Call it what you will, a crack in the dam, a sliver of sunshine breaking through the vast darkness of Republican sloth. Whatever you want to call it, it has happened.
First, Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins stood up against the misguided and just plain irrational nomination of Kash Patel for director of the FBI. The guy, who clearly shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near any branch of law enforcement, was confirmed anyway, as Murkowski and Collins were the only two Republicans with the courage to stand up against Donald Trump, but they did.
Then came Senator Thom Tillis, of North Carolina. He was a another beam of light and truthfulness to cut through all the Trumpian insanity, as he took to the senate floor to lambaste Vladimir Putin and Trump’s demented stand on supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine while turning his back on NATO and our traditional allies.
Three Republican senators may not be much, but it’s a start. A beginning in what hopefully will be a return to sane and responsible governance by the Republican Party, before Donald J. Trump, brings us all down, destroying our “shining city on a hill” that took 250 years to build.
We can only pray there will be more, joining in the patriotic fight against creeping despotism, until the entire Republican Party, or most of it at least, can regain their senses and stand as a block against Donald Trump, refusing to accept his attempted overthrow of our Constitutional Democracy.
America needs heroes not cowards, and we need them now. People willing to take the lead, like Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska.
Use any metaphor you like, the train carrying American patriots to the continued successful future of our Constitutional Democracy is about to leave the station. Time to pick a side, Democracy or dictator.
When we were growing up we were criticized for doing stupid things. We were told “you better go and take a smart pill or you won’t be able to get into college.” It worked, I think, as many of us tried harder to develop our minds as well as our bodies. And a bunch of us, did get into college.
Then it happened. Somewhere in the 80’s, the country began celebrating ignorance and chastising higher learning as being “elitist.” The country started glorifying commonality and demeaning higher learning for anything other than an MBA. Diplomacy was displaced by a bigger and badder war machine as we adopted “Greed is good” as our national mantra.
What was left of any spiritual ethos we might have had was beaten bloody and left lying on the floor.
Now, here we all are. Half the country has no reading comprehension and the only thing anybody can agree on is football. A perfect satellite for Putin and his Russian machine as the United States turns it back on its allies in favor of dictators, oil rich kingdoms and terrorists.
The bad guys are no longer at the gate, they have kicked down the front door and made a home for themselves in the Oval Office. They are standing the American ideal on its head and probably laughing about it while the Republican Party, the only ones left with the power to put our house back in order, cower in a dark corner of some basement room at the Capitol.
This current Republican Party gives new meaning to the term political cowardice, as they watch the country die from a thousand cuts with influence being purchased through dark money courtesy of a totally politicized Supreme Court.
It may be too late to hope that people will develop critical thinking. Instead we’re losing the Dept. of Education, denying Science and hoping the Oligarchy, our new rulers that are slowly tearing apart our American Democracy, will be kind to us.
The hotline to the Kremlin, installed years ago to keep the peace in an increasingly dangerous world, is undoubtedly coming in handy to receive instructions from Vladimir Putin, advising Trump how and when to act, so that we the sheeple will continue behaving according to plan, making as little trouble as possible as they continue laying waste to our institutions.
You didn’t really think Donald J. Trump was smart enough to come up with all this stuff on his own, did you?
Feels like people are complaining a lot, doesn’t it?
I went in for a blood draw with an appointment for one o’clock. There were three women in the waiting area when I arrived around 12:50. All three were complaining about how long they had been waiting. I finally asked if they had an appointment. They did not. I then suggested that maybe the people who worked at the office might be on a lunch break. That was a mistake, as all three then directed their frustration at me, because it would, they explained, be only reasonable to put up an “out to lunch” sign. At one o’clock, on the nose, a phlibotomist came out and invited me into the office for my blood draw. Because I had an appointment. Easy to get one. You can do it online in just three or four minutes.
Next came a guy the at supermarket, loudly complaining about all the federal workers being “Paid big money for just sittin’ around.” I wondered if he could name three, or even two, and what his complaint will be when he needs help from that same Federal Government, but there’s nobody to take his call. Bet that’ll set him off.
I wonder if he knows that our President, a guy he may have voted for, is now claiming that Ukraine started the war with Russia, and not the other way around. Or that people working for Elon Musk, are now scrambling to try and re-hire some of the federal workers they recently fired, because it turns out those recently dismissed had filled positions of critical importance within the Federal Government? Like keeping tabs on our nuclear industry and watching the expanding Bird Flu problem.
I wonder if he knows any of that, or even cares. Thing is, if you tried to tell him, he’d probably just get mad. Therein lies the heart of it. Telling people what they don’t know but should is a blow to their egos. So, suggestions like making an appointment might be a good idea or maybe you should read a newspaper now and then, will only draw their ire.
It seems to be epidemic. So many of our fellow Americans now seem to think with their collective gut and not with their heads. Which should probably be expected in a country led by a man who frequently complains and divides but seldom if ever, does anything designed to heal and bring people together. He seems great at tearing things down and then playing the victim when he fails, but lousy when it comes to building things up. And he once billed himself as a real estate developer?
The really scary thing, if you’ve been paying any attention at all, is that his condition is obviously systemic. This time when he crashes, turning his back on NATO, denying Science and attempting to silence the legitimate press, he’s gonna try and take us all down with him. It’s built in to his psychosis. Simply put, it’s who he is.
In the words of retired U.S. Army 4-star General Barry McCaffrey, “It’s utter madness. It’s against the security of the United States and its allies.”
Don’t watch CNN much anymore, but inadvertently landed there this morning. Pamela Brown, was hosting CNN Newsroom, and did an excellent interview with Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee.
It was one of the best interviews I’ve heard with a Trump supporter, with Brown keeping it on topic when the congressman tried to compare an American solider taking a rifle off a Japanese solider during WW II to Elon Musk’s young geeks conducting raids on the U.S. Government. Kudos to her. She exposed Burchett, for exactly what he is, not losing her temper while he continued referring to her as “Ma’am.” The way the good old boy from Tennessee was using it sounded more like a slur than a complement. Brown eventually ended the interview as he continued to spew talking points and got personal, attacking Brown and CNN’s poor ratings rather than addressing actual issues.
She also did an excellent segment on the non-summit, summit in Saudi Arabia. Interesting setup, with the Americans on one side, the Russians on the other and the Saudis at the head of the table and the Ukrainians nowhere to be found. Real through the looking glass stuff. By my way of thinking, anyway. Just an excuse to get Russia and the U.S. back together again, following four years of separation. Happy to see CNN is still letting Jill Dougherty come back to provide input on Putin and the Russians.
Golden West Broadcasters, used to reside on the old Warner Brothers lot at the corner of Sunset and Bronson, in Hollywood. It included both KTLA-TV, a radio station, I think it was KMPC, and what was left of the original Warner Brothers lot with its mammoth sound stages, including the stage where they shot the first “talkie,” The Jazz Singer, with Al Jolson.
That particular soundstage is gone. Replaced by a big building that houses Netflix. Also gone is the old concrete vault where they kept the film. That old film was so highly combustible, that they had to lock it away behind concrete walls. If it exploded into flames, the whole lot might go up. Some of those ancient soundstages are so big, that clouds, or condensation at least, can form up in the rafters. For real. I saw it and was amazed.
All of it, and more, including the Los Angeles Angeles baseball team and a couple of other broadcasting properties, were owned by cowboy movie star Gene Autry, and his partner, former Detroit Lions tackle, Bob Reynolds, until Autry decided to get out in 1982. A few years earlier, there was a strike.
The National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians or “NABET,” and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees or “IATSE,” are two big unions in Hollywood. There’s also the IBEW. I don’t recall if all three went out on strike or if one went out and the others supported the work stoppage, but I do recall that it happened when the boss, Gene Autry, whom everybody including all the employees called “The Cowboy” was out of the state or maybe, out of the country.
The story goes that he learned of the strike when his limo pulled up to the picket line at the Bronson gate. Autry, or so the story goes, got out of his car for a confab with the striking workers. Hours later, the strike was over as Autry ordered his negotiating team to give the union what it needed to end the strike. And they did. And that was that.
I met Gene Autry, just once, at the Hollywood Christmas Parade. KTLA, was the broadcast outlet for the parade, which was fitting, since the song “Here Comes Santa Claus” was written by Gene Autry for the parade when he was the owner of KTLA and Golden West Broadcasters.
A year or two after he sold the company, he was still a presence on the lot. At the time, I was working for KABC, and was sent over to cover the parade. They had their “green room,” a lounge for the stars, set up under a big tent. I mean big, like nearly half a football field big, and in the middle, was Gene Autry.
He was seated at a large round table. With him, at the table, was every cowboy character actor I had grown up watching as a kid at those Sunday matinees back in Minnesota. I can’t give you any names, but I knew all the faces. And they were all there to honor THE COWBOY, who was famous for hanging out, not just with other stars, but with stunt men.
The story goes that Autry and his stunt man buddies would drink late into the wee hours of the morning, closing the bar in the back room at Charlie’s on Ventura Boulevard out in the valley – that his handyman assistant, “Doc” would have to take him home and drop him into bed.
Gene Autry, may have been a singing cowboy, but he was no candy ass. Not if he was hanging out with stunt men and probably some of the cowboys that infamously inhabited “Gower Gulch,” the street that ran down one side of Sunset Gower Studios. Legend has it that those real cowboys that were extras in some of the hundreds of cowboy movies they were cranking out back then used to get into real gunfights, right there on Gower Street. I can’t prove or disprove it, but it sounds plausible enough. Los Angeles, after all, is the city where Wyatt Earp was once arrested on a bunco charge by the LAPD. Earp, also occasionally worked as a consultant for western movies.
Autry’s right hand man “Doc” is a story in and of himself. The Cowboy used to go fishing down in the Caribbean. It was on these fishing trips that Autry met Doc, a native islander, and offered him a job back in Hollywood. Doc accepted, and from then on, he had a job, not just hanging out with Gene and his buddies, but on the lot at KTLA. He had a maintenance job for life. Autry, had it written into the contract when he sold the place. Whomever bought it, got Doc in the deal, and he could never be fired, laid off or otherwise dismissed. That’s the story, and I believe it. I’ve been told that Autry cut the same deal for a couple of buddies when he sold Golden West. Jobs for life.
Everybody, it seemed, loved Gene Autry. By the time I got to KTLA, in 1985, they were still talking about how “The Cowboy” came home and settled the strike. It was another chapter in the legend of the singing cowboy, who died with his boots on and millions in the bank. By one account he was worth around $500 million when he died. His wealth, and how he handled it, have been on my mind.
Autry, who had more money than he was ever going to be able to spend, was apparently happy to share some of it with the men and women that worked for him. And that put him at one end of the moral spectrum. People like Elon Musk and Donald Trump, appear to be at the other end. People who are driven not by courage and the love they have for others, but by fear and greed, which in turn, generate anger and division. Sometimes, even hate.
Right now, for the United States, the cowboy is clearly out of the country. I hope he comes back soon, before the gates are torn down, the buildings set ablaze and the Republic is no longer. We’re a wealthy country. It doesn’t have to be this way.
In 1982/83, KABC-TV sent me out to do a live shot from the Club Lingerie, in Hollywood. They were featuring a group from New York City, doing this new thing called “Hip Hop.” Not sure it was being called “Rap” yet. So, I went out, did the live shot with kids break dancing on the floor, and a DJ spinning records, backwards and forwards, and I was totally unplussed. Couldn’t understand any of it. “Just another new thing that’ll be “here today and gone tomorrow” I thought.
Then, not much later, maybe just a few months later, I would be driving home through the San Fernando Valley, and I noticed kids on street corners break dancing on sheets of plywood or cardboard with a boombox nearby. It became clear that Hip Hop, had a hold on Los Angeles. Which brings me to now, and why I have any interest at all in any of this.
Yesterday, I forced myself to watch some of the Superbowl half-time show. I was determined to check it out, even though I’m not a fan of Hip-Hop or Rap, or whatever it’s currently being called.
I hated it, possibly because I couldn’t understand anything the “artist” was saying. I was relieved when Samuel L. Jackson popped up, wearing an Uncle Sam costume. It was at least something I could understand. How Sam Jackson related to all the dancers and whatever it was the “artist” was trying to say, left me without a clue. And I’m a huge fan of Bob Dylan. Vocally, he’s no Caruso, but he never had to be. He’s the poet laureate for an entire generation, the Boomers. My generation. If you want to understand the mindset of the 60’s, listen to Dylan. And so, I was bound and determined to get whatever it was the “artist” was trying to convey during the Superbowl half-time show.
I got nothing. Nada. I was repulsed by his incoherent shouting and hit the mute button, satisfied I had given him a chance.
It’s been said that “The Blues had a baby and they called it Rock N’ Roll.” For the most part, that’s spot on. One form of music evolving into another. So what gave birth to Rap?
It’s not that I hate all of it. In 1989, MC Hammer, had a hit with “Can’t Touch This,” and I loved it. Rap, had finally come around to approaching something that was smart. It was clever, which made it fun and interesting. But then, nothing. Not until “Uptown Funk” from Bruno Mars. Great stuff. A number that will last for years. You can even understand the words. It’s not just angry, it’s clever and melodic.
I suppose I sound like my grandparents sounded in the 1960’s. Perhaps that’s inevitable? Pretty sure Grandpa Herbie, never got the Rolling Stones. I will though keep listening, keep trying, until something else reaches out and grabs me. Hope it doesn’t take another 25 years to get there (referencing the time period between Hammer and Bruno Mars), cause I promise you that Rap, will not last that long. It has no melody and the poetry is simply not that good.
Some new purely marketable product will come along for the streamers and Rap will be forgotten. But Rock, will live forever. Cause it’s actually music. It has not only rhythm, but melody and harmony. And maybe even, God help us, actual singing, or people at least trying to sing, instead of just feeding their voice into a machine to atuo-correct the pitch, further promoting the dumbing down of American music.
“Teach your children well, their father’s hell, did slowly go by……..” CSN&Y, 1970
I admit there’s a possibility that this is all inevitable, that I am turning into my Grandfather. But there could be something else at play. ‘Autotune” is a real thing, and much or most of Rap, is without melody or harmony. And I don’t like it. Possibly because my ear is too educated for the genre, or maybe because I refuse to educate myself to the hear and now . Get it? “Hear” and now? Naw, I could never be that closed minded. I went through the 60’s and survived. You can’t take that away from me, even if you do hate me for being repulsed by Rap.
While we wait to see the implications of Elon Musk’s attempted takeover of the Treasury of the United States, the gutting of the Justice Department and much of the federal workforce (whether we will receive this month’s Social Security checks), thoughts race through my head about this past election.
Mostly, I continue to be fascinated by the fact that DJT, inherited a stable government with a growing economy. Something those on the right rejected in favor of a convicted felon, who inherited a fortune only to go bankrupt six times before leading an attempted coup against the United States. Donald J. Trump, now appears determined to destroy the stable government he inherited and to ignore the rule of law despite the fact that he swore an oath to “…preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Trump and his FCC, are now trying to silence the media, the free media, not just those outlets that support the Administration and care only for profitability with no concern for any obligation they might have to provide their viewers or readers with factual news and information. Trump and his lieutenants have targeted CBS, and will undoubtedly target others, including special agents of the FBI, who are being threatened for doing their jobs. Curtailing the work of the FBI would be bad enough. Muzzling a free press, would be as bad and maybe worse.
Imagine having no idea at all, as to what’s actually happening to the country. Imagine news outlets living in fear of saying or writing anything that might upset the Trump Administration. Imagine the United States, following the the path of Hungary or Russia.
Keeping a population ignorant, is one of a tyrant’s greatest weapons. A free press, is among his most powerful enemies.
If you don’t like what’s happening to the country, you can fight back. You can start by calling your U.S. Senators and your representative in Congress, demanding that the laws of the land are upheld, that our Constitution must be preserved – that tyranny, shall not stand. While we can’t all afford to take the government into court, the ACLU can, and will. You can make a donation to the ACLU by clicking here.
It feels as though our business, what was once called the “press” but has now morphed into “media” by virtue of the fact that there is so much more out there than just the old printed word, may have peaked with Dan Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, or maybe with Woodward and Bernstein during the Watergate period.
It feels to this 76 year old, like we have been sliding away from being the old watchdog press and into something more and more conservative. Like Victorian ladies and gentlemen, afraid of being overly offensive or possibly attracting a lawsuit.
I recall my mentor, Bill Vance, telling me, “Sooner or later you have to learn to take the gloves off.” Wonder how many newsroom bosses we have like Bill Vance, now? Any? And here we all are, after a long slide into fear and disrespect, driven in no small part by companies that cared only for the bottom line and avoiding lawsuits rather than tough, adversarial Journalism. Companies that merged into just a handful, all or most with a similar mindset.
There were of course, mitigating factors. Things like ENG coming along, with the concurrent demand to do everything on the broadcast side “live,” with little or no time for fact checking. And Ronald Reagan, killing the Fairness Doctrine, giving rise to “trash talk” radio, and wingnut 7/24 cable news channels, with little news and mostly opinion. With all of that, we were “slip sliding away,” weren’t we?
I felt that slide happening, did you? Don’t you think that to a degree this current news business atmosphere aided and abetted Donald Trump? I have to wonder if once we get through this current madness, if in fact we are able to get through it, lessons will be learned about getting back to the “telling it like it is” mindset of the 1960’s? A time when some of us were naive enough to think that the truth was an absolute defense. Could be that every so often people need a reminder.
Back in the days when Jefferson Airplane was still in the air and Ken Kesey and the “Dead” were driving around San Francisco with Timothy Leary, handing out free hits of acid (google it), there was a relatively new import from Europe, capturing the hearts of America’s youth. It was the Volkswagen “Beetle,” and eventually, the Volkswagen Microbus, or just “VW Bus.”
I learned how to drive, in a VW Beetle. It was basic black. As I recall, those first Beetles were offered in only two or three colors. I think it had a three-speed transmission. On the floor. I remember that much. A stick shift, on the floor. Family friend, Kenny Christensen, bought what had to have been one of the first Beetles to arrive at a dealership in Minnesota, and Kenny, offered to teach me how to drive. Which I did. Right into a cornfield.
As the years went by, Kenny continued buying VW’s, a couple of Beetles and eventually, a Microbus, which he converted into a camper and never let me drive. No fool was he.
Others, were also fond of the new imports from Germany. The VW Bus in fact, became a vehicle of choice for the flower power “Hippie” movement that swept the land as young men of draft age headed for one of two places, either the drug addled fields of the “Summer of Love” or the battlefields of Vietnam. Which by that time, were also addled by drugs.
The flower power Hippie “peacenik” movement was in full bloom. As Hunter Thompson put it, “They were fast strange times and we moved in fast strange ways.” Or something like that. It was a long time ago, and the old VW Bus was central to it all, on its way to becoming iconic.
And now VW has something new. They’re bringing back their old “bus,” in an EV version and calling it the “Buzz.” Clever play on words if you ask me, updating the vehicle’s name without giving up on its considerable youth culture heritage from the 60’s and 70’s. Thing is, younger folks, many of them delivering the news, don’t know any of this and are calling it a Volkswagen “van.”
This became apparent while watching coverage of the Los Angeles fires, when what appeared to be a vintage blue and white VW Bus, somehow survived the Palisades Fire, while everything else around it burned to the ground. The local newscasters were calling it a “van.” “NO!” I shouted at the screen, “It’s a VW Bus! Not a damn van!”
Just one of the older folks splitting historical hairs, I suppose, but in matter of fact, VW always called it a”Microbus,” which the youth culture shortened to VW Bus. And now we have an electric “Buzz” as well. Good for VW, for keeping it going.
None of this matters much, I suppose. For many of us, though, it will always be a VW Bus. Maybe you had to be there to understand. Thought I might pass this along before we’re all gone. Hopefully, I got most of it right. It was a long time ago.
I dropped our subscription to the NYT’s, because I (we) felt they were conducting what amounted to a smear campaign against Joe Biden, which in turn, was helping DJT. Also, my friend and former colleague Dean Baquet, had left the paper, which appeared to coincide with its diminished front page political coverage. And, $500 a year for digital and a hard copy on Sunday, felt a little steep.
Without the NYT’s, we still had the LAT’s and the WaPo to rely on. We went digital on both and have been getting a hard copy of the WaPo on Sunday, replacing the NYT’s. However, now comes the continuing behavior of Bezos and Soon, apparently bending their knees for Trump, resulting in what appears to be an exodus of excellent journalists like Matea Gold, leaving both those papers. My former colleague, Matea, is moving from the WaPo over to the NYT’s.
After Soon did an interview proving he knows nothing about Journalism, we canceled our subscription to the LAT’s. I then renewed our digital subscription with the NYT’s, leaving us with digital subscriptions to the NYT’s and the WaPo and a hard copy of the WaPo on Sundays.
Considering what’s happening at the WaPo, I’m gonna drop them, I think, which will leave me (us) with nothing but the NYT’s digital edition. Which appears to be all we have left. The NYT’s and the AP, Reuters and that’s it?
Print is where our news comes from after all, what we used to call “shoeleather” journalism. AKA, the truth, as opposed to relying on the lies and half-truths of corporate and government handouts. And if the NYT’s goes under – how many of us can afford $500 a yr for the Sunday paper – then what’s left? Local tv news? Most of them don’t even know how to do a follo, much less what a follo is or how to follow up on a question someone from another outlet asked but the guy at the lectern is still refusing to answer.
I swear to God, in my local market, the broadcast outlets just keep reporting out the same old story without advancing it at all. I don’t think they were ever taught that it’s their job to advance a story or at least explain why it can’t be advanced because someone, usually some government wonk, it putting roadblocks in your way. It’s not necessarily their fault, it’s just that the news business has changed, and to a degree, those in it are forced to accommodate the changes or they’ll lose their jobs.
There are still a lot of great people in the news business, trying their best to put out a decent product. But by in large it would appear that for the most part our old credo of “Afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted” appears to be dead and gone. Except maybe, for the NYT’s and a few locals, like the Baltimore Banner online, to which I subscribe.
It’s accepted as fact, that one of the first targets of an invading force is the media. An invading army has to capture the media to control the minds of the populace in order to control and contain the country. Keep people in the dark and you can do almost anything.
And so, welcome to our new America, with billionaire newspaper owners bowing down to he who would be king and firing anybody that won’t do the same – leaving me (us?) with nothing but the digital edition of the NYT’s and maybe a few online outlets like the Baltimore Banner, but it’s difficult to see how they will be economically sustainable with nothing but online revenue.
Lots of football today (on Netflix?) made me recall one day in the mid-70’s, when the station I was with, KDKA, made a bet with the CBS affiliate in Houston. If the Oilers won, KDKA would send their weatherman, Bob Kudzma, to Houston to do the weather for a night. If the Steelers won, the Houston station would send their weathercaster to do the weather for KDKA.
Well, the Steelers won, and the Houston station sent their weathercaster up to Pittsburgh. She was drop-dead gorgeous and wearing a cowboy hat. Today, the Steelers will be playing the Chiefs. I’ll be watching, and thinking of that day somewhere back in the mid-70’s – thinking of that cowboy hat and poor Bob Kudzma. Not sure he was ever quite the same.
Christmas, is almost here. You can tell, just by watching your local tv news. A government shutdown has once again been narrowly averted, some madman has driven a rented car or truck into a crowd of holiday revelers somewhere in Europe while here in the U.S., some other madman, or school kid, has opened fire on their teachers and classmates in the latest mass shooting. Topping it off, for those planning to travel, the airports are expected to be jammed with record crowds. Oh, and we’re still short on air traffic controllers, a problem the country has had since Reagan walked away from contract talks and locked out their union in 1981, which marked the beginning of the collapse of the union movement in America, and a first major death blow to the American middle class.
Every year, it’s pretty much the same. This year though, there’s icing on the cake with Musk and RFK Jr. making noises about eliminating Daylight Savings Time altogether and cutting back on the use of vaccines, putting us in even more darkness and disease than we’re currently experiencing.
Somewhere in the dark recesses of my brain is the sure fire feeling that what Reagan did to create the air traffic control mess, Trump is gonna do to Ukraine and NATO, and like the air traffic controllers, the upcoming Ukraine tragedy will also last for decades. It’s what the Republicans do. The country, never seems to learn.
And don’t tell me “it could be worse.” Know what? It could be one helluva lot better, too. But we won’t get there by cutting the education budget or banning books or cutting taxes for the uber-wealthy.
Sharing public bathrooms with cross-dressers shrinks into nothingness compared to turning over the reigns of power to greedheads who want to tear away the Social Security program and medical benefits you and your peers have been paying into since you were 15 years old just so they can give even bigger tax breaks to their billionaire friends.
And you wonder why so many journalists end up as alcoholics or drug addicts?
After being under the radar for a few days, Trump arrived in Paris, without Melania. Greeted by French President Macron on a red carpet, Trump appeared as though he was trying to arm wrestle the French president. Clearly confused, Macron patted Trump’s hand as if to let him know that everything would be okay, that no wrestling would be necessary. Later, DJT was seen in the newly renovated Notre Dame Cathedral, sitting hunched over to one side as though he had an injured butt cheek.
Generally, Macron appeared extremely cordial toward the soon-to-be U.S. President, possibly reflecting back to his earlier congratulatory message to him on social media: “Ready to work together as we did for four years. With your convictions and mine.” (Thank you Jimmy Kimmel).
Here in the U.S., the news was full of speculation about who Joe Biden will pardon next. Specifically, preemptive pardons for possible targets of Trump’s retribution once he’s been sworn in.
The fact that this is even happening in the United States, should give pause to Trump supporters, “should” being the operative word. I no longer hold out much hope for the possibility of conversions although any late awareness of reality will be greatly appreciated.
I was stunned at the outcome of the popular vote. Still am. It just doesn’t seem possible. It feels like some kind of alternate reality kicked in, taking the country by the throat and threatening our American Democracy as Democrats failed to vote. For anybody. But here we now are, stuck with it.
Years ago, I had a professor in a humanities course at the University of Minnesota, who taught us an interesting premise. One that’s stuck with me. Maybe because the professor was a body builder who rode a Harley. Very imposing for an academic. Smart guy, too.
“Every man, wants to be a god.” That’s what he told us. I can’t remember who originally came up with it, but it’s pretty good. Especially in light of all that’s happening in our current state of madness.
Think about those in control and those who seek control. And how much of it they actually want.
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, contributed more than a quarter-billion dollars to the Trump campaign, or so says the New York Times. But why? Why would anybody give that much money to an egomaniac with the attention span of a flea? Because he wants to be a god, that’s why.
It’s not enough for Musk to be uber-wealthy, so wealthy that his family will enjoy “generational wealth” for centuries to come. No, he wants it all for himself, or as much as possible, and he wants it now. That means obtaining the office of the most powerful person in the world, the President of the United States. But Musk can’t have that because he wasn’t born in the U.S. He’s a South African import, who, according to reports, inherited an emerald mine before getting his company started on U.S. soil illegally, apparently, before obtaining the proper credentials.
So, unable to get himself elected to be the nearest thing we have to an Egyptian Pharaoh, a sun god who walks the earth like a giant while all others cower in fear, he’s trying to buy his way in. With a quarter of a billion dollars. Why? To get next to Donald J. Trump, our soon to be anointed American god, who admires, perhaps idolizes, Vladimir Putin, dictator, absolute ruler and god of Russia, master of all he observes, a man who is trying to rebuild the old Soviet Union. Apparently. And who is helping him get that done, as Ukraine is devastated to satisfy Putin’s god-like desires? Why it’s Kim Jong Un of North Korea, of course. Dragon God of the North.
Putin is running out of soldiers to continue his war of conquest against the unfortunate people of Ukraine, so North Korea’s Kim, not wanting another god-factor dictator to go down in flames because that might reflect badly on him, has sent his troops to Russia, to help conquer Ukraine and perhaps one or two or three other countries that were at one time in the Soviet orbit.
Those who would be gods, need to stick together. Trump has professed his admiration and even “love” for both Putin and Kim. A bromance from hell.
And then there’s Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, who, it seems, has something in common with all the others. All these wealthy, powerful, conceited and probably sociopathic individuals who just can’t get enough. They demand absolute power and if you disagree, they’ll threaten you with a state sanctioned reprisal. They might send in the tanks and blow you away. In Putin’s case, some rare radioactive poison might be preferred.
The common factor is that they all want to be gods. The professor was right. For any one of them, more will never be enough. And they are all here at the same time. What a cruel and unholy turn fate has dealt us.
