The Brilliance of Donald Trump

President Donald Trump signs Executive Orders like Costco hands out free samples. To some they seem a godsend; a promise kept. To others they’re just another sign of the clown-ocracy; one step closer to fascism.

This particular batch appeared to be no more than some watered-down proposals that had already been offered up by the Democrats. One of the proposals has been opposed by both parties.

As usual the devil is in the details. Trumps executive orders combine an authoritarian power grab with a blatant attempt to purchase the 2020 election with taxpayer dollars. (In typical Trump-onomics fashion, nothing is actually paid for. Actual payment will be deferred to future generations or the Trumps more standard method of payment--bankruptcy.)

Resorting to executive orders is not some great victory or a promise kept. As Trump has shown they can be easily negated by the next administration. Even Trump supporters should be concerned about the self-proclaimed deal-maker has never been able to steer a real bi-partisan solution through congress.

The current executive would appear to have neither the talent nor the inclination to actually help craft legislation. Instead, he proclaims like a tiny Lord Farquaad, because negotiating is too difficult, especially when he can sign meaningless drivel that makes him look benevolent.

There is a short term executive order deferring student loans that could relief that could actually benefit some individuals. But the so-called relief is structured in such a manner that all he really does it defer the pain of the bite until after the election.

The moratorium on evictions sounds downright humanitarian. Trump promises to offset any cost to landlords. Of course, he fails to identify where this money will come from.

Trump is also declaring a retroactive payroll-tax holiday for all those earning $100,000 or less. The problem with this is that while everybody wants to see a bigger pay check, Trump ignores the problem that to do so in this manner undermines Social Security and Medicare. 

Hoping that you don't notice the cynicism, Trump has turned his executive orders into an election -year bribe. You will continue to receive money, that would have been your, but these changes will only be made permanent if he is reelected. Apparently, as a lame-duck president, Trump will never find the time to make his sabotaging of Social Security and Medicare permanent. It's hard to tell if he means this as a promise or a threat.

The big prize in this batch of executive orders was probably the extension of supplemental unemployment benefits. Not surprisingly, these benefits are also unfunded. For the unemployed to actually receive these benefits they would have to live in one of the few states not swimming in debt from the COVID-19 crash, that could actually afford to pick up a large part of the tab. In this scenario the hardest-hit states — already begging for relief and coincidentally leaning toward the Democratic nominee — will be unable to participate. So before it even begins, Trump’s smoke-and-mirrors order doesn’t actually exist.

These executive orders have no teeth, they are paper tigers at best, but more importantly they are probably unconstitutional. They encroach upon areas of government generally reserved for Congress. Of course, court challenges may be the hoped for outcome. It allows promises to be made, that will never be kept, while making somebody else look like the bad guy.

 

A Question of Possibilities

What happens to us when we die? Do we join in some grand family reunion? Perhaps we frolic in the clouds with angels, dress in white and play harpsichords. Some of us may fear that we are destined to an eternity in a pit of fire. Or could the truth be as simple as we return to all that we remember of the year before our birth.

In some ways it remains undeniable that the dead continue to live on long after they have died. Their idealized, perfected personages live on in our dreams and memories. Unless we've opted for life as a hermit, we will undoubtedly live on in someone's dreams and memories. The real question is, will we continue to live even after all who remember us are dead? 

There are people who claim to have contacted the dead. Houdini thought they were liars, although he remained hopeful. But not all contacts with the dead are made by people just trying to steal a dollar. It happens to regular people. For lack of a better explanation it has happened to me.

Does the acknowledgment of the reality of claimed contacts with the dead the same as saying we have sufficient proof of the reality? I don't think so. The reality and sincerity of an account is not the same as a verification of the perception of that event.

I do believe that it is safe to say that, at the very least, the departed continue to live in our dreams and memories. If confronted with a stressful situation of our own who better to provide comfort than the perfected persona of a passed loved one?

Given our natural desire to live it does not seem remarkable that people with near-death experiences are often greeted by a parent, grand-parent, Jesus, or someone recently deceased. What I might call a flaw in all of these accounts is, if the other side is so desirable why are our loved ones always sending us back?

Nevertheless, I can't disprove any near-death stories any more than they can be proven. While it is true that some are so ridiculous as to be obviously false and dome are frauds, I suspect most accounts represent an honest retelling of the person's experience. Generally, the only thing I doubt is the accuracy of the perception, not the honesty. 

However, none of this rambling leaves me settled or resolved about the dead. I still don't know if it is better to take comfort in the possibility that life continues after death as suggested by myth or to seek answers not yet found.

Neither atheism nor agnosticism provides a satisfactory landing pad. They themselves represent a structure belief. Atheism assumes we know it all, or at least enough to discount possibilities. Agnosticism is in some ways chicken-shit atheism. Ultimate truth is unknowable therefore maybe, but leaning heavily towards maybe not.

Both theisms fail to consider that we don't know all that we don't know. (It did sound goofy but Donald Rumsfeld wasn't entirely wrong.) Nor do we know all that we will know. As a temporary landing pad atheism and agnosticism might make sense, but they don't really account for the long term. For that reason I've landed upon the almost Rumsfeldian, Possibilism.

Possibilism is, of course, an invented term. Since the term was invention it has been borrowed modified and dressed up slightly by various individuals... That's actually no worse than the many Protestant churches, all of which consider themselves Christian.

My take on Possibilism is that we have reached a point where many of the old myths and legends, even weekly horoscopes, can be discounted. We don’t hide them away to pull out at some later time. Perhaps for today that makes us atheist. The difference is that we don’t lose sight of the fact that an immeasurable universe remains mostly unknown and maybe possibly, we'll stumble upon an answer tomorrow.

Earlier on I hinted that I had not been immune to the inexplicable experience. I once had a two-way conversation for several minutes with someone who had died.

I was in the bedroom where my father had just died. Only he and I were in the room. Just then a person walked in dressed as a medic. There was nothing magical or mysterious accompanying his entry. There were no horns or lights from the heavens. He was working with the county to collect certain medications. In this case it was morphine. I didn't recognize him at first. But then I did. We spoke of things past and of the possibility of a future rendezvous.

It wasn't until after he left that recalled the last time I had seen him. It had been at a funereal. His. 

I left the bedroom and went to the living room and kitchen to ask if anybody, there were more than 5 people present, had seen this person, or any person, pass through. They had not.

Over the years I have had time to invent rational explanations for this story. It is possible that at least one of those rationalizations is correct, yet nothing that I have ever conjectured as shaken the reality that I felt during that experience. 

For better or worse, Possibilism, is no better than any other -ism at providing an answer. That is not what it is about. Naturally, I'd rather have the answer handed to me. Who wouldn't? But I have found it disingenuous to accept solutions with holes big enough to drive a truck through.

For now, I take comfort in knowing that I really don't know, I may never know, but on the other hand someday I just might know.

Joe Biden, Just Saying

 

I am supporting Joe Biden for president, and I still don’t know who his running mate will be.

I am not worried that Joe Biden will be beholden to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. There is no reason to believe that he will be beholden to anybody. He is nearing the end of his political career, not the beginning. He’s not some young Senator from a small state hoping to make a name for himself. His name has been made. This is legacy time.

I’m not worried that joe Biden is not always the smartest person in the room. Truthfully he never really overly impressed me. In his earlier years he had a propensity for repeating the wisdom of his others as his own. Oftentimes he would provide proper attribution, but that one time he didn’t it was a doozy. It killed his presidential bid at that time. I’d thought that, at least on the national front, we’d seen the last of Joe. It would have sunk a lesser man. On the other hand, his borrowed words were well chosen. All by all appearances he was sincere in his meaning, even if it had sometimes been enunciated better by others. If that is his greatest sin he’ll be a great president.

Joe Biden had been a senator for a long time. He certainly took some positions in the past that I can’t support today. Of course, some of them, he no longer supports either. I think that it is safe to say that throughout his career that while he has seldom been on the leading edge of anything, more importantly in my opinion, is that he has seldom if ever failed to come around to the more decent, empathetic and human point of view. The bottom line is that in spite of his ups and downs and the occasional, maybe a bit more than occasional, malapropism he has always returned to what seems to be his core: basic decency.

There is little doubt that he will do all that he thinks he should to placate the more extreme members of his party, whether you believe them to be Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or Tulsi Gabbard. However, people cowering at the thought of socialist takeover need not worry. He will also try to sooth the concerns of Mitch McConnell, if for some reason he’s still around, as well as whomever remains from that side of room. 
It has never been in Joe Biden’s nature, at least politically, to stick it to people. I don’t think he’s about to start now. Deservedly or not he sees himself as someone who can bring people together and that is the legacy he is most likely to pursue.

Given that the choice this election year will be between a return to sanity or a hastening of the slide into a banana-republic totalitarianism, I don’t see a third party vote and the resultant gamble with the American electoral system, as an affordable luxury for 2020.

Tin-Pot Dictator

As mentioned previously this was about a campaign commercial. There was no noble effort about to be undertaken here. Donald Trump was not about to make a call for unity, or a pledge for justice or even spit in somebody’s eye. There was no attempt to actually address any of the obvious issues at hand. It was a staged power-walk across Lafayette Square to Saint John’s Episcopal Church for the purpose of creating a photo opportunity and a campaign video flanked by militarized extras, paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

Brandishing a Bible whose pages have probably never seen daylight, Donald Trump, once again showed that he has no time for empathy, governing or upholding the constitution when it conflicts with his self-interest.

For the sake of a campaign commercial, Donald Trump willfully trampled upon the U.S. Constitution when he violated the 1st amendment rights of peacefully assembled American citizens. Trump called upon a secretive military unit to scatter the legally assembled protesters. The president’s army descended upon the peaceful and legally assembled crowd. They pushed their way their way through with shields and batons and they rode in on horseback. They pushed the crowd of legally assembled protestors back using flash bombs, rubber bullets and tear gas. 
 
 OK, some people say they actually didn’t use tear gas, just some irritating smoke bombs. In terms of what they did to the first amendment I don’t think the smoke bomb defense is as exculpatory as those pushing the tale seem to believe. The bottom line is we are talking about a police action attacking people for exercising their constitutional rights; there’s no need to quibble about whether or not smoke or tear gas was used along with the rubber bullets, flash bombs, shields and batons.

Once Trump arrived he triumphantly held up his Bible. Well, he tried, Having never seen an actual Bible up close before he wasn’t sure which end was up. In the end he decide that up was down and front was back and, after all, it’s only a book. Who would know?

Trump had no inspired quote to share; not about forgiveness nor, keeping more in character, about vengeance. His only purpose was trying enough poses to insure that the cameras would get the best possible picture for his campaign video. Melania taught him well.

In the end, Trump’s walk from the Rose Garden displayed his usual lack of empathy, a middle finger to the constitution, and a display of religious hypocrisy that would have made the Pharisees blush. The topper for the evening was sending in the helicopters at low altitudes to, apparently, bother the protestors. As as being intentionally threatening, this was a needlessly dangerous stunt.

But Trump is a Tin-Pot-Dictator wannabe. You expect this from him. It’s his entourage of sycophants and enablers that are more troubling.

Former governor Scott Walker thinks the president displayed “guts”. Mario Rubio was OK with 1st amendment violations, because wherever there are people there may be violence, or some such logic.

Trump’s behavior shouldn’t be a conservative or liberal issue, but it should be an American issue. Yet the voices from the GOP continue to remain submissively silent. Is their hold on power that intoxicating? Far too many Evangelical leaders don’t seem to mind when religion is reduced to a campaign trope, just as long as it gets them a seat at the big table.

It’s dangerous times. Trump may willingly become the tin-pot-dictator with a love of props, but by himself he is powerless. It is his enablers, his cabinet, and the complicit GOP that appear to have sold their country for 30 pieces of silver.

A Best Next Step

 

Have recent events taught me anything? If so, then what? Can it make a difference?

These are the questions I ask myself as I ponder recent events in the United States. I look for deep meaning but I don’t really find it. I just left with a combination of disgust, despair and hopelessness about the human condition.

Ahmaud Arbery was jogging when his murder was caught on video. If the video had not gone viral would his murderers have even been arrested? It doesn’t seem likely. It also makes you wonder how many other similar incidents were not caught on video.

In Kentucky, Breonna Taylor was shot 8 times when police stormed into her apartment — or politely knocked, depending upon which version of accounts you choose to believe. Her boyfriend, who legally carried a gun, defended himself in what he believed to be a home invasion. There can be little doubt that, as initially charged, he was lying and represented a threat to law enforcement and the community. Why else would he have called 911? Throw in that the charges against him were dropped and you have an indication that something really wrong happened.

Like Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd’s death was also caught on video. Would George Floyd’s death have been considered murder if not it had not been caught on video? Look at the video showing several policemen standing over him while he is being held with a knee on his neck. They’re not interceding on his behalf. That’s supposed to be bad, and it is, but more surprising is that they are not reacting in a manner that would suggest this is something they’ve never seen before.

What I think I’ve learned is that racism can be a little bit like skin cancer. What is easily seen may be only a glimpse of how bad things are below the surface.

What’s next? I don’t know? I’ve weighed the pros and cons of writing this little guilt-dump. I suppose I could engage in peaceful protest — we all know that looting is criminal and counter-productive. At the same time, observation has taught us that all that peaceful protest is likely to do is bring about a premature end to our NFL careers. It’s so frustrating that it makes you want to throw something.

So, how do we make a difference? For now, I think we fall back on clichés. As Americans, at least at the moment, we can still choose to vote. Yes, there will be many attempts to discourage voter turnout but those would-be obstacles need to be met and beaten. I do wish that I had the courage of my convictions and honestly believed that a good voter turnout was the answer. I don’t, but I do welcome the chance to be proven wrong. Removing Trump and his minions would be a good start on the road back to civility. While some of the alternatives may provide only the slightest improvement, hopefully they’ll provide for a day when there will be even better choices in a next round.

On Hillary

I don’t like defending Hillary Clinton. At best she was my third or fourth choice from among the original slew of candidates. However, that was about politics, not honesty.

I watch TV, browse the Internet, and read the news so it’s easy to believe that she has made a career of skating along the edges of ethical behavior. I have to admit that I have sometimes found her attitude grating. She projects a sense of entitlement that I find uncomfortable. However, I can't be proud that my attitudes formed in no small part due to constant exposure to the headlines, memes, and repetition. If you say a lie often enough, it really does come true.

So, pulling gathering together all of the resources at my disposal, I went on a Google expedition to uncover the “crimes” of Hillary Clinton.

My final determination: There was no there, there. I found accounts of her business dealings, Whitewater and cattle futures and such. However, each of these episodes came across more like bad episodes of ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ than high crime. That she would find herself mired in several get-rich-quick schemes may suggest a certain lack of character but it doesn’t even begin approach the depths of evil with which she is so often discussed.

But what about Benghazi? Benghazi proved that she isn’t Rambo. What should she have done? Has anyone questioned how many more Americans might have died had a guns-blazing, face-saving, futile gesture been authorized?

That the email story continues to thrive is also nonsense. She acknowledged having a private server. What more must she do? If it violated a policy – something that should have been easy for a competent Congress to determine—then wouldn’t there already be a specified sanction. Instead they (the Congress) spent millions on hearings and investigation all for the sake of political theater. I also believe that the security concerns are political nonsense. Anybody, including the Pentagon, can be targeted by hackers. It’s possible, although it would not excuse any violation, that Clinton’s security bettered the State Department’s system. Don’t forget that the State Department’s system did allow mail to go back and forth from a private server. Back to the point, Clinton was Secretary of State, everything was potentially sensitive and carried the possibility of future classification. That she had the server, that she used it for work-related mail is all established fact. Unless, she’s being accused of deliberate espionage, that’s really all there is. Combing through the 80,000 emails in hopes of finding something embarrassing has no value beyond political intimidation.

Still, I’m not saying there aren’t enough questions about Clinton’s judgements, actions, or attitudes that it would be unreasonable to think (hope) that a better alternative might be found down-ballot What I am saying is that she isn’t the anti-Christ, or even a less extreme variation of Trump.

I Just Don't Know

The Republican Party, which was bordering on deranged, has found a standard bearer who may actually be deranged. Alzheimer’s, Dementia a combination of the two? I don’t know whether to despise Trump or feel bad that syphilis, or something equally debilitating, may be eating away at his brain.

However, the party that continues to fund him can’t hide behind a mental illness excuse. (Or maybe they can if they really think that lead in their drinking water is OK, but I’m guessing that they don’t.) A few Republicans are tepidly jumping off the bandwagon, but in large part that’s only because they sense it might he heading over a cliff.

The party of “No”, the party that for 8 years has known how bad Obamacare was but couldn’t come up with a single idea to fix it, the party so fearful of the law that they won’t appoint a judge until they can be assured of how that judge would rule, so obsessed with personal responsibility that they would default on the obligations they incurred but can’t seem to find the will not to continue spending, worried more about who’s pissing in the next stall than preventing the next economic collapse, obsessed that BLM wasn’t ALM rather than giving a damn about why it is a thing in the first place…

Wow, what a self-indulgent rant; time to put a plug in it. Suffice it to say that the Republican Party has been careening towards this moment for decades. The crazy-man standard bearer is no accident.

Yeah but... What about Hillary? It’s not an equivalency; Hillary is far from my perfect candidate. I find her too hawkish. Her indebtedness to Wall Street is uncomfortable. Her ethics are always on the side of good, but sometimes by less than a hair. She is a little too elitist as it applies to herself. I also think she packed the DNC with cronies to ease her path to the nomination. I don’t like that. But I think the DNC remains healthier than the RNC. The movement within the party is taking a progressive slant. But, most importantly, no matter what you think of Hillary; she’s not crazy.

Relitics has had a confused existence.

Originally I intended it to be a venting arena where I could pontificate on religion and/or politics. But issues having nothing to do with either religion or politics intervened and Relitics was set aside.

Eventually the dust did settle and I found myself to be a very rusty writer. Even by my low standards my writing had become rusty. I found that writing had become like riding a bike You DO forget.

So I resurrected Relitics as a site where I could, hopefully, lose some of the rust, get back on the saddle, etc. (Sadly I've lost my book of tired cliches and must trust that these last few are fresh and untried.). To get back on point: I set myself up with a schedule and wrote - every Sunday night, often inspired by nothing more than what song might be playing in the background.

Well, that was great, for me. But, truth be told, who wants to write and write and be unread? Well I guess, actually there are many people that do. And I say "Bravo" to them. On the other hand there are a lot of people who get similar pleasure from talking to themselves. We generally cross the street when we see them coming.

My point, if there really is one, is that readers of blogs like to read blogs that are about something,not blogs that are about nothing. Think about it. For instance, who would watch a TV show about nothing?

Finally to remedy the situation about having a blog about nothing I'm making the following changes:

Reletics will be about religion and politics, although it may never see another entry.

I've created a new blog: WriterReadersPost. It will be about writing and it will also be about reading. After all there's no point writing if nobody is reading.

Hope to see you there at http://writerreaderspost.blogspot.com/

Back on the Blog Again

Back on the Blog Again

The iTune player has found “Realize’ by Menthol James. That is some deep digging by the iTunes player but not much of a prompt to start a blog. This is two weeks in a row that iTunes has let me down.

Not so much. FLASH!  I’m a Writing Flashy.

I had my first attempt at writing flash fiction returned. Why? Well they didn’t say. I have several theories but I could never prove any of them.

1. What is flash fiction?

Maybe I don’t know. Or I do know and I also know that what I sent in was not. Flash fiction has a beginning, middle, and end. It does this in 1,000 words or less. My story had a beginning and middle, but did it really end? Well, sort of, but there was a carry-on-to-tomorrow aspect which was unresolved. Perhaps if someone had entered to kill one of the main characters then it would have definitely had an ending.

2. Genre Please.

On order to remain employed editors need to please their readers and their readers demand: science fiction, humor, horror, satire, or romance, but probably not much in-between.  Don’t give me any damn romance when all I wanted was to have the bejeezus scared out of me.

My story it was part fantasy, part horror, part ghost story, with what I hope was a touch of humor. I other words it clearly fit in the … genre. Mr. Editor, I feel your pain.

3. Too Sophisticated for the Intended Publication.

Yeah, that’s likely. But please, allow me to tell myself this while I cry in my beer.

(The iTunes player rises to the occasion to mock me as it plays George Harrison’s ‘That’s the Way it Goes’.)

What’s Next?

Chuck it all in? Learn to write like Dave Barry OR Stephen King but not both? (The world already has a Christopher Moore.)

Well, “THE’ story is actually pretty good. If not good, at least it has been edited well, most of my sometimes excessive comma splices having been removed. I would read it to my son. I wrote it for him many years ago.

So, I’ll find a home for it – somewhere. There are places that accept literary pieces; there are places that publish crap. Someplace there is a place where this story belongs. And on that note, with Culture Club’s ‘Karma Chameleon’ playing in the background – blog out!

Back on the Blog

Back on the Blog

The tune playing as the blog begins: The Beatles, a bootleg of a live performance, ‘I Want to be Your Man’. Well, that’s a tough one to use as a jump off, or a prompt, or whatever the term du jour may be.

FLASH!  I’m a Writing Flashy.

What is flash fiction? It’s a novel for those of us wanting instant gratification. It’s for those times when Cliff Notes are too much.

As luck would have it I happened to have a story collecting dust that seemed almost a perfect for the format. The format is, basically, to fit a complete story with a beginning, middle and end into 500 to 1,000 words, or 300 to 1,000 words, depending on whose definition you’re trusting.

It turns out that writing flash fiction can be a great exercise, especially for a master of the superfluous. Limiting oneself to essential words results in cleaner writing. All those words intended to add color – gone! (They probably didn’t work anyway.)

Story ready, off it goes. Will it be accepted? I don’t know, but just in case I am making plans for the $60.

Clever, eh?

At one time I intended that this blog would tackle serious subjects: religion and politics. Reletics, get it? Anyway I’m going return to take a turn in that serious direction for a moment. All while ‘You Brought the Sunshine Inside’ by Jude Bowerman plays in the background.

Shortly after it started appearing on Facebook I started following the Clive Bundy ranch fiasco. It was supposed to be an assault on our basic rights but I wasn't getting it.. So I read and then read some more, but I still didn’t get it. How was one rancher’s sense of entitlement to freely use land that was not his, endangering our rights? He said he didn’t recognize the Federal Government but would willingly pay the state authorities anything they asked. That doesn't make sense. We can’t legitimately decide not to pay people we owe but to pay some uninvolved party instead. Bundy had been making his usage payments until around 1993, so what changed? His claims to have been farming the land since the 19^th century don’t appear to be valid. Land records indicate his family purchased their land in the late ‘40’s, and probably didn't start farming (or ranching?) until the mid ‘50s. It doesn’t appear that they ever owned the land in dispute.

So, without hyperbole about the armed thugs of BLM – Since, even if they do exist they didn’t show up on the scene for 20 years – what’s the story?

The Final Tune for the Evening.

Once more I depend upon the iTunes random selection to close out the evening. Tonight it’s “March of the Meanies” from The Beatles, Yellow Submarine soundtrack. For a moment I was thinking that I might have to re-think this iTunes strategy, but I actually like this.