struggle to watch.

What’s your accident worth?  If you are injured in a car crash, whatever you do, don’t settle with an insurance company.  That’s the standard pitch coming from a scourge of personal injury lawyers hectoring us on television no matter which channel we choose.  Hurt on the job?  No problem.  Wrongful death?  Our specialty.  You heal (unless you’re dead) while our attorneys go after compensation from the ones responsible, and anyone else who may have played a part in your anguish.  Lighten up!  We’ve got your back.  What do you have to lose?  Huh?  Our attorneys don’t get paid unless your case is awarded in your favor, often big money.  What could go wrong?  Huh?

Turns out lots could go wrong.  Putting anxiety and general tedium aside and finding yourself in the slow-moving gears of the tort judicial system, there is a good chance you will resent the injustice of the process.  Often the cases are settled out of court by pitting lawyers against the insurance industry, two entities stewed in their own self-interest.  Uncompromising lawyers and costly medical systems set the stage for tussling over award, liability, and every nit of argument.  Many insiders find the civil justice system unethical, one which fuels countless professionals and civil servants for personal gain at the expense of ethics and fairness.  If you win your case or settle out of court, your lawyer typically takes 25 % to 40 % of the settlement, and after ancillary expenses a judgment often means attorneys are the winners, and you are left with resentments.  Time and bother may yield compensation, but even if you receive a decent settlement you will likely find the combative process off-putting.

The rules of professional conduct allow lawyers wide berth when making pitches on radio, television, billboards, and other media.  While it used to be unethical for lawyers to advertise, those prohibitions changed in 1977 when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down bans against advertising by attorneys. And while it is still unlawful in most states to chase ambulances as a way of drumming up legal business, in effect sales-pitching by running ads amounts to the same thing without involving hired runners who used to drum up business for attorneys.  Although insurance companies are known to lowball accident victims’ compensation, injury attorneys also have a history of taking advantage of victims.  We, the schlubs who have suffered injuries or worse, try to get by without being caught between Scylla and Charybdis.

Under the present system of tort law, we pay dearly.  All of us.  Either the insurance companies make over-the-top profits or the personal injury lawyers ratchet up settlements.  In fact both things usually happen.  Insurance companies make big profits while personal injury lawyers go for broke on monetary demands.  Insurance companies and tort law attorneys win at the expense of the rest of us.  We pick up a percentage of the tab with every payment and purchase.  We pay higher insurance premiums.  We pay more to companies who must pay the defendants who win over-the-top tort cases.  People lose jobs.  Taxes creep up.  The cost and efficiency of our tort system have been thoughtfully researched and debated, but finally our tort law procedure is a drain, all those lawyers hustling after big scores.  All those accident victims rubbing the backs of their necks while wondering if whiplash could be added to the accident settlement.

As a side note, there is nothing noble in the stock claim lawyers and claimants make after winning a big pay out.  “It’s not about money.  It’s the principle of the thing.”  Really?  No, it’s about money.  “O, while you live, tell truth and shame the devil,” as Hotspur said in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1.  How would the plaintiff feel if told, yes, the giant corporation admits guilt in killing your family, but the award to you is a sincere apology.  Monetary award is assigned cy pres.  However, the court finds you win the day, and others may take note.  Principles!  Attach those principles to several million dollars and shut the door on your way out.

If one has wealth and inclination, anyone may use the justice system as a club or a shield.  Truly, if you are loaded and so inclined, you may use filing lawsuits as a hobby.  As in many sectors of American life, those well-moneyed get the largest share of processing justice in our courts.   According to reliable sources, former President Trump’s political network has spent about 130 million in legal fees since he first began running for office.  Those fees will double or triple as he faces ongoing legal difficulties.  For him, apparently, it is worth every dollar his political donors pay for his legal manipulations.  Though he has a history of “stiffing” lawyers, the hundreds of attorneys he hires allow him to keep gaming the courts.  Though it is believed that no one is above the law, Trump has found a way to jump over or around the law time and time again.  He appeals every disappointing loss in the courtroom and gobbles up a massive share of the justice system’s resources.  As dodgy as it may appear, bullies get the bully pulpit.  Again, in Trump’s case, money raised from his followers is shoveled through Trump’s money counters to Trump’s army of attorneys.  No problem.  What has he got to lose?

At a minimum, our tort system if out of whack.  At worst, it is a machine which will destroy itself.  An empirical analysis suggests our system is simply too expensive and is getting even more pricey each year.  Each American contributes about $800 a year for tort law expenses according to some estimates.  Universal health care would offer a partial solution because the largest portion of medical expenses would be covered for the victim as well as everyone else.

Ultimately, justice system needs tort reform.  Tort laws make insurance and medical coverage too expensive.  A makeover is needed before some jury awards a guy who burned his mouth on a cup of coffee twenty billion dollars, which will mean when you order your next cup at Starbucks the price will be $40.00 for a flat white.  

LOOKISM

Humanity is widely diverse: some people are stout, some lean, some wall-eyed, some with crooked teeth and double chins, some lame, some misshapen.  You know, the usual, the beautiful, the not-so-beautiful, and the only-a-mother-could-love.  Differences make us all special.  Add physical deficits coming after birth—scars, skin conditions, disfiguring injuries, years of wear and abuse—and it may be claimed, at best, everyone is beautiful in his or her own way.  But in viewing the all-pervasive media, we primarily see attractive people, symmetrical faces and fit figures—pretty people, handsome people, not ordinary or unsightly people.  If we were to judge the exteriors of presenters on news shows, sports presentations, and reality television, we would find eye-catching women (mostly young, smiling, and at the height of their reproductive potential), handsome men (well-groomed, firm jaws, sculpted bodies, and camera aware) demonstrating the most appealing surface features of humanity, symmetrical and proportional physiognomies.  If an aspiring newscaster has a face for radio, he or she will not get television work.  “Sorry, Agatha, you are just not what we are looking for.”  In this case, emphasis on “looking.”  Accordingly, if a viewer has a negative opinion of his or her self-image, watching exceptionally attractive presenters projected onto our screens and monitors will not bolster self-confidence.  The swells occupy those frames, the 10s, the lookers, the eye-catchers, the alpha males and females.  Inner beauty is not an issue, nor is it applicable.

Shouldn’t we welcome a few upfront presenters to be, well, at least plain-looking, maybe even indisputably, you know, strikingly unattractive?  Wouldn’t it be fitting to see someone with crooked teeth and a carbuncle on the end of his or her nose doing the weather report?  With recent emphasis on societal inclusion, we don’t condone misogynism, racism, agism, sexism, or any other ism that infringes on people’s rights, do we?  But lookism is bigotry we tolerate, if not promote.  Beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder; it is in the eye of the media producer or the metonymical Madison Avenue advertising kingdom.  Go wide of the norms of fitness, vigor, and dress, and the viewing public will make judgments.  While most of us endorse the adage, “Beauty comes from within,” media producers show little interest in inner beauty because it is all but impossible to identify on screen, so they opt for proportionate bodies and angular physiques.  Let’s face it: everyone is not beautiful.  Why should they be?  We generally shy away from unappealing people, animals, sounds, smells, tastes, buildings, and so on.  Instinctively, we have an aversion to unpleasant things.  Subjective though our perceptions are, we are hardwired to avoid, if not be repelled by, what culture promotes as unattractive.  Judgements come later as we marinate in cultural and media influences.

It is not difficult to separate goodies from baddies in most screen productions.  Sure, many baddies are foul, off-putting characters.  Maybe they sneer, have crossed eyes, and enjoy hurting others?  Perhaps they affect a slick smile while cackling a supercilious laugh?  We get first impressions by reading people’s physiognomies, though those conclusions are not always accurate.  Most of us can tell, however, within minutes which characters are goodies and which are baddies in Hallmark-type productions.  Not subtle stuff, is it?  The cues are in facial expressions, body language, and not-so-subtle behavior.  In those formulaic productions, for instance, we know where good and bad come together.  We see and hear the social cues that explain the remainder of the story without needing to slog through to the predictable conclusion.  Sometimes the baddies are too-too, too handsome, too rich, too beautiful, too full of themselves—the result is off-putting, comeliness becomes appalling, because they are beyond the pale.  Jay Gatsby and Iago are smooth, handsome, and big trouble.

In case you haven’t noticed, inclusiveness is a thing.  We have lots of protections for categories of people who are treated unfairly.  Unseemliness is not one of those protected categories.  In fact, until about fifty years ago many communities had “ugly laws,” which prohibited unattractive people, for whatever reason, to appear in public view.  Most of those laws were aimed at beggars and diseased folks who made us cringe when encountered.  A Chicago ordinance of 1881 read as follows:  Any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, or an improper person to be allowed in or on the streets, highways, thoroughfares, or public places in the city, shall not therein or thereon expose himself or herself to public view, under the penalty of a fine of $1 for each offense (Chicago City Code 1881).  So much for disgusting people, eh.  Though such laws have disappeared, they remain in spirit when we confront an “ugly” walking the streets of our cities, when a beggar comes our way, or when we confront the growing population of unhoused folks living in tents and plywood shelters on the verges of our byways.

As a remedy to our discriminatory past, shouldn’t we invite more hard-to-countenance people into our lives, to appear on television and in our films?  Repellent people, even distorted ones, can read and speak, can present the evening news to us because, finally, we share a share of grotesqueness as human beings, and we are all beautiful in inexplicable ways.  These news presenters would detail as they ought, all the horrible and grotesque events of the day because that’s the way of the world in which we live, isn’t it?

Walter Cronkite used to sign off each newscast with, “And that’s the way it is.”  Might be time to change the old models for the world as it truly is.

TRUMP

A friend has suggested I not mention Donald Trump’s name in her company unless I have breaking news he is either dead or in prison.  I understand the loathing, a visceral disgust which comes from just thinking about Trump.  Seeing Trump.  Hearing Trump.  Trump says this.  Trump says that.  Undoubtedly, he is a creature dedicated to money and crime, a Jabba the Hutt cartoonish figure.  It’s wearisome to see his face in every newspaper and screen.  How many times each day must we visit his complaints, anger and misogyny?  Poor dear is as repulsive as the late Uganda dictator Idi Amin, who allegedly munched the flesh of his political rivals during cannibalistic conquests.  “Everybody knows” (a phrase Trump often uses) the former president admires those who rule with an iron fist.  Come one, come all, he loves to fight, get even, be the winner no matter the contest.  He treats women as objects, “pieces of ass,” in his words.  That said, he unquestionably would praise the Ugandan cannibal strongman for his command of his people and for his reputation as a world-class despot.  Besides being as gross as Amin, Trump has been and still is as divisive as the Berlin Wall.  Aside from his reputation as a rapist (let’s not split hairs between sexual assault and rape) and a racist, he's a swindler and a braggart, not to mention his roles as a traitor and draft dodger.  Daily he attacks and blusters.  Blithely, he cares only about himself, lacking empathy, his conscience incapable of functioning.  Benedict Arnold’s vita curriculum looks better than Trump’s because Arnold was far more high-minded until he decided to switch sides during the Revolutionary War, though I’m sure our former President Bone-Spurs would gin up his resume to fabricate everything in it before judgments became final.

So how does such a flawed person command the respect and following of all those red state MAGA voters?  Recent polls suggest Trump may be more electable than Biden.  A friendless man married to a stony woman, Trump has cheated on all three of his wives and is unashamed of his dalliances.  Given Trump’s character, or lack thereof, and his stunning list of legal liabilities, how is it possible he stands a chance to become president once again?  How can he inspire voters to anything but contempt and the immediate use of an airline airsickness bag?

Fear and anger, that’s how.

Fear is Trump’s superpower.  Fear is the weapon all would-be dictators use.  He stages fear.  He invents fears.  He taps into the fears of voters.  His inherent lack of self-worth invites a grandiose cover up, so he claims to be a winner, a genius, a messianic figure, a powerful voice fighting the sources of the threats which surround us.  He will battle those who threaten America.  He cozies up to voters by claiming to understand what they fear.  Fear of those contaminating our country.  Fear of Mexicans pouring over our borders.  Fear of sexual topics being discussed in schools and in public squares.  Fear of ethnic and racial populations gaining political power.  Fear of LGBTQ people living large in America.  Fear of losing Mayberry RFD to BIPOC folks who may use weed but don’t use weed & feed on their lawns.  Fear of science.  Fear of books.  Fear of intellectuals.  Fear of dark conspiracies by Jews and globalists who allegedly aim to control the world.  Fear of those who kneel rather than sing with gusto “The Star-Spangled Banner.”  Fear of ceding power and social standing to people who don’t own guns and want to put restrictions on them.  Fear of elitists, meaning anyone who has earned more than a high school diploma or GED.  Fear of city folks.  Fear of BLM.  Fear of RINOS.  Fear of Wokeness.  Simply, Make America Great Again, you know, by emphasizing what we all should fear.

It works too.  Former President McLiarface appeals to an underclass which has been held down and subsequently pushed around for centuries, even though he, also known as The Man Who Would Be King, deplores the very voters to whom he curries favor.  He is not of their element.  He wants dominance, his victory dance, and his people don’t mind being told what to do because they have been exploited and want to end the cycle of being ignored.  He tells his core followers they are victims of a culture excluding them from what America is and should be.  Trump will rescue them from victimhood, and so they will follow his flag all the way to the point of storming the Capitol and will even entertain the idea of hanging Mike Pence or executing a general who implies bad things about their Generalissimo. 

But anger is Trump’s other trump card.  His rage goes off as often as Old Faithful’s eruptions.  Case in point, he spewed his 2023 Christmas message as follows:

“Merry Christmas to all, including Crooked Joe Biden’s ONLY HOPE, Deranged Jack Smith…THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN, LIED TO CONGRESS, CHEATED ON FISA, RIGGED A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ALLOWED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, MANY FROM PRISONS & MENTAL INSTITUTIONS, TO INVADE OUR COUNTRY, SCREWED UP IN AFGHANISTAN, & JOE BIDEN’S MISFITS & THUGS, LIKE DERANGED JACK SMITH, ARE COMING AFTER ME, AT LEVELS OF PERSECUTION NEVER SEEN BEFORE IN OUR COUNTRY??? IT’S CALLED ELECTION INTERFERENCE. MERRY CHRISTMAS!...Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

Atta boy, former President Bone Spurs, great message of love and hope to promote the Christmas season.

A sliver of truth comes from this would-be dictator’s fear message.  Government bureaucrats and American oligarchs have been telling the powerless what to do and how to do it for as long as folks found themselves in the same church but sitting in different pews.  Even though Trump is emphatically a despicable person, many voters conclude he can be a good president because he promises to represent their interests, their victimhood.  Trump favors dictators and billionaires and has no affinity for those left behind and struggling to catch up.  Those people for the most part are losers, and Trump only likes winners.  Exclusively.  But Trump plays his anger to their anger of being left behind.  And it works.

As immoral as Trump has proven to be, many voters find equally strong objections to Uncle Joe.  Biden has his own list of liabilities, though not as many Deadly Sins as Trump.  So we are all in for an anxiety-ridden election year.  Who should we choose—a nice gentleman who has observable flaws, or a corrupt swindler who speaks only lies?

That said, I plead guilty in doing the same thing Trump does: name-calling, belittling, taunting.  Shouldn’t I strive to be better than Trump?  Easy answer, yes.  Every day I’m trying.  But I keep thinking—what if he wins again!  How can one horrid person destroy America and its place in the world?  Anything might happen.

What if he keeps sticking his finger in women he barely knows?

British View of Trump

A colleague recently sent me the follow piece from the London Daily News.  “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?”  You may have already seen it because it has been circulating online for some time.  The following response appeared before January 6th and the Big Lie, which only would add steam to the commentary.  It was written by Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England:

 
       “A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

       “Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
      

       “There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

       “And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

       “So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

       “This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

       “And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumps of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.”