Archives for April 2020

Day 1174 – Two Themes Running

Monday April 6, 2020 

209 Days until the election on November 3rd

289 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Yesterday I posted an article on my Facebook page from The Guardian, the British newspaper. It outlined the syncopatic co-dependent relationship between Jared Kushner and Donald Trump. It seems every bad decision Trump has made has been at the behest of Kushner. I’m sure that’s going too far because Donald was making bad decisions before Jared showed up on the scene. Maybe, I should amend the above to say, “In this administration many, if not all, of the bad decisions have been because of Jared.” 

The Guardian outlines them and it is stunning. Also of interest is the fact that people who worked for Jared when he ran a paper called The Observer were shocked at his rise to a place of such power in the Trump administration because they knew of his incredible bad decision making ability. One has only to look at his buying that building in New York at (I love this) 666 somewhere or other (Park?) to see he has really bad business acumen. I mean you buy the sign of the devil and pay too much? (I digress, sorry.) 

But now Jared is advising the president. I realized they, Jared and Donald, are locked in a co-dependent relationship, and a bad one, a very bad one. Cogitating on this has led me to see a second emerging theme in this piece and in my thinking – the danger of religion, any religion, over truth. 

The two themes of this piece, and probably many to come, are:

1. The danger of co-dependent relationship. Here as expressed in the relationship of Jared and Donald.

2. The danger of religion over reason.

(PS Don’t expect this kind of clarity in my writing most of the time.)

When Trump won the presidency he appointed Jared in charge of domestic policy and threw in solving the Middle East crisis and later fixing the V.A. Why did he do that? It has become clear in articles and books that Trump has no interest in running anything, be it a business, a charity, a government. He likes the flash and the sizzle, but the actual work? Forget it. Remember as soon as he became president he signed Executive Orders? He held up the two fold binders with the order signed in black sharpie and turned it toward the cameras? Yeah, that’s what Donald likes. Actually doing something? No, he lets other people do that. 

It’s been a disaster for him. We now have clues in his business dealings how bad it was and still is. He was losing somewhere near a billion dollars a year for several years running back in the 90s. His father kept bailing him out. Finally, the Russians came in and had him doing their dirty laundry. He continued to fail upward. From an academic career that we don’t really know much about, other than he didn’t spend much time in class, didn’t do much homework, and spent most of his time sucking up to his dad via dad’s real estate business. He went on to announcing a number of flashy Manhattan real estate projects. Most of which failed or put him further in debt and left him bankrupt, but on financial resuscitation via an allowance from the banks he owed money. This morphed into his TV show where he used his brash reputation to make people believe he was some sort of captain of capitalism. The show worked because he wasn’t too bright and kept repeating the same lines, which in a TV series is a good thing because you don’t have time nor do you want to keep having to re-educate your audience. They already knew the characters and their actions (i.e. “You’re fired!”) You could watch as a B-list actor and/or tangential celebrity tried to please and ultimately fail (the worst I think was Meatloaf – so pathetic.)

From that show he was able to cobble together an odd assemblage of hateful people and using the same sales pitch he has always used win the presidency. It wouldn’t have happened without the yeoman disinformation work of Fox News and the Russians. 

But now what? He’s won the most powerful office in the land, has no interest in actually doing the job, hasn’t thought about or prepared to do the job (still hasn’t) what should he do? The solution is to dump all or as much as he can on Jared. Problem solved.

But it’s not only because neither he nor Jared have any idea what the American system at its core is all about. They are both hampered by their flawed personalities. I knew Trump to be lacking in the ability to emote, to understand sadness or happiness, to be able to laugh or cry. But Jared is the same way. He has demonstrated a lack of empathy and caring combined with a level of banality, stupidity, and misunderstanding that can most easily be described as evil. Not that he knows or cares what it is, but it is there. 

To understand Jared you have to understand that he is Jewish, conservative Jewish. This is an important part of who he is. His family survived the Nazis by tunneling their way out of a ghetto and living in a forest in winter in Russia (or close to Russia.) They eventually made their way to Italy where they heard of a program that would allow them to immigrate to the U.S. (Thank-you Democrats.) They began building housing in New Jersey. Much of it crappy housing, as opposed to Fred Trump who was building crappy housing in Queens and Long Island. Jared’s dad employed people from they synagogue. In fact, if you weren’t a member of the synagogue you probably wouldn’t get a job. At least not a job where you were going anywhere.

Dad got a little too big for his britches and started mixing money from one place to another. He was a mini-king maker in that part of Jersey, but eventually he ran afoul of the law and another glory seeker named Chris Christie put him away on tax evasion. Did Christie have a chance in the Trump administration? No. Jared made sure of that.

But if you’re conservative Jewish and your family tunneled it’s way out of Nazism to live in the woods in winter you’ve got a certain toughness and distain. You do what you gotta do to survive, and this colors everything you do, are, and be.

Here’s the thing about Donald and Jared. They don’t understand. They don’t understand basic human emotion. You only have to listen to Joe Biden for a minute or two and you know he feels deeply for the hurt and the tragedy of everyday life. Donald? Never. Jared too. I think it is completely missing from those two. Called it sociopathic or psychopathic. Human empathy and emotion – it’s not there. Seth Myers has said that when he worked on an SNL skit with Trump. (Sorry, I know. I’ve told this before.) Trump did not understand the humor. He didn’t get it. He had to observe other people laughing to understand that it was – apparently – funny. He never laughed at it because he is incapable of laughter because he doesn’t get it. 

He also thinks he can turnover the running of whatever it is he is currently into to someone else and they’ll take care of it. This leaves him free to make more public pronouncements and seek publicity, which seems to be the only way for him to gain satisfaction. 

Now he’s president. He’s turned the government over to Jared and a bunch of crooks who are looting our resources and good will and anything else they can get their hands on as quickly as possible. Meanwhile he’s been going to rallies, now press conferences, and getting rid of anyone he suspects that isn’t adding to his glory.

But Jared is sacrosanct and this shows in stark detail the danger of nepotism. Jared is not only his son-in-law, but the guy making lots of decisions albeit really bad ones. He and Trump are locked in this bad relationship that they can’t get out of.

Nothing has shown this more than this pandemic. Neither Jared nor Donald understand the basic purpose of the Federal government in a time of crisis. In fact, Jared not only doesn’t think the Federal government should help the states when they are overwhelmed, he actively works against them. He doesn’t quite say it that way, or maybe he does? How else is one to understand the statement that the National Stockpile is not for the states? 

This leads me to my second theme the danger of religion. Not spirituality, but religion – organized religion. Be it a huge enterprise like the Catholic religion or a small cult like Jim Jones or a general set of guidelines and principles be it Christianity, Mohammedanism, Judaism or any of the other big religions. They, at their core, have a few things in common. One is belief. Belief in something. It’s called belief because it isn’t factual. They hope it is true, but they can’t prove it, and don’t really know. 

This relying on a belief that can’t be proven has led to some pretty drastic and crazy behaviors over the years. Most of which end up some someone dying. Maybe, many people dying. 

What stuns me is that despite any evidence how such a belief takes hold and how it can persist for years, decades, centuries, millennia. 

I think a search for the truth is a better way to go. Have beliefs if you want to, but realize and be prepared to abandon one or all of your beliefs if evidence to the contrary is presented. Of course, this is not what happens. Religion seems to be more a rear guard action defending itself from the truth as more evidence to the contrary of one’s beliefs presents itself.  

Science is the search for truth. Religion is not. Therefore, I believe in science because I believe in the truth. 

I’m wondering when that graphic will start making its way around the internet again. The one that shows how many diseases science has wiped out or contained versus religion. ( Spoiler Alert: Religion 0 ).

Link to the Guardian article:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/jared-kushner-coronavirus-aid-trump-governors

209 Days until the election on November 3rd

289 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Who doesn’t love an elephant! I wonder what this one is thinking. I’m betting he’s thinking “Man, I was a dummy to allow this guy to get up on my neck.”

Day 1173 – Let’s be Fair to the president
Sunday April 5, 2020
210 Days until the election on November 3rd
290 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
I recently got an email from my friend Ron entitled:
Chinese Covid 19 Check Point

Here is the text:
“The CHICOMS don’t mess around … just like Trump didn’t mess around when he embargoed any Chinese from coming into our Country … and was criticized as being “racist” by the same people (MSNBC) who now say he dawdled and didn’t act soon enough.”

There was a movie attached which I didn’t open (didn’t want my machine to get infected!)
The movie has a picture of what looks like a toll booth with a traffic cop and someone in protective gear. As I said I didn’t play the movie. But the implication of the text is that Trump didn’t mess around and he isn’t getting credit for it from places like MSNBC.
I beg to differ, ever so slightly. I think he has gotten credit by MSNBC for everything he has done and not done, but let’s make sure he and others get the credit they deserve.
I also want to point out the title of the email I received – Chinese Covid 19. Some would call that racist, because well, it is. But let’s go with it shall we? Or do you like Tom Cotton’s characterization better “Wuhan Virus”?
But now that the virus is here should we could call it by geographic location, like “New York Covid 19” and “New Jersey Covid 19”, “Ohio Covid 19”? Those are states. Maybe it should be cities, like “New York Covid 19” or “San Francisco Covid 19”? Or as Cotton did, sign it to a race or nationality “American Covid 19”? How about assign it to an individual from that city or state? Trump is from New York so we could slap his name on it – “Trump Covid 19”? San Franciso has Nancy Pelosi so it could be “Pelosi Covid 19”?
Let’s keep score shall we? How’s Trump Covid 19 doing compared to Pelosi Covid 19? Why Trump is way out ahead! Or as Hillary (that nasty woman!) pointed out “We’re number 1!” Why are folks offended by that? She just told the truth.
Okay, it’s not fair to call New York’s Covid 19 “Trump Covid 19” because he’s no longer a resident of New York. He now is a resident of Florida so really Florida’s should be called “Trump Covid 19.” The Donald likes his name on things, I say give him both! I’m generous.
The email goes on to say Trump dawdled. Well, he did. Let’s give him credit for holding press conferences during those weeks after stopping Chinese from coming here from China (but not other folks. Fortunately, Covid 19 knows the difference between Wuhanians and New Yorkers flying back to America right? Am I right?)
The idea of stopping flights from countries is to give your country time to prepare. Did we prepare? Well, the president held multiple press conferences and said that we had the situation under control, that there were only 5 cases in the country and it was dropping to 0 soon. He was only off by what? 300,000 or more. So do be fair, and accurate should I subtract 5 or 0 from the total to say how far off he was? Just asking, you tell me.
Let’s also give him credit for stopping other things as well, like accepting test kits from the World Health Organization (WHO).
Let’s give him credit for his restraint. Like not invoking the War Powers Act at that time and whipping our military and industries into action to fight this thing.
Let’s also give him credit for not putting the whole country in quarantine, which would have – according to experts (what do they know?) – helped stop the spread of this pandemic.
Let’s also point out that many governors took the lead from the president and let “business as usual” rule the day. Big shout out to Ron DiSantis in Florida for keeping the beaches open for spring break so all those healthy kids could pass the virus among themselves and then go back home. Of course, we don’t know that to be true because we didn’t test many if any of them. Last I heard five had the virus, but that was weeks ago.

Other cities (like San Francisco) and states (like Ohio) ignored the president and immediately started shutting down. The Republican governor of Ohio should get a big shout out. He stopped a huge meeting from taking place in his state and shut his state down. The result is Ohio does not have the huge outbreak that Trump-ville has, I mean New York City. San Francisco also shut down. It was the first city to do so. Guess they learned from the AIDS epidemic? Hey, that’s Pelosi’s district! Who knew? Shouldn’t she get credit?

What else should the president get credit for? I don’t know if this is fair because I’m sure if he is asked he will say he didn’t do it. That maybe someone in his administration did it, but he didn’t do it. He’ll then turn and look for someone and ask them. “Mike did you do it?” or “Jared, did you do it?” Well, shucks no, well yes, kind of, well not them personally. Mike will “assure the American people,” while Jared will say, essentially, “They aren’t for you.” And then they’ll trot out that guy with all the medal on his chest who will say, “Oh yes, we released all the masks we promised in the National Stockpile. We GAVE them to suppliers to sell in the open market place.”
Yes, let’s give credit where credit is due. This administration gave away some of our national emergency supply to be sold on the open market, while governors were imploring and pleading for them. ( ‘They aren’t for you.” – J. Kushner)

Ron, You used to fly big tanker planes in Vietnam. Imagine if you were told to deliver a plane load of that fuel to say Exxon/Mobil for them to sell to whomever they wanted to sell it to? You know let the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Marines all bid for it. Heck maybe Russia or China would pay more? Who knows. That’s open market competition.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump is saying that some of the states are demanding more ventilators than they will really need. It’s clear that Mr. Trump is implying one of those states is New York. If you are incorrect, and they really do need those ventilators, I hope you take the Governor of New York up on his demand that you come and determine who lives and who dies. Maybe not you personally, but someone in your administration. Maybe Mike? Or Jared? Or how about Ivanka? I understand she is learning to play the guitar. She could entertain the person gasping for air. Maybe show them the chords she learned that day? Maybe play “If I had a Ventilator” (updated from “If I had a Hammer?”)

Meanwhile, the owner of the Nets is donating 1,000 ventilators. He’s Chinese. They are Chinese ventilators! OMG! Flown right out of China. Yeah, that’s right. Hey, guess what? It’s reported that those ventilators will work. Not like the ones in the National Stockpile that don’t because you let the contract go on maintaining them.
Yeah, let’s give the president credit.
Should I stick on a “Let’s see who has the guts to repost this?” on my Facebook post?

Come on Ron, and the rest of you. Give the president his credit.
210 Days until the election on November 3rd
290 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
PS Monkey See, Monkey blow this sh*t up.

Day 1172 – The Three ISMs

Saturday April 4, 2020 

211 Days until the election on November 3rd

291 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

I don’t like to use the word socialism or pretty much any word ending in ‘ism” because it has to be defined by whomever is using it, and it is misdefined, or defined very differently by those opposed to the person or group using it originally. That’s how you get to terms like antidisestablishmentarianism ( but not Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch* which is the name of a former town in Wales of which only the abandoned train station remains )

*And yes, I know how to pronounce it.**
** “Slan-Fair-Postwingus-gullgerah-drobwith-santasillio-go-go-go-goch”

There are three ISMs I would like to talk about today:

Capitalism – Individuals (and corporations) helping themselves.

Socialism – Individuals and corporations being helped by their government

Marxism – Individuals banding together to form an economic unit (and perhaps run the government)

All three suffer from some sort of drawback. All three have advantages. All three are used by their proponents to bludgeon the other two with the drawbacks of the system being bludgeoned.

In our political discourse Marxism rarely comes up other than a quote here or there. e.g. “Religion is the opiate of the people.”

What most people forget (but not you my brilliant readers because you are – well, brilliant) is that Marx was a good newspaper man and he reported on the political goings on in Europe during the time of our Civil War. It is believed that Lincoln read his columns and that informed our President of how to handle various European situations. (I also wonder how Marx living in a one room apartment with his wife and maid managed to get the maid pregnant.)

So let’s look at capitalism. One can say we are a capitalist society and not get stoned; don’t try that with the word socialism as Bernie keeps demonstrating. Yes, we have to point out that the socialism Bernis is talking about is what is going on in Europe, not the socialism that was going on in Europe. Blah, blah, blah. 

Michale Lewis, in his book “The Fifth Risk,” points out that in the midwest where they grow wheat and corn, Senators out there are opposed to socialism, but try and take away their grain subsidies and they become socialist real quick.

And lots of Republican politicians like to talk about freedom and capitalism and letting people be free to make as much money as they can via their own initiative and hard work. Blah, blah, blah. In every example I’ve ever heard of them pointing to someone being successful, there has been some form of government regulation, assistance, intervention. 

Unfettered capitalism leads to a concentration of power into the hands of a few and they take advantage of that power to the detriment of others. The same is true, more abstractly of socialism. Some folks like the idea of a strongman coming in “to clean things up.” The problem with that scenario is they don’t leave. Mussolini, Castro, Billy Jack ( Okay. he never got his chance. He was a fictional character, but his real life star ran for President with the idea that he’d become President “clean things up,” then hand it over to the VP to run things after that. See the movie! I would like to see a President call a bunch of fools into a meeting, say, “I’m sorry but now I’m going to have to take care of this,” take off his shoes and socks and run in a circle kicking them all in the mouth. [That btw is the whole premise of the Billy Jack movie.] )

Or as Tocqueville said (it was him wasn’t it) “Power corrupts, Complete power corrupts completely.”

Of these systems, these ISMs, when taken to extreme don’t work very well. And any of these systems can find cases that fail at any given point in their trajectory. 

There is also the role of the government in helping the people they govern and the economy of their country. Governments have two ways to help (or hurt) an economy. They can buy stuff (called fiscal policy.) And they can print money (called monetary policy). PS – They can also take money out of the economy via selling bonds to decrease the amount of available cash in the system and thus tamp down inflation (also called monetary policy.)

I am not an ISM guy. I am a “What works” guy. To be specific I’m a “what works now” guy. I don’t want it called Capitalism, or Socialism, or Marxism, or Catholicism (Wait? How’d that get in here? Never mind.)

If you want to see the failure of capitalism look at The Great Depression, The Great Recession, or any modern Republican administration since WWII (except Eisenhower, who was lucky enough to inherit the great programs of Roosevelt and have no industrial competition because the rest of the world was in shambles.)

The failure of the Republican administrations has gotten more and more pronounced, and more strident, as their administrations have moved along. Thus their motives have become more obvious, and their real benefactors more revealed. They are in it for themselves. They are controlled by the very rich. The feed at the trough and now they make no bones about it. 

The worst part of that is that now, with the Trump administration they don’t even understand the basic concepts or premises of the Federal government. 

We are in the worst pandemic that perhaps this country has ever seen, and one of the worst economic downturns ever, and we have the people in the administration throwing masks into the public square for the governors of the states to fight over like starving dogs. This is not the America I knew as a kid, or as an adult. 

Hoover did a lot of good things as an individual, before becoming President. However, his approach and concept of what the country needed in the time of economic crisis did not help the country. It was the bold actions of a New York governor that pulled the country through the hard times. This man inspired a generation. He tried things. Not all of them were successful. But he tried things, he got the country moving. He understood the pain and suffering of people and he worked to alleviate it. 

Many of the programs we take for granted today are due to his efforts. 

Call them socialist, capitalist, marxist, or The New Deal.

It is time to try things. Bold things. Things that might work (You do that to discover what will work.)

Unfortunately, we have an administration that is weak, timid, and uneducated. There will be no help coming from them. We are left on our own. We can fight in the town square or we can band together to fight for all, and suffer some, but for the greater good.

It is not clear as of this writing where we will come out.

211 Days until the election on November 3rd

291 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS In the Tunnel 

 

Day 1171 – The Sad Reality, Part II: Pieces and Bits

Friday April 3, 2020 

212 Days until the election on November 3rd

292 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

After writing Part I, which I stopped after making my major point I read a facebook post by one of my conservative friends. She had reposted an opinion piece by Don Henninger, and wrote “An Excellent Column in the WSJ.” 

I read it. Like many of these pieces, they sound good until you think about what they said, and what they left out. I didn’t know who Don was so I looked him up. He’s described as a conservative American commentator. Aside from The Wall street Journal he also contributes to Fox News.

So what does the article say?

He starts off with an anecdote about a 100 year old woman who was a nurse in WWII whom he quoted as saying back then they knew exactly what they were doing and why.

(OMG, I doubt he sees the irony of this set up anecdote.)

Then he goes to anecdote #2 about a guy who survived the1918 Pandemic and didn’t really start living until the Roaring Twenties.

(Double OMG, double irony, What happened after The Roaring Twenties? Clue Black Friday, The Great Depression.)

He then goes on to say that one thing is clear – the polarization of American politics.

(Time to start waving the flag.)

Which he says is exactly what the Founding Fathers feared.

(Spoiler Alert: He won’t give any suggestions of what to do to fix this situation. He’ll only attack one side, thus adding to the factionalism. What’s that Triple Irony?)

He then compares the Corona virus to the daily back and forth between citizens and the administration and says nothing will turn off the bile.

(He seems to miss the point that the reason people are screaming is the administration is not doing the job, if they were the screaming would stop.)

He then goes on to compare the fact that Trump doesn’t like the Governor of Washington* and the fact that Adam Schiff said he’s putting together a bill to do a postmortem of how well we as a nation did in response to the pandemic. (Of course, he accuses Nancy Pelosi, not Schiff, of wanting to impeach the president again.) 

* (I guess because he’s a Democrat and because he got so feed up with Trump’s comment that the Federal government is only a backup and the governor said, “We don’t need a back up quarterback. We need Tom Brady.”) 

Now we move into the meat. We attack Bernie and AOC. Why? Well, AOC said in regards to health care plans that it’s never been about how “we” pay for it. OMG! The friggin’ liberals, tax and spend, blah blah blah. Okay, let’s go through this carefully. It’s not been about how you pay for the health care, but that everyone gets covered. Bernie has made this point over and over again. i.e. Do you want everyone to have health care or not? That’s the question Don. Do you? I know, you’re concerned (no your not) how we are going to pay for it. Okay. Were you concerned when the president cut taxes and put us a trillion dollars in debt for every year he’s been in office. I’m guessing no. So stop with your phony concern about how you are going to pay for it. But to answer the question, which has been answered many times. The overall good to the economy will take care of a lot of it, and we can argue how much. The rest will be done in some form of taxation. The taxation can be like insurance is supposed to be, spread over the whole group (ie all Americans.) Now, I know this is not a conservative principle. The conservative principle being “I got mine. You get yours.” And the variant being what I call the Handicap Sticker routine. “Yeah, you can apply for a handicap sticker and get one of those good parking spaces. No, I’m not handicapped, but no one uses those spaces anyway…”

Then, this is where it gets really good, he goes on to quote economic theory and explain how the left is so off the rails while Trump and the conservatives are hewing to the right and just. 

He says that the Democratic progressives and moderates (and says there is no difference thus lumping them all together) are subscribing to something he calls MMT “Modern Monetary Theory” which he defines as the government can spend without limit.

That’s pretty funny, and very ballsy to say when it has been “conservative’ economic theory that has always outspent any liberal political agenda. I remind you, and Don, that it is Republicans that always outspend Democrats. Trump is the one spending money without limit, not them there liberals. 

He then goes on to boast that we have had three years of thriving economic activity under Trump. Talk about irony! He seems to ignore the fact that Trump has spent without limit, put the country deeper in debt, and that it had little to no effect on the economy, and that the economy under Trump is really what Obama put in place after the disaster of the previous Republican administration under W.

Oh, oh, time to wave the flag again. He then goes on to boast about how wonderfully business is adapting to Cavad 19, coming up with innovations etc. He also points to “a federally led” response. 

But the point is – THERE IS NO FEDERALLY LED RESPONSE!!!!

That’s why people and local leaders are screaming. That’s why we are having to spend all this money (because we didn’t jump on this early. We didn’t prepare – and that is on the Republicans, because Obama put the apparatus in place. And we didn’t listen to smart people like Bill Gates or Robert Gallo. Instead Trump ignored them. Poo-pooed the whole thing and did nothing for far too long. He’s still doing nothing. He’s holding daily press briefings because he likes the number of viewers who are tuning in. But afterwards? I guess he goes back to his bedroom, eats some cheeseburgers and calls up Sean Hannity or watches Fox & Friends. But lead? He’s incapable. I wish that wasn’t true, but that’s the reality. Now we also know that his flunkies, often called “The Administration”, have no intention of helping.

Sorry Don Henninger. Your “outstanding” opinion piece is just another right wing carefully crafted hit piece.

I’ve got a boffo idea. Try doing something positive. Maybe, get out a sewing machine and make a few masks to make up for the 230,000,000 that were given away to a foreign company while our doctors, nurses, and EMTs are screaming for them?

PS The dark hole we are going to have to climb out of. (Inside the Black Pyramid. The staircase up to the burial chamber.)

Day 1171 – The Sad Reality

Friday April 3, 2020 

212 Days until the election on November 3rd

292 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Have you ever tried to focus something: a camera, a telescope; and it just won’t focus?

Maybe, it’s an auto-focus and it keeps making that errr-errr noise as it goes back and forth trying to find something to focus on – never succeeding. Yeah, that’s how I felt thinking about today’s screed, then it hit me as I walked up the stairs to my office; coffee cup in hand – The Sad Reality.

It’s like that tidal wave I told you about a few days ago. The one that wiped out Crete and launched the mythical Atlantis. When something that big is coming at you there’s no point in running. It’s way too late for that. You just turn open mouthed and wait. There are only a few split seconds before you are wiped away forever.

There are all these little bits that I saw, read, or heard since my last writing. Bits, vignettes, statements, visuals, emails, facebook posts, tweets – whatever. How to make sense of it? And then it hit me – The Sad Reality. I don’t want it to be true, but as Pogo would say, “There it is.” Or rather “We have met the enemy and they is us.” (If you don’t know who Pogo is look it the F up.)

The final focusing moments for me were these two tidbits:

One – Jared Kushner wandered into the White House briefing room and said the Federal stockpile of stuff was not for the states but “for us.”

Two – Some guy in a uniform with lots of medals (probably like a surgeon general second in command) said the masks were delivered. Delivered to commercial suppliers to sell on the open market.
Think about those two statements. Who is us? The first family? The Federal Government and if so what does that mean? The army? The Federal workers? Who is us?

The masks in the open market guy went on to say they weren’t there to interfere with the supply and demand marketplace.

Okay, I’m going to let that sit for a bit while I give you a few other “bits and pieces” (Hey, someone should make that a song. Dave Clark who? No no not the Who, Dave Clark. Who? No, Dave Clark. Never mind.)

Okay, we’ve know for awhile, ever since this guy came into office at least, that there is an alternate universe. It is made up of “alternate facts.” “Spin,” lies,  disinformation, phony stories, all with a mean political objective. We used to laugh it off, ignore it, say to ourselves “no one in their right mind would believe this garbage,” but we are way beyond that now. 42% or some such steadfastly believe it. They post mean stupid things, they yell and belittle (“No, no. You don’t understand. You’re wrong.” Etc.) Now we see that world and ours collide.

The governors and local politicians thought that if they appealed to the Federal government that the Federal government would come to their aid. That when they, the local government, was overwhelmed they could get help from a larger resource. The truth is they can’t. That’s sad because that’s not the world we grew up in. 

212 Days until the election on November 3rd
292 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS The Black Pyramid