Molly Ivins once wrote that when following modern politics, you had three options: laugh, cry, or throw up. But since crying and throwing up are bad for you, you might as well laugh.
Me, I think there is a proper season for everything. And now is the season to look at this swollen pimple of an administration...and then take that important call from Ralph on the big white phone. Because the things our so-called President says and does on a near-daily basis are the rough equivalent of riding a runaway Tilt-A-Whirl right after eating an ipecac-flavored Sno-Cone. If Molly were here to see the Thing that a bunch of angry, fed-up right-wingers sent up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, she'd agree--right before gagging and losing her lunch in the nearest waste basket.
Surely they didn't invent Twitter for this...
Even before Day One, Donald Trump communicated with the world mainly via Twitter, the app made for those with short attention spans. Messages at that time could be no longer than 140 characters, including spaces, emoticons, and symbols. And boy, Trump took to it like a pig to a mud hole. He used lots of all-caps words and phrases, which I was taught was rude because it was the cyber-equivalent of shouting. He splattered the Twittersphere with diatribes and insults against everyone he didn't like (a veeeerrrrrry loooooong list, apparently). And he created hashtags that are still sliming around the Internet, like #MAGA and #AmericaFirst...both of which have been eagerly ingested and regurgitated by white nationalists and other haters.
It's worse now.
Remember how up in arms folks got over President Obama's BlackBerry? And all the fuss over Hillary's non-secure server with all those classified e-mails? Well, O Best Beloved, we now have a President who tweets more than he actually works at the job he was elected to do. Not only that, his tweeting fingers are apparently faster than his brain, because he posts the most outrageous shit--like his threats against Iran, or the horrible things he tweeted about Puerto Rico, or even government actions he's planning...things you'd think he would discuss in private with his Cabinet and then announce in a TV broadcast or at a press conference. Worse yet, he doesn't find out whether he can legally do what he intends until after he tweets it. Plus, he tweets about important, sensitive diplomatic stuff that his people are trying to do--like negotiate with guys like Kim Jong Un--and says things that sabotage those activities! And to top it all off, he doesn't give a flying shag at a rolling donut whether he even has his facts straight...the most egregious example, of course, being his attempt to one-up the National Weather Service about Hurricane Dorian hitting Alabama.
Oh, and that 140-character limit? Some non-genius decided to double that. So now we get twice as much of Trump's empty-headed Twitter use. Because, to add yet more bales of misery to our already-overloaded backs, the news media reports every damn tweet that Trump sends!!!
Ready...aim...
Ah, how things change. Once upon a time, a flag flew at half-mast on national holidays honoring veterans, when an important political person died, when a prominent local figure who had passed was declared worthy of the honor by the city fathers, or--much more rarely--during a time of national crisis. At any rate, we all pretty much knew why the flag was flying low.
These days, that half-mast could happen at any time, and more often than not, it's because some angry /nutty person with a gun went and opened fire on other people. So now, when that flag flies low and it's not a suitable national holiday, I find myself sighing, "Oh, Lord, not another one."
And how has our leadership responded? Better care for the mentally unbalanced? Waiting periods for gun purchases? More intensive background checks? Or how about banning the kinds of guns that are made (or can be converted) only for killing people in large numbers?
Nope. None of the above. Because the National Rifle Association has elevated the 2nd Amendment to an almost idolatrous position. And the NRA has money--big money--which it donates to the political campaigns of those it deems most likely to support its cause.
Now, I am not against gun ownership. That nice hunting rifle, or that handgun for personal/home defense...I'm fine with that. But do you really need something with a bump stock for that purpose? If you've had your training and kept up with your target practice at the shooting range, you shouldn't. And remember, Good Guy, the more shots you can fire at once, the greater the chance of an innocent bystander getting hit, as well.
Hey, by the way, check out this image of the magazine used by the Dayton shooter (lower left):
Dunno about you, but I think somebody's compensating. Maybe that's the whole NRA's problem.
But Trump is a Christian!....Wait, what???
I couldn't believe it when I first heard it, but apparently, Donald Trump is a Christian. However, he's not the kind of person who immediately comes to mind when you think of that label...you thought Mother Teresa, didn't you? So did I. No, Trump's brand of Christianity is the type espoused by the so-called "prosperity preachers," who believe that monetary wealth and physical health is a sign of God's favor--a reward of faith. So if you are a child of God, you are entitled to have lots of money, a nice house, and three luxury vehicles! And bless God, you can just rebuke that sickness in Jesus' Name, because you're a King's Kid, and He takes care of His chosen ones! Just the thing that a narcissistic, money-loving man like Trump would be attracted to.
It's no surprise, therefore, that Trump's spiritual adviser is a woman pastor named Paula White, who has been investigated in the past for shady practices but was never found guilty (sound familiar?). She also once told her viewers to send their first paycheck of the year to her ministry, or God would be angry. (That is a distortion of the Old Testament doctrine of giving the firstfruits of the harvest to God...a segment of the Law which, being fulfilled by Christ's sacrifice on the Cross, is no longer necessary.)
The prosperity preachers cherry-pick verses from the Bible to support their "name it and claim it" message, but when it comes to holiness in life, compassion toward the poor, and showing forth Christ in word and deed to the unsaved world, they fall very short. I have listened to many of these guys and gals, and I hear almost nothing about any of the virtues I just named--in fact, I once heard one guy, Creflo Dollar, (what a name, right?) make the appalling claim that people don't want to worship a God whose people look poor, because it's unattractive; but if you follow the prosperity doctrine and get rich, the non-Christians will "want what you have"--i.e., a pipeline to the God Who's showering you with everything your little heart desires!
When you know all this, it's easy to see why there is a massive disconnect between what Trump claims to believe, and what he actually does and says. When you've got your eyes and your hands focused on seeing and grabbing that next blessing, you have no time or means to have compassion on, say, refugees from war-torn countries who want to come here. Since you're focused on the bits of the Bible that talk about blessings for you, you completely miss the much larger parts telling you to love your neighbor as yourself, to be a good steward of whatever God has given you, to be generous to the poor, to be humble, to be kind...not to mention the long section in Matthew 25 describing the Last Judgment, when Jesus defines the kind of behavior that is the mark of a true King's Kid--feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and welcoming strangers into one's home. He tells us that doing these things for "the least of these, My brothers" is the same as doing them for Jesus. By the way...do you notice that if Trump signed a new executive order granting all those migrants asylum, he would be ticking all but two of those boxes? And if he actually visited the overcrowded refugee camps and offered the inhabitants real hope, he'd clear the list?
Unfortunately, I don't have enough faith to believe in a miracle that huge. I could see Jimmy Carter doing it, and if Liz Warren were President right now, she would already have most of them settled in where they were most needed. But Trump? Sorry, no.
Cha-CHING!
With Donald Trump, everything is about money. He defines people and countries by how much "business" he does or can do with them. As President, he was supposed to step away from his holdings and businesses and hand them off to a third party. He refused to do so, and the cesspool of profiteering, shameless promotion, and even accepting taxpayer funding when his aides and other members of his administration visit his hotels (remember Pence staying at the Trump Hotel in Doonbeg, when his meeting with the Irish PM was in Dublin? You and I are paying for that. Trump has plenty of money--why couldn't he have comped his VP and family?) has created a stench so bad that every window in the White House will have to be opened for at least a year to air out the building when Trump leaves. Even then, it might be like pig manure--that aroma may be permanent. Hell, we may have to change the name to the Brown House!
Here's a link to an article that tells you just how bad Trump's conflicts of interest have gotten:
https://www.citizensforethics.org/presidential-profiteering-trumps-conflicts-got-worse/
Birds of a feather...
Trump is a shameless bully toward those with less money and power than he has. But when he hangs out with other bullies, he's like a Zen novice at the feet of a master--he drinks in every word, watches every move, learns whatever he can, and always acts like a sycophant. The worst example was the Helsinki summit, when he kowtowed so shamelessly to Vladimir Putin. It was a horribly embarrassing incident. Even if we never have such a bad President ever again, the entire world will remember Helsinki...and it will make them think twice about trusting us.
Unclear on the concept...but that's nothing new...
Trump does not believe in climate change. Or at least, he doesn't believe that what humans do affects the earth's climate over time. He has in the past said (or tweeted) that man-made climate change is a hoax, foisted off on us by--of all people--the Chinese! He sees no need to do anything to rein in the use of fossil fuels, even though these resources become scarcer as time goes on; worse, he scoffs at the efforts made by others who are trying to conserve natural resources and find new, cleaner ways to produce electricity.
Needless to say, Trump's appointees for Secretary of Energy, Secretary of the Interior, and head of the Environmental Protection Agency neither know nor care about the departments they are supposed to run. That's not their job in this administration. They are there solely to create (as Molly Ivins used to say about Texas) "a healthy bidness climate." That means adjusting rules, rolling back standards, ending long-standing regulations--anything that helps big, wealthy corporations...more of Trump's like-feathered friends. Of course, a lot of endangered species will go extinct, and a lot of national parks will be ruined, and people will die from poisons and pathogens in the environment...but oh, well.
The most recent salvo fired by Trump at conservation efforts was aimed at California, whose emissions standards are by far the strictest in the country. But those high standards go back a long way; back in the 40's and 50's, when "photochemical brown" was the color of the skies over Los Angeles, and people were getting sick from all that smoggy air, two scientists named Arie Haagen-Smit, a flavor chemist, and Arnold Beckman, who built advanced detection equipment for emissions, determined the cause to be automobile exhaust and the smoke belching from industrial chimneys. After a big fight pitting lobbyists for the oil and auto industries against a bunch of ordinary citizens who were tired of the dirty air, California's state government took action in 1959 by setting up a pollution control board for motor vehicles. With ozone having been identified as the worst of the various tailpipe emissions, the new board set a limit--150 ppb (parts per billion) of ozone per cubic meter of air. (This limit is still way higher than the federal standard.) Because the "car culture" really started in California, the auto makers would have to find ways to reduce ozone emissions before Californians could buy their cars...and with over 2,000,000 cars on CA state roads at the time, Ford, General Motors, and all the other automakers listened. Particularly since 22 other states jumped in and followed California's example by setting their own clean-air standards.
During the 60's, the federal government began catching up and setting standards of its own. But they were lower than those of California and the states who had followed their example, and by 1970, when the Clean Air Act was ratified, California was worried that the new federal standards would be a step backward that would reverse the gains the pollution-ridden state had already made. So Congress made an exception for California: they could set whatever clean-air standards they wanted, so long as they were stricter than those set by the federal government.
Then the catalytic converter was invented. California mandated that it be installed in all cars produced from 1975 on, and since the automakers weren't about to produce two sets of cars each year, catalytic converters became the standard. This reduced not only ozone emissions, but also carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide. Since leaded gasoline (the "lead" is a compound called "tetra-ethyl lead," or TEL) could not be used in an engine with a catalytic converter, that fuel was finally phased out--a good thing, too, because it turned out that the combustion of leaded gasoline released the lead into the air, where it became yet another dangerous substance when breathed in by animals and humans. Eating paint chips or drinking lead-heavy water weren't the only ways to get lead poisoning--if you lived in the middle of a big city, all you needed to do was breathe the air!
BTW, we have a geochemist named Clair Patterson to thank for the new knowledge concerning lead and its effects on living things. While doing research on a meteorite, using uranium-lead dating to determine the age of the earth and the solar system in general, Patterson found that his samples were being corrupted with lead in the environment. After he built a "clean room" to eliminate the problem, he was able to finish his research, no problem...except he wondered about all that lead in the air. Was it normal? After testing deep-sea ocean water and finding that its lead content wasn't even close to that in L.A., where he worked, he did some more experiments and found that the culprit was--no surprise--the TEL in gasoline. He fought like an avenging angel to get it banned, despite opposition from the makers of TEL, the auto industry, and even fellow scientists, some of whom were bought and paid for by the TEL and auto folks! But in 1986, Congress banned "leaded" fuel in all but a very few, limited applications...and we're now testing at 80% less lead than we were in the 50's.
Okay, back to the present and Trump. He says that California's strict standards cause cars to be too expensive, and so people keep their old cars longer, which makes them unsafe. Forcing the state to back away from high emissions standards will take the pressure off the automakers, who can then make cheaper cars, which will make everyone safer.
Sure...unless you live in L.A., or Chicago, or any of the other large cities where smog is a problem. And even the auto industry is unhappy with Trump, because they think he's gone too far. Oh...and ironically, the day I read about the California-Trump rumble, I also read, in the same newspaper, that the pollution a pregnant woman breathes in goes through her lungs and winds up in her placenta. Imagine how much of that could end up in the unborn baby. Are you sure you're pro-life, Mr. President?!
Of course, California has vowed to fight. Along with 22 other states, the District of Columbia, and the Cities of Los Angeles and New York, California is suing the Trump Administration, and so far, a few judges have sided with the plaintiffs.
But here's the thing. Trump doesn't give a shit about the environment. He never even goes outside unless it's to golf, and I doubt he's ever seen an eagle in its natural habitat. He knows nothing of the various ecosystems that make up our country (let alone our planet!), and I doubt it would make any difference to the way he thinks...because when he talks about "excessive regulations" that restrain the damage that industry and business do to the environment, it's another way of saying, "we could make a lot more money if we didn't have to worry about the junk we dump into the water, the ground and the air--and anyway, it's not really that harmful."
Because Trump's abiding passion is to make even more money...and who cares about what troubles his grandchildren will inherit? All that fast food he eats, he probably won't last another decade, so he'll never have to worry about it.
So, what do we take for this intense nausea?
There are two Constitutionally-approved treatments for our gastrointestinal woe. The first is, we invoke the 25th Amendment and get Trump declared unfit for office. Honestly, how hard could that be? He tweets such incoherent sprays of liquid pig shit that you could get him out of the White House just by presenting his Twitter archives as evidence.
The second is, we impeach the man. That's a little harder. See, the House of Representatives impeaches, but the real trial is held in the Senate. We have a split Congress--Democrat House, GOP Senate. And the GOP, however they may loathe Trump privately, probably will vote along party lines to exonerate him. The Dems worry that this could energize his base and help get him elected for another four years.
Oh, yeah...there's a third remedy. Vote, dammit! Be creative about it, too. If your state has ugly voter-ID laws, organize a drive and get others registered and ID'd up for the occasion. If you can afford the ID and your neighbor can't, help them out. Same goes for the sneaky polling-place changes--get informed beforehand, and let those who have transportation help those who don't. Don't let evil people in power rob you of your right...which, remember, is just as much a right as that right to bear arms.
And finally...remember that your vote counts. No matter how much money the PACs and corporations spend, no matter how many nasty ads and junk-mail flyers they send out...it's still down to us. Ordinary people pulling levers and filling in little circles at set locations on Election Day.
Think about that. And hopefully, your stomach will feel better.
