Cults- Trump - Jim Jones

 In 1978 918 people drank poisoned Kool Aid and died because their insane cult leader, Jim Jones, told them to. Incomprehensible. 

In 2020 over 1000 people assembled on the White House lawn to hear Trump accept his nomination for the 2020 presidential run. They did not follow scientific medical advice to socially distance at least 6 feet and wear masks. They did so because their insane cult leader, Donald Trump, told them to.  Incomprehensible. 

It only takes one infected but non symptomatic COVID19 person to spread the virus to many. COVID19 kills, causes heart, organ, and brain damage in some people. 

Trump, of course, has no interest in the health or welfare of anyone other than himself, so we can expect that he would see COVID19 deaths as a welcome tribute to his importance.  

Incomprehensible. 

Convention chaos?

 The Dems put together a tightly produced professional convention rolling out Joe Biden. 

The Reps start theirs now.  Trump is a TV guy, so it might be good. But Trump is also a chaotic ball of incompetence and impulse and incompetence. So, it could be a mess. 

I can’t watch because I can’t stand to watch the mentally ill man. But I’m thinking there may be some strange stuff coming. 

BIden's call for the Light to overcome the Darkness

Joe opened with a call for the Light:”

“Give people light and they will find a way. Give people light. Those are words for our time.

The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger. Too much fear. Too much division.

Here and now, I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I will be an ally of the light, not of the darkness.”

He ended with a promise of the Light:

“With passion and purpose, let us begin — you and I together, one nation, under God — united in our love for America and united in our love for each other.

For love is more powerful than hate.

Hope is more powerful than fear.

Light is more powerful than dark.

This is our moment. This is our mission.”

I celebrate a man with a vision of the Light overcoming the deep and disturbing darkness of Trump and his Trumpsters.

Obama at the convention - Trump using his power to help only himself and his friends

President Obama spoke at the Democratic Convention last night:

"For close to four years now, he's shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves. Donald Trump hasn't grown into the job because he can't. And the consequences of that failure are severe….

So let me tell you about my friend, Joe Biden…what I quickly came to admire about Joe Biden is his resilience, born of too much struggle; his empathy, born of too much grief. Joe's a man who learned – early on – to treat every person he meets with respect and dignity, living by the words his parents taught him: "No one's better than you, Joe, but you're better than nobody…..

This administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that's what it takes to win. So we have to get busy building it up – by pouring all our effort into these 76 days, and by voting like never before – for Joe and Kamala, and candidates up and down the ticket, so that we leave no doubt about what this country that we love stands for – today and for all our days to come.”

I feel sorry for Donald Trump because he really is doing the best he can, he just doesn’t know that he is supposed to do the best he can for the country, not do the best he can for himself.  He is literally mentally ill and a host of other very unflattering descriptors. 

But, his time has come and he will go.  Joe’s time has come.  The world will take a big sigh of relief when we stop the dictatorship of Trump from becoming worse and even uglier.

Michele - if we think things can't get worse --- they CAN

Michele Obama gave her speech at the Democratic Convention last night.  She said some very important things:

“But right now, kids in this country are seeing what happens when we stop requiring empathy of one another. They’re looking around wondering if we’ve been lying to them this whole time about who we are and what we truly value.

They see people shouting in grocery stores, unwilling to wear a mask to keep us all safe. They see people calling the police on folks minding their own business just because of the color of their skin. They see an entitlement that says only certain people belong here, that greed is good, and winning is everything because as long as you come out on top, it doesn’t matter what happens to everyone else. And they see what happens when that lack of empathy is ginned up into outright disdain.

They see our leaders labeling fellow citizens enemies of the state while emboldening torch-bearing white supremacists. They watch in horror as children are torn from their families and thrown into cages, and pepper spray and rubber bullets are used on peaceful protestors for a photo-op.

So let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.

So if you take one thing from my words tonight, it is this: if you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can; and they will if we don’t make a change in this election. If we have any hope of ending this chaos, we have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it.”

Trump has proven that the job is way too hard for him, and if he is re-elected he will go full fascist dictator. 

Sanders calls out Trump's authoritarianism

Bernie Sanders gave his speech at the Democratic Convention last night.  He said some important things, pointing out the obvious, that Trump is acting like an authoritarian tyrant overthrowing democracy:

“This election is the most important in the modern history of this country. In response to the unprecedented crises we face, we need an unprecedented response …At its most basic, this election is about preserving our democracy. During this president's term, the unthinkable has become normal. He has tried to prevent people from voting, undermined the U.S. Postal Service, deployed the military and federal agents against peaceful protesters, threatened to delay the election and suggested that he will not leave office if he loses. This is not normal, and we must never treat it like it is.

Under this administration, authoritarianism has taken root in our country.”

He must be voted out, and when he refuses to leave he must be dragged out.

CLEAN IT UP

We are on the verge of the Democratic Party Convention.  There is just one theme needed for the Democrats this election - CLEAN IT UP!

After astonishing levels of incompetency, corruption, racism, and just plain crudeness and crassness, it is time TO CLEAN IT UP!

INCOMPETENCY?  Just look at the United States of America  - we lead the world, by far, in continuous outbreaks of infection and deaths from COVID-19.

CORRUPTION?  Corruption is this president’s business plan, and governing plan.

RACISM?  Trump makes it clear that his hard core base is racist, like him.

CRUDENESS?  Trump embarrasses this country with his crass, insulting, low life remarks and attacks daily.

We can each come up with countless examples in each category, I am sure. 

The worst of it all is his authoritarianism, and the authoritarian staff, department heads, and elected officials, and followers. 

It is time to CLEAN IT UP!

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Prepare for war

If you understand that Donald Trump is psychotically narcissistic, you will expect that he will do anything to keep from going to jail after he is thrown out of office. Anything means anything. Do not be surprised if he tries to start a war. Harming other people is not even on his radar screen, let alone something he thinks he should not do. Watch out world. He needs big-time distractions, and nothing is bigger than war.

Mary Trump's book about Donald Trump and the family that formed him.

I just finished "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man by [Mary L. Trump]" It was more about the incredible toxic effect of Donald's father, Fred Trump, than Donald himself. I always wondered what kind of father Fred Trump was to have his oldest son die of despair and alcoholism and the age of 42, and his next son, Donald, be such a cruel, self centered, heartless monster. Well, she answers the question.

The main point of the book is that the father forced Donald to cut off all human feeling - sympathy, empathy, compassion, caring for the feelings or well being of others were a form of weakness. And it was clear that weakness was severely punished with ridicule, humiliation, disapproval, personal destruction. Indeed, the first son, Freddie, was too human to take on the legacy of his father's cruel real estate empire, failed continuously in his cruel father's eyes, and was a crushed human being who tried to escape the tyranny by becoming a pilot. It wasn't enough, he couldn't escape and disappeared into alcoholism and early death.

Next in line, was the second son, Donald. Donald knew just one thing, don't be like his older brother, Freddy. So Donald's only way of surviving his cruel father was to be like his father - fight back, be more cruel, be more heartless, be less a feeling human being, be more driven to expand the cruelty and greed of his father. He succeeded in becoming his father's path to conserving and extending his financial empire.

So, Donald went off into the real estate business, and became the personification of his father's mythology. The myth was that Donald was a brash entrepreneur who had giant visions and achieved great wealth. Well, the reality beneath the myth was that his father had the political and financial contacts that made the deals in New York real estate - connections, tax breaks, the entire hidden infrastructure that made it all possible.

And then, Donald made a dumb mistake. He believed the myth about himself and he went off to New Jersey and bought three casinos. But he was without the only thing that had given him any success in New York - his father's connections and management talent needed to make it work.

He went bankrupt. He failed, but his failure could be twisted in his childish mind into success because the people who suffered were his vendors, his workers, his bankers - other people. And what did he care about other people? He was formed by his cruel father to see other people as having no value other than how they could make him money, or in Donald's case, fame.

By the way, Mary Trump was the source of the huge trove of financial documents for the New York Times investigative article showing that Dondald inherited over $450 million from his father. His myth of being a self made man was just smoke and mirrors.

She doesn't go into Donald's other bankruptcies, but they are the true record of his inability to run anything:

1. Trump Steaks

2. GoTrump

3. Trump Airlines

4. Trump Vodka

5. Trump Mortgage

6. Trump: The Game

7. Trump Magazine

8. Trump University

9. Trump Ice

10. The New Jersey Generals

11. Tour de Trump

12. Trump Network

13. Trumped!

Trump companies that sought bankruptcy protection:

1. Trump Taj Mahal

2. Trump’s Castle

3. Trump Plaza Casinos

4. Trump Plaza Hotel

5. Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts

6. Trump Entertainment Resorts

So, what is her message from her book? She opened the book with a quote from Victor Hugo saying that one who is raised in loveless and cruel darkness is less responsible for the sins committed than the one who was the darkness in the first place. The villain of the book is Donald's father, Fred Trump. Donald is his victim. His older brother Freddie was the first son crushed by his father, and his second son, Donald, became a twisted monster of incompetence and cruelty as his second victim.

In the end, Donald is what he has always been, a terrified three year old. And everything he does, from blaming others, to his astonishing levels of grandiosity and over-hyping everything (the best, the greatest, the biggest, the grandest, the most historic, etc.)- it is delusional, and it is compensation to protect one of the most fragile and twisted egos in the country.

Trump's sad camaign

It looks to me like Donald Trump has only three issues he can campaign on - "Law and Order" and the "China Flu" and "socialism!!!".  Pretty weak.


Given the persistent demonstrations about Black Lives Matter our president has decided that the only way to respond is to dominate the "blue cities" with para-military force.  Hey, it worked for Nixon in 1968, so what the heck?  Well 1968 had assassinations, massive anti-war demonstrations, civil rights demonstrations, Weather Underground bombings, violent anti-war demonstrations at the Democratic convention in Chicago, etc.  It was a violent time.  And the "silent majority" was afraid of the violence and responded to Nixon's appeal to the fear in the middle class.  2020 does not have that kind of violence from today's left.  Indeed, today's heavily armed intimidators and killers are the radical white supremacists who have actually been killing people.


So, trying to whip up fear about a violent left falls way short in the face of a profound multi-racial and primarily peaceful support of anti-racism being demonstrated for by both left and right today.


The next issue is what he insists on calling the "Chinese Flu".  Good grief.  First he calls it a flu as if it is no more deadly than what we are familiar with - the flu.  COVID-19 is more deadly, spreads much easier since people can carry the virus for 14 days without symptoms, and can cause heart, organ, and brain damage in those who do not die. 


Second, and even worse, is by calling it the "Chinese flu" he gets to do the only thing he is good at - blaming others for his failures.  Sure, it started in China.  And sure, the Chinese reacted poorly at the start.  But the one who refused to see and act on how terrible the pandemic was to become is Trump - he dismissed it, downplayed it, bragged about how great he was responding to it, etc. etc.  He caused it to become much, much worse in America than any other prosperous democracy.  He did not use emergency powers to mandate manufacture and use of masks and other Personal Protective Equipment, or tests, or vaccines.  There is NO national response to the pandemic other than a national collapse of the economy as it spreads throughout our country.  Astonishing level of presidential failure.


Third, is his pathetic warning about himself being the last defense against tyrannical socialism.  The Democratic voters spoke very loud and clear - they went against the left wingers of Sanders and Warren.  They looked at the field and chose Biden as the moderate to support.  And they did so decisively and very quickly.  Biden is not a fire breathing leftie no matter how much Trump and Fox News wants people to think he is.  He is a moderate, stable, sane politician with decades of experience and history that prove he is not about to nationalize the oil industry.


So, Trump has no issue to run on other than those that excite the hard core right wing who are lost in the media bubbles of Fox News and talk radio shouters. 


His desperation to keep from going down in history as one of the biggest losers of all time becomes increasingly evident as he hysterically grabs headlines with more and more outlandish statements and threats.  He is a very wounded man, psychologically, and increasingly, a very wounded man politically as well.


Thank the dear Lord.

Trump's ideological support

Trump's support is eroding, but he still shows an approval rating of 41% of likely or registered voters per fivethirtyeight.com.  This despite his deep and pervasive corruption, cruelty, stupidity, and delusions.  Why?


Mugambi Jouet of the New Republic says it is because he has support of those too dedicated to their ideologies to turn against him.


There are four ideological underpinning of the Republican Party - anti-intellectualism, Christian Fundamentalism, market fundamentalism, and racial "resentment".


Anti-intellectualism.  We see this in a terrible way today as Trump and the right wing media bubble attacks the expertise of the country's top immunologist, Dr. Fauci.  The tragic result is conservatives refusing to protect themselves and the rest of us, and America is the only democratic country that has not dramatically reduced the number of infections and deaths from COVID-19.  It goes way beyond the virus, of course, since Trump and the Republicans have driven scientists and experts from every branch of government. 


Christian Fundamentalism.  Fundamentalists have essentially sold their souls to Trump to get their Christian judges.  Well, mission accomplished - the U.S. now has a bunch of Christian judges and fundamentalists have lost connection with their consciences and their souls.


Market Fundamentalism.  I used to be a conservative and thought that the market was so much smarter than any central planning.  There is some truth to that, but when you take that idea too far, the results are catastrophic.  The market will never address Climate Change, or environmental destruction, or massive income inequality, or public services that only government can provide like roads, fire and police protection, libraries, nuclear waste protection, a judicial system, food and drug safety, etc. - there are thousands of services that only the government can provide.  This disregard of government services goes hand in hand with anti-intellectualism.


Racial resentment. "Resentment" spans the range from white people who feel left out of the efforts of government assistance (despite programs of health, unemployment, disability, education, etc that mostly benefit whites), to those who are simply racist and believe in white supremacy.  The Republican Party became the party playing upon white resentment ever since Nixon's Southern Strategy switched the Confederate States from Democrat to Republican.


But, many conservatives and Republicans have broken away from the extraordinarily dangerous child in the White House, and have led the attack on him and his sycophants - from George Will to the Lincoln Project. Good for them. 


It is just a question of waking up and smelling the disease.

Tear down the statues?

Across the land, symbols of white supremacy are being gotten rid of.  Mississippi just removed the symbol of the Confederacy from its state flag - the last state to do so.  Richmond VA, the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War, removed statues of Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson.  Statues commemorating the Confederacy are coming down.  Should they?  Absolutely.


The argument against the removal of the statues is that to do so is somehow to eliminate history.  Well, if you want to depict the history of the Confederate Generals, the best way would be to place another statue next to the statue of the general - only this one would be a statue of the whipping and raping of slaves.  That is the actual history of what the Confederate generals were fighting to save - slavery. 


There are no statues in Germany honoring the history of noble Nazi soldiers and generals who fought in WWII.  Why?  Because enough of the Germans had the decency of being deeply ashamed of the inhumanity of the Nazis to tear down all symbols of that ideology of hatred - the ideology of white supremacy.  It didn't happen overnight and the process is never done, but nobody is erecting statues to Goering or Hitler, and they never will.


I know that the South has been on a 150 year propaganda campaign to convince themselves and the rest of us that they seceded from the United States of America for some kind of noble reason to do with taxation, or agricultural policy, or some ridiculous abstraction about State's Rights, but is was just to save their economic way of life, slavery, and to preserve their most intensely held belief - the supremacy or the white race. 


This 4th of July weekend has been a tough one for me.  I usually enthusiastically celebrate the ideals of America on the 4th, but this 4th has a U.S. president openly praising and encouraging racism and hatred.  America has become a place to be ashamed of because of its president, and because of too much of the Republican Party who are racist themselves or at least still supporting this appalling and racist "man". 


It is a dark time in America.  It is time for a renewal of the decency and integrity of this once great country.  We can become great again, but it will have to be by loudly saying "NO" of the cruelty, stupidity, and racism of this president and far too many of his Republican Party.


Vote.

Trump blocks high tech talent?

Why has Trump blocked high tech talent from coming into America?  This is an assault on the one  remaining area of U.S. excellence - technology. Silicon Valley is shocked.  Business leaders are shocked.  U.S. technology leads the world because it attracts the world’s smartest people. 

“Putting up a ‘not welcome’ sign for engineers, executives, IT experts, doctors, nurses and other workers won’t help our country, it will hold us back,” said Thomas J. Donohue, the chief executive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce”

I see three reason for This Trump idiocy:

1.  Racism.  Trump, and his closest adviser Stephen Miller, are stone cold racists.  His entire campaign is about racism - America first, foreign workers not welcome, white supremacy.   Disgusting - and stupid.

2.  Stupidity.  Trump is clearly below average intelligence. If he ever was average intelligence he has clearly devolved. Many who have worked with him have said he was a “moron”, an “idiot”, and incapable of comprehending anything complex. Keep it simple - America Good, White people Good, people of color Bad. 

3.  Putin.  He works for Putin. Putin tells him what to do. Putin is weakening America. This is just another in a long line of ways Putin has been and is weakening America. America no longer leads the world in anything. Putin is winning. 

Disgusting, as usual. 

How to better understand what Black Lives Matter means

I think women should more easily understand what blacks are trying to say when they say Black Lives Matter.


For example, can we imagine a man who loves his wife, loves his daughters, loves his mother, respects women of achievement - and yet is still sexist?  still chauvinist?  Of course we can imagine that.  Women have been telling us that for decades, or more.  For a man to love some women does not mean that he does not automatically diminish women, that he does not think women are too emotional, or at the mercy of their hormones, or not as smart, or as dedicated, or as capable of leadership, or don't belong in the workforce, or don't belong in management, or are too soft, or too nice, or toooooooooo….. or not enoughhhhhhhh….fill in the blank. 


Loving some women, and admiring some women does not let sexist and chauvinist men off the hook.  They can be and usually are to at least some degree sexist and chauvinist. We are raised in and surrounded by a world that diminishes women and the feminine.  We carry it in us and have to free ourselves from it.  It requires a conscious choice, and the first step in that choice is to know that a choice needs to be made.


So too with Black Lives Matter.  We can fool ourselves into thinking that we are not racists because we have black people in our lives that we admire, trust, and love.  OK, great, that is wonderful.  But it does not mean that we don't have centuries of racist biases in us - and have to overcome those deeply ingrained biases - not smart? lazy? dangerous? promiscuous? uppity?  pick a word, it is hard to continue with these pejoratives.


Or we can dodge the issue by just saying that we love all people, that All Lives Matter.  But that just lets us not examine and make corrections to the centuries of bias baked into our country and our world and into ourselves.


Black Lives Matter is a scream of anguish from the black community saying that in this country black lives don't matter - you can tell by the endless shooting of unarmed black men, by the social snubbing, by the fact that every black parent has to train their children in how not to get killed by a cop, etc. etc. etc. 


So, in the same way that women know that they have to make sure they don't get raped - for which they will be shamed and blamed - blacks know they have to make sure they don't get shot by cops - for which they will be shamed and blamed.


I hope the analogy helps clarify.


To discover your own biases go to implicit.harvard.edu.  It shows your implicit reactions - your subconscious mind.  It is a disturbing test to take, but the courageous will.

Take your feet/knees off our knecks

Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously said: "I ask no favor for my sex.  All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks”  as she spoke to sexist men.


George Floyd famously said: "I can't breathe" as he was being killed by a racist cop.


That's all.  Get your sexist feet off the necks of the women that you cruelly dominate.


Get your racist knees off the necks of the blacks that you cruelly dominate. 


Trumpsters have a president that they elected and idolize that said to governors during the multiracial Black Lives Matter protests; "You have to dominate"


But, of course, having to dominate is actually the problem itself - dominate blacks, and browns, and reds, and yellows and women, and children and other countries, and everyone and everything that looks threatening to the fragile and precarious egos of white men, white supremacists, white authoritarians.


Leadership, not domination.  
Inspiration, not domination. 
Example, not domination. 
Character, not domination.
Integrity, not domination.
Honesty, not domination.
Responsibility, not domination.
Caring, not domination.
Empathy, not domination.
Understanding, not domination.
Humanity, not domination.
Love, not domination.

I Can’t Breathe - Me Too - no going back

A friend pointed out that this “I Can’t Breathe” moment is a moment where there is no going back, just like the “Me Too” moment changed life for women. There is no going back.  In both cases twisted, domineering men have been told that their reigns of terror are over. The “domination” which is so beloved and admired by this twisted president has been exposed, reviled, and will be defeated. 

About time. 

"All men are created equal" Thomas Jefferson - what does that mean?

What does the founding idea of America as written by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence mean - "All men are created equal"?


All men are not equally strong, or fast, or smart, or tall, or skilled, or talented, or young, or old, or wise, or foolish, or....


Philosopher Mortimer J Adler answered that question in his wonderful book "We Hold These Truths" in 1987. 


All Men Are Created Equal means all men, and women of course, are equally one thing - we are all equally HUMAN.


When our male chauvinists think they are superior to women, they are wrong - all humans are equally human.  When our racist white supremacist men and women think they are superior to blacks, and browns, and reds, and yellows - they are wrong - all humans are equally human.  And all humans are equally endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, including the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It's in the Declaration of Independence for all of us to read.


There is another wonderful book - "Guns Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998.  He asks the question - how did the European white race dominate and over-run the world?  His answer is the dominance of the white race is NOT because of any genetic superiority (sorry white supremacists) but rather the accident of geography. 


Europe, by mere chance, had the confluence of grains, animals, and climate that made Europe the first to very gradually develop agricultural societies which then led them to become the first to develop guns, ships, steel, etc.  For example, you can domesticate sheep, cows, pigs, and horses but you can't domesticate lions, zebras, hippopotamuses etc.   And, by centuries of exposure to their domestic animals the Europeans developed immunities to the contagious diseases that came from those animals - smallpox, chickenpox, cholera, measles, etc. that killed more of them than the brave cavalry enforcing the spread of the white European Americans across the land did with their guns (against the arrows and spears of the natives)


So, the message to white supremacists is this - white blood is not superior - white genes are not superior - white Europeans were just lucky to be in the geography to develop guns, germs, and steel before others. 


You could say that the white Europeans were nastier than the others, I suppose.  Because they certainly brutalized all in their way to their own "manifest destinies".  Not exactly something to be proud of, even though our current temporary president seems to think that Domination is the highest human "virtue."

Outsiders bringing violence

It’s looking like left wing anarchists and right wing anarchists are the one bringing violence to Minneapolis. I see the hand of Russia in this - turn Americans against each other. 

Too bad we don’t have a president who can deal with this. 

We need transformative purges

The cold blooded murder of George Floyd by racist police officers has sparked protests, and eventually riots, across the nation. 


Riots are the natural expression of the powerless. Most of the protest is legal, and some is just criminal, so by all means prosecute the criminals.  BUT, don't try to dismiss these actions as anything other than the rage of the powerless who see, time and time and time and time and time again, police killing unarmed and helpless black men. 


How are blacks supposed to respond?  Peacefully?  How about Colin Kaepernick?  He lost his job for protesting peacefully.


When star football players took a knee prior to a football game to protest police killings of unarmed black men, the racist reaction was vicious.  They changed the story from an attempt to call attention to a terrible injustice to a story of blacks disrespecting the flag and the military who gave their lives for the freedoms that the flag represents.  Their protest had nothing to do with disrespecting the flag and had nothing to do with disrespecting the military. It was calling attention to a system that allowed police to kill blacks with little consequence.


It is time for a transformative purge of police departments across America.  I am encouraged that so many police chiefs are outraged by the actions of the killers of George Floyd.  And I hope that many police departments have already made good strides in cleaning up their act.


But, I have no doubt that every officer in every police department knows exactly who the racist and violent officers are.  And, I have no doubt that every police chief knows that same information.  My deepest wish is that every police department uses this event as permission to cleanse themselves of these poisons. 


It is time for a transformative purge of racist and violent officers from every police and sheriff department in the country.

If a police chief isn't sure who the bad cops are, you can be sure the black and brown residents who suffer from them do know.  Just ask.....

The virus is opening our hearts to a new "normal"

This world wide virus is making the world slow down, pause, stop.  This has never happened before.  Contrary to some who are trying to diminish the impact of this gigantic event, I see this as the most disruptive and world changing event since WWII. 


I don't know the answers, but I can certainly see the problems - the two main structural defects in America and the world are an economy that produces huge economic disparities in the country, and that produces world wide environmental destruction.


I don't know the solutions, but I am sure that we are not going to return to "normal" - a "normal" that continues these structural deformities. 


This gigantic world wide event shows us that we are all connected, whether we like it or not.  The virus spreads, first among the poor who can't protect themselves as the wealthy can, and then to all  It connects us also, through our seeing the suffering and devastation - it connects us through compassion.


My vision is that this world wide crisis helps us all to open your hearts to care about each other. Which will diminish the greed of the predatory business models. Which will diminish the greed of environmentally destructive business models. Which will create supportive business models that nurture and care for workers. Which will create business models that nurture and restore the environment.


I don’t know what these emerging business models are. But I can dream them.  And I can expect them.  And I can sincerely hope and pray that the smartest young minds turn from previous generations' focus on getting rich into a focus on taking care of each other, economically and environmentally.  Turn to a true prosperity for themselves and for the world and for humanity. 


In the '60s the smartest minds went into science and engineering to create the miracle of getting to the moon.  And they succeeded.


Then, the smartest minds turned to making huge fortunes, and the Harvard and MIT geniuses went to Wall Street.  That has not been a wonderful thing for the country, as it ended up in the financial crash of 2008, ended up in too much economic inequality, ended up in a planet becoming inhospitable for human habitation. 


It is time for a fundamental change in goals, in dreams, in destinies, in deciding what matters.  I have great faith in today's youth who are facing these realities in ways that we Boomers can't really imagine.  I have every expectation that the new world they create will be an answer to the current deformities.


I am not talking about some kind of left wing politics.   I am talking about each of us opening our hearts to care about others and the world.  And out of that, the predatory destructions of the economics of greed just fade away.


I can dream.....

Is Trump trying to kill his cult?

The president has just demanded that churches open up "right now".  I guess he thinks that is what his evangelical cult followers want, so he thinks this is going to boost his ratings.  And, of course, the only thing (other than money) that he cares about is his ratings.


Of course, we know that if you ignore social distancing and ignore sheltering in place you dramatically increase the spread of the virus.  But, maybe he is actually too dense to accept that obvious fact.


So, he seems to be on a campaign to get his evangelical followers, his Fox News followers, his white supremacist followers killed off.  Very strange.


And, of course, the spread will go well beyond his cult and increase the spread of the virus geometrically to all of us.


There hasn't  been a more blatant example of the damage that an out of control ego can do since WWI and WWII.  This is really hard  to believe.

Trump claims he is taking hydroxichloriquine.

I don’t believe him.


He wants people to think that if you get the disease there is a miracle cure. The drug doesn’t work. 



He pretends that it does so that the economy speeds up. And the stock market goes up. And his ratings go up. Which is all that he thinks about. So he is pretending to take the drug to prove that it is not harmful and works. No way Is he actually taking the drug. 



The drug will have no negative effects on him because he won’t be taking it.



Always remember that he is a con man. 

It's not over

Everyone is really tired of this COVID-19 pandemic.  Everyone is really tired of sheltering in place.  So, lots and lots of people want to come out and go back to work and back to the way it was.  But....


It is true that the collapse of the economy is forcing us to open businesses back up.  It is true that the economic toll is so dire that we can't just shelter in place forever.  But we have to do it with what we have learned so far - social distancing and masks are absolutely needed, please.


And we desperately need tests, tests, tests, tests...


Because we don't have a national strategy from the Trump administration we don't have the two mandatory things we need to actually go back into the world - millions and millions of tests to give to people as a condition of being in public, and an effective drug or other remedy to help people come back from the disease easier and quicker.  These are massive failings on the part of our national government.  It is literally unimaginable to me that we don't have a national strategy and funding to work our way through this plague. 


I wrote on April 1 that there are two huge structural problems in our economy - first, an ever increasing inequality of income between the rich and the poor.  The Middle Class has been hollowed out for four decades.  Huge percentages of people cannot go two paychecks without going hungry or lose their homes.  When the poor are forced into an unbearable suffering, revolutions happen.


Second, our economy is destroying the environment - e.g. ocean warming is wiping out the coral reefs which generate a food chain that goes all the way up to us.


So, during the Democratic Primaries I wanted a moderate like Biden because I was certain that Sanders or Yang would be too socialist and lose to a man who is pathologically cruel, arrogantly ignorant, and grandiosely unable to deal with reality.  His latest delusion is that the virus will go away by itself without vaccines.  Hard to believe that anyone voted for him.


But, how does Yang's UBI, Universal Basic Income, look now?  He was talking about jobs and careers disappearing to computers and automation, but what will our economy look like in two years?  How many industries just won't come back?


And, how does Medicare for All sound now?   How many millions have lost not only their job but have lost their health coverage?  Can we live in a country where so many millions are left to the cruelties of this terrible pandemic?  or the next health catastrophe?


It's not over.  The next big wave of COVID-19 cases will be the rural areas of Trump's red states.  And the second wave in the cities is also likely to come. 


It's not over.  It's just starting. 

Don't drink the Kool Aid, er no, the Lysol or Clorox

A terrible but iconic moment in history is when the followers of Jim Jones all committed collective suicide by drinking the poisoned Kool Aid to die with their worshiped leader, Jim Jones.  Astonishingly, some Trump worshipers seem to have taken Donald Trump's advice to get disinfectants inside their bodies and there are reports of people ingesting Lysol and Clorox.  

I expect this is a very few number of people, but if your only source of info is to listen to and believe Donald Trump, you put yourself in a very vulnerable situation, because our president seems to have a very wobbly grasp on reality.  Thus he speculates that something that can actually kill you might be good for you.

He lies endlessly and compulsively.  And it seems to be worse than that, he seems to literally inhabit a fantasy world of his own ego driven make believe that can be remarkably dangerous to all of us, but especially to those who seem to worship him uncritically.

Don’t drink the Kool Aid. 

Is fracking dead in the U.S.?

I didn't realize it but apparently the huge fracking industry providing oil from the U.S. has long been built upon a shaky financial foundation.   Financial reporter, Bethany McLean, writes:




"...the dream was always an illusion, and its collapse was already underway. That’s because oil fracking has never been financially viable. America’s energy independence was built on an industry that is the very definition of dependent — dependent on investors to keeping pouring billions upon billions in capital into money-losing companies to fund their drilling. Investors were willing to do this only as long as oil prices, which are not under America’s control, were high — and when they believed that one day, profits would materialize.

Even before the coronavirus crisis, the spigot was drying up. Now, it has been shut off."

Today, the price of oil dropped to less than a dollar a barrel.  No demand during the coronavirus pandemic, so the bottom literally dropped out of the oil market. 


Someday, the demand will return and oil prices will go up.  But, if fracking was not truly economical before the virus, why would it become economical later?  How many frackers will be able to sustain the crisis and hope for a better future?


I can't say I am unhappy about the possibility of the end of fracking in America.  It seems very environmentally suspect.  And there are many other sources of oil to be had.  Who knows, this oil crisis may end up being an economical spur to non-hydrocarbon energy and transportation.  I have long thought that the smartest kids in MIT, Stanford, Cal Tech, etc, were hard at work developing green energy.  Maybe there can be a real influx of moneys to help that along.

Test - Trace - Isolate - to buy time to develop the vaccines

As best as I can tell in my readings, the best path forward is to test, trace, and isolate. 


Tests.  We need millions of tests.  If we can go back to work, and be tested as we enter our workplaces, we can know who is safe to enter the workplace.  And the testing would have to be given on a regular basis since we can become infected and spread the virus for up to 14 days even if we don't exhibit any symptoms.


If we are found to be carrying the virus then we isolate - go back to our homes and ride out the disease, working with the doctors and health system.


Once we know we are infected we can work with the professionals to contact all that we have come into contact with so that they can be tested.  Those who are not infected have a clean bill of health to work and circulate.  Those who discover they are infected become isolated themselves.


It is not like we don't know how to deal with a pandemic.  We did so successfully in the past - from HIV to SARS to Swine Flu to Ebola, and in the more distant past - polio, measles, mumps, etc. 


What we don't have is a Federal Government that knows what to do.  Correction, we used to have a Federal Government that knew what to do but this Federal Government fired and forced out the scientists and experts because this government is run by the "instincts" of a profoundly ignorant president who simply cannot rely on experts or anyone that knows more than he does because his astonishingly idiotic ego thinks he knows more than the experts.  And this president is supported by a Republican Party that has spent half a century disdaining, disempowering, and dismissing as much of the government expertise as they could get away with.  (Taxed Enough Already - right?) Well, how is that working out?


Plus, of course, this president is literally incapable of thinking about anybody other than himself, and is someone who is literally incapable of caring or compassion. 

But, there are others, mostly outside of the Federal Government who so know what to do and I expect them to do it. 


What we need to do is test, trace, and isolate while the most vital work of all, creating an effective vaccine, can put this disease on the ash heap of history along with so many highly contagious diseases have been with good vaccines in the past, such as polio, measles, mumps, whooping cough, pneumococcal disease, tetanus, menengoccal disease, hepatitis B, chicken pox, diptheria, etc.  It is hard for us to imagine how deadly airborne and waterborne diseases where before vaccinations because they are mostly gone from the world. The Coronavirus can join that list of defeated diseases as well, but we need time to develop that vaccines.

An Easter message

Although I am no longer a Christian, I am deeply moved by the message of Easter.  It is the message of Rising from the Dead - rising from the ashes and being born anew.  This is the ancient story of the Phoenix.  And is seems so appropriate to our current story of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.  May this pandemic, which has the country and the world in the grips of tragedy, be a story of rising from the ashes, stronger, healed, casting off those parts of ourselves and our societies that don't work, and stepping into a newer and better and more spiritually evolved version of ourselves, our nation, and our world. 

Let today be a turning point.  Let the rising from the ashes begin.


Happy Easter......

Thank you Queen Elizabeth

Britain's 93 year old monarch gave an address to her country that I found very inspiring.


"....“I hope in the years to come everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge. And those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any. That the attributes of self-discipline, of quiet good-humoured resolve and of fellow-feeling still characterise this country. The pride in who we are is not a part of our past, it defines our present and our future. .... We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return: we will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.  But for now, I send my thanks and warmest good wishes to you all."


Dignity, resolve, character.  Did I mention Dignity?  


May we all be able to "take pride in how we are responding" to this challenge. 


Thank you Queen Elizabeth....

Is Fox News killing its followers?

Tragically, many right wingers are acting as if the COVID-19 pandemic isn't much of a threat.  This is contrary to the news around the country and around the world.  Why?  Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, right wing radio, evangelical preachers, etc. are telling the Trump faithful that it is all an over-hyped story designed to unseat their hero, Trump.  So, Trump Country is has not been staying home as a show of solidarity for how much they love Trump and how much they dismiss actual news.

I am lucky to be in California where our Democratic governor called for us to shelter in place over two weeks ago.  The happy result is that we are flattening the curve of the spread of the virus and we have a decent chance of not overwhelming our medical system.  Still a long, long way to go but we are on the right track.

The red states are not so lucky.  Most of their governors have been downplaying this pandemic.  Too many of their people are not social distancing nor sheltering in place.  Why?  They aren't getting the actual news. They decided long ago that the actual news was fake and they are in a right wing media bubble that feeds them ideology rather than news. And they are in even more trouble than the rest of us, I fear.  

The New York Times shows a map of who has not been staying home - Trump County has not been staying home.  I am sorry for that. 

I can't figure out how to paste that map into this post, but you can click through to see it here 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-social-distancing.html

Large structural issues in America and the world

The COVID-19 virus is exacerbating two fundamental structural problems in America and the world.


First, we are facing an increasingly alarming inequality of income between the upper and lower levels of society.  The Middle Class has been in the process of being hollowed out for decades now, and is getting worse.  This is being shown in tragic relief by the viral pandemic we are all going though.  We have known for a few years now that 40% of Americans don't have $400 for an emergency without having to borrow it or sell something.  Well, we are in that emergency now for many of them.


Andrew Yang, failed candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, highlighted a major contributing factor to this dangerous inequality spread - the relentless progression of technology that is eliminating jobs, and could end up eliminating the very idea of jobs and careers themselves.  Artificial Intelligence is exploding exponentially and could eliminate everything from truck drivers to doctors in a time frame much shorter than we can imagine.  If so, how do we survive?  What new paradigm is needed for humanity to continue in relative harmony?


The problem is that when the poverty becomes too widespread, very painful things can happen.  When the economic inequality became too extreme in France, the French Revolution of 1789 ended up with the French aristocracy having their heads chopped off by the guillotine.  And when the economic inequality in Russia became too extreme in 1917 the Russian Revolution ended up with the Tsar and his family being shot.  I don't expect bloody revolution in America, but some big changes can happen here and around the world if we are unable to flatten the curve of the spread of the virus and are not able to give needed financial and health aid to all Americans.

The second major structural problem we face is the inability to effectively respond to the ever more alarming climate change being caused by our economies.  California and Australia are seeing terrible fire storm seasons.  The rest of the country is seeing floods, blizzards, hurricanes etc. that are far outside of normal.  And time is only making these things worse.  I have real hopes that the smartest young scientists and engineers are working on coming up with new technologies of producing energy and transportation that are environmentally friendly, but political forces are entrenched and destructive.


These are structural issues and I don't have an answer, but answers are coming, and my hope and vision is that those answers are not violent.  A dear friend has suggested that the future will have the emergence of those qualities that only humans can contribute - creativity.  I would add to that - the human touch and compassion. This is where my hopes and dreams go for now.

The lives of us all depend on conservatives' courage

Let's face it, Trump is mentally ill, and the fate of the nation rests on the shoulders of conservatives that he listens to having the courage to tell him what he must do for the nation.  Here is his latest evidence of his profound mental disease:


"“I say, ‘Mike, don’t call the governor of Washington; you’re wasting your time with him. Don’t call the woman in Michigan. It doesn’t make any difference what happens.’ You know what I say: ‘If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.”


Conservatives on Fox News and in the right wing media bubble need to tell him that he needs to use his powers to send help where it is needed, not where people "treat him right".  Republicans in the Senate and House need to tell him face to face what he needs to do. And if he won't listen they need to go public, en masse.


We need conservatives to show courage and do the right thing for the nation.  It is blue states with high population densities being hardest hit now by COVID-19, but rural areas with marginal health care systems are at very great risk as well, and this virus is coming for them.


Trump's mental illness - pathological psychotic narcissistic self centeredness - makes him incapable of compassion or caring for other people.  He can only see people as worshipers who "treat him right" or as enemies to be destroyed. It is sad for him as a person, and extraordinarily dangerous for the rest of us as long as he has any power at all over our lives.  He literally is threatening to kill people who don't "treat him right."  (It is an understatement to say that this is an unconstitutional abuse of power)


Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, the Fox morning show folks,  Mitch McConnell, Devin Nunes, all Republican Senate and House members, Republican governors - we need you to show courage.  Once you start, all can join, and you will be protected by your numbers if all join in.  And then Trump will decide, ON HIS OWN, that he was right all along that he said he was sending help to every state according to need rather than according to their political leadership, because he is the greatest president in American history.


The fate of America rests on the shoulders of a very few conservative.  I know this seems like a foolish dream right now, but it is one I need to have. And so I dream it.....

Is Trump profiting from the virus?

Why did it take Trump two months to issue a Defense Production Authorization to build ventilators?  Can we please see the finances of him, his family, and his cronies?  Is he a pandemic profiteer?  Why hasn’t he issues DPAs for testing kits and Personal Protective Equipment??  What investments are they making?  

One explanation is simply that he has been trying to convince people that the virus is no big deal and is trying to keep the stock market up so he gets re-elected. It might be even more disgusting. 

Why does Trump call the Corona Virus the Chinese Virus?

Conservatives seem to be rushing to defend Trump for calling the coronavirus the Chinese virus. After all, they say, the virus started in China. Correct? So what’s the problem and calling it the Chinese virus?



Well, the swine flu in 2009 originated in America. What is it called the American flu?  No.



 The corona virus the sweeping through the world because the world is so deeply interconnected. It is not the Chinese virus.



It is true that the dictatorial authoritarian of Communist China did his best to downplay the effect and scope of the  coronavirus. That authoritarian leader was more interested in protecting the reputation and business of China than protecting its people or protecting the world. Sound familiar?



It is deeply and sadly true that the Wanabee dictatorial authoritarian leader in the White House did his best to downplay the effect and scope of the Corona Virus in America. He was more interested in protecting his reputation and protecting business in America than he was in protecting the people in America.


So, the time to contain the virus has passed and we are now in the mitigation phase - trying to spread out the curve of infection in order to keep from overwhelming our health care system.


Donald Trump calls it the  Chinese virus for two reasons.

• First he gets to blame somebody else for his own delayed responses to protect America from this virus.
• Second, he gets to play to his racist base, and proudly display his own racism.  That seems to be his primary campaign strategy  - last time and this time as well.
  

What I really want to know is what Trump and his family and his associates sold and bought on the stock market while he was oddly telling everybody that the virus was under control and that the virus was nothing more than a cold or a flu. Two Republican senators were caught selling hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock after getting briefings about what was about to happen. Did trump and those close to him do the same? Was Trump's message that we should not worry just a ploy for him to make millions?



Is Trump a pandemic profiteer?  It certainly would not be out of character for him, would it?

Trump and the Tea Party prepared the country to be unprepared for the Corona Virus

Trump and his Tea Party comrades - dedicated to destroying the Federal Government -  are being exposed by how deliberately unprepared they were for this Corona Virus pandemic.  (By the way, it is not what Trump racistly calls the "Chinese Virus" it is the Corona Virus - a world wide virus).  Amber Phillips writes:

The New York Times reported that last year, the Health and Human Services Department performed startling government simulations to show how underprepared the United States was for such a pandemic. Nothing was done in response.

As Trump was coming into office, the Times reports, “outgoing Obama administration officials ran an extensive exercise on responding to a pandemic for incoming senior officials of the Trump administration.” A year later, Trump disbanded the government’s pandemic-response team.

NPR got an audio recording of the top senator on the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), privately warning businesses in February that the virus, which was already in America, was going to be “aggressive” and “akin to the 1918 pandemic.” At the time, Trump was still comparing it to the flu.

We are lucky that the entire world is working to combat this pandemic, because this White House and these Tea Party Republicans certainly weren't prepared.

Why Trump and UK's Boris Johnson suddenly stopped calling the virus a hoax

Here is a quote about a very qualified report that got the UK's Boris Johnson, and probably Donald Trump as well, to stop telling people to go out and have a good time at restaurants and bars - from the WAPO's Daily 202:


3) Research from Imperial College London, endorsed by the U.K. government, suggests that 2.2 million would die in the United States and 510,000 would die in Britain if nothing is done by governments and individuals to stop the pandemic. The new forecasts, by Neil Ferguson and his colleagues, show that more-ambitious measures to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, to slow but not necessarily stop the epidemic over the coming few months, could reduce mortality by half, to 260,000 people in the United Kingdom and 1.1 million in the United States. The new report concludes that the British government might be able to keep the number of dead below 20,000 by enforcing social distancing for the entire population, isolating all cases, demanding quarantines of entire households where anyone is sick and closing all schools and universities — for 12 to 18 months, until a vaccine is available. The modelers did not give numbers for the United States for these most intense suppression efforts.Seeing these numbers from some of Britain’s top modelers of infectious disease inspired Prime Minister Boris Johnson to take a much more severe approach to suppress the spread. “The report is also influencing planning by the Trump administration,” William Booth reports. “Deborah Birx, who serves as the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, cited the British analysis at a news conference Monday, saying her response team was especially focused on the report’s conclusion that an entire household should self-quarantine for 14 days if one of its members is stricken by the virus.”


The administration and the right wing news organizations who have been telling everyone that this virus is just some kind of plot to damage Trump have proven themselves to be totally unreliable sources of news - you could more properly call them "Fake News". 


I hope my conservative friends hear this wake up call to get out of their propaganda bubbles and have the courage to just listen to the actual news, rather than be continuously assured by the right wing media bubble telling them that the world is being run by liberals trying to hurt them in some way.


Please, just read, watch, and listen to actual news.  It may save your life.