The Borders (according to the Border Patrol)

Suppose I, born in Compton, sit on a bench at Courthouse Square (about 60 mules north of San Francisco). Can the Border Patrol grab me off that bench without a warrant, transport me to a local hospital, have medical personnel search my body cavities, feed me a pill to flush my bowels so they can inspect my turds and then tell the hospital to bill me for $5,000?  

Yes.  They do that to American citizens..

I'm fairly safe, though, because the Border Patrol uses a complexion code chart in their work, one that runs "from white to sallow to olive and black." I'm an old white man, and I sure as hell don't want to be sallow (whatever that is) or olive (green?).

I was surprised yesterday to read in Harper's that the Border Patrol makes warrantless arrests of American citizens all over its designated border areas, which are anyplace within 100 miles of a border. Borders include the Pacific Ocean, the Great Lakes, the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean, Mexico and Canada. The entire state of Michigan is border. So the Border Patrol is policing about 200 million citizens, and I am not talking about ICE.  

Boofer Kavanaugh Needs a Broken Nose

I’ve seen rich kids like Boofer Kavanaugh before, but it was a long time ago, when I was in high school

At the time I had never been in a street fight, but my father had been in many. He’d taught me two things. First, always get in the first punch, because many street fights last one punch. Second, hit them in the nose and break it.

He wasn't the perfect father, but I had reason to love him.

Kavanaugh, as I will call this rich kid from a prep school, and I were at the same dance, and he was drunk and bothering my date. She got testy, so I stopped him, and he insisted we take it out into the night air. Fine. Everyone followed us outside, and once on the grass, he started a run at me (not a sound approach to a brawl). I set myself and hit him in the face as hard as I could, breaking his aristocratic nose and dropping him like a sack of elegant manure. 

Boofer Kavanaugh is another mean drunk. He needs a good beating. In his senate hearing today, he was mean while sober, yelling, insulting women senators, acting belligerent, much like the lightly-brained Lindsay Graham, who rose at the appointed moment to defend what he dotes on. 

Trump's Lips

Trump has the oddest mouth on television. As he speaks his lips writhe forward, away from the gums, as if grasping for contact with the real. Word-gas forms around his tongue. Behind the prehensile lips, in the deep shadows of his maw, two rows of baby teeth cry for ground meat and American cheese and giant boobs four or five times a day, regular, heavy, very heavy feedings. The lips, beyond conscious control, smirk in fearful embarrassment and wiggle this way and that as defensive slime flaps them outward in irregular patterns--is what some people have claimed. 

A Deserved Loss of FaIth

A solid majority of Americans, after the New Deal, believed in our system. Then we were lied into a war in Vietnam, lied to about Watergate, lied to about people of color, lied into a pointless war against Iraq and now lied to about a rapist named Kavanaugh. Bill  Clinton joined the process of weakening New Deal supports for people in need. Today polls show that a large majority of voters share a hard-earned cynicism about an oligarchical "democracy" that values greed and power far above the happiness of our people. 

The problem is not with the "deep state," the civil service, government employees, Washington media, etc. The problem is that Alexander Hamilton's intense campaign for a financial oligarchy has managed to subjugate half of one political party and all of the other. The consequence is a fragmenting, alienated society unable to build trust or consensus. Jefferson warned us. Ben Franklin warned us. We had a republic once, a flawed republic. We've lost it. Voters are angry and confused--many voters support idiotic candidates, looking for change in any form. To regain even a semblance of democracy, we need a cleansing movement, a giant shift. That's not news--it's obvious.

Jefferson

Presidential reputations rise and fall. In my lifetime, I've noticed two remarkable changes.  When I was in college Truman was considered one of the worst Presidents in history, largely because of a relentless Republican campaign to paint him as corrupt and soft on Communism. That's all gone now. And Grant was portrayed by my history professors as a brutal drunken general and a foolish or corrupt President.

In recent years younger historians have pointed out that Grant won the Civil War, popping Lee like a pimple, and, as President, smashed the KKK, enforced the civil rights of people of color and wrote America's best autobiography on his deathbed.   (You can see how these achievements disqualified Grant in the books of Southern professors.)

At the moment Thomas Jefferson's reputation is in disarray, in part because, although he very quietly considered slavery a bad thing, he did nothing about it. But it may be time to reconsider. Jefferson was the most radical President we've had, opposed to Hamilton's goal of maintaining a governing oligarchy. Jefferson did not like oligarchies. "Those who rule are a confederacy against the happiness of the mass of people," he wrote in a letter. At the time of his death, Jefferson believed he had defeated the Hamiltons of America--but, dude, look at us now.

Rules of the Game

It turns out that Unindicted Co-Conspirator and USA President Spanky has a below average penis, according to Ms. Daniels, a porn actress. She did not find Spanky a generous lover. This is too much information, but it may explain why Spanky nominated a high school rapist to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Self-centered and under-endowed, Spanky strongly dislikes women (and men).

There’s no legal bar against rapists serving as justices. Before Spanky became President, there was, apparently, a tacit understanding that Presidents wouldn’t nominate rapists,murderers or child molesters. Of course it may not have been a conscious understanding. It’s probable that no prior President, not even Nixon, had given the matter any thought. 

This points out a problem with laws or rules in general. They don’t begin to cover the possibilities halfwits can dream up. We rely on unspoken understandings to keep society functional. Spanky sees unspoken understandings as opportunities to cheat.

Size Counts

Enough evidence has been gathered to establish that entitled teen Pencilneck Kavanagh,  currently applying for a job as Supreme Court Justice, tried to rape an underage girl at one of his prep school parties. He was too drunk to hold her down, and she fought loose and got away. Everyone at her school heard about it. She's passed a lie-detector test. But it looks like the Republican senate, including Republican women senators, will find Kavanagh well-qualified and vote him in. The argument is that Kavanagh can, after all, represent a key part of America, the part that is white, male, privileged, wealthy and entitled to special private schooling and boyhood jinks like rape. 

If Pencilneck becomes the final vote needed to seal the corruption of our highest court, what can we do? 

Congress has the power to change the number of people on the Supreme Court. The original edition, in 1801, had 5 members. I mention this because three of the current members are originalists.  They need to shed those 3 members to get to the original number. 

 In 1807, 7 members huddled together in soiled black robes. Congress decided in 1837 that 9 members would be better, then went to 10 in 1863. By 1867 they realized that 7 was absolutely the best number, until 1869 when 9 was chosen again.

If the Democrats ever regain power, I suggest that 435 justices would be a good number. That may seem big, but I think I recall that in ancient Athens, mere juries (citizens chosen at random) were about that size, a nice cross-section of white male Greeks (not enslaved). 

President Spanky's Brain

I don't have much interest in IQ tests. I doubt if they measure intelligence, which is hard to define. They measure test-taking skills (nothing to sneeze at). They predict how well a student will do on related tests.

I read a thread today about Pres. Spanky's IQ, supposedly over 150. He's never been tested. Somebody "estimated" his IQ, using Wharton admissions standards. I've sat on admissions committees. Kids from a rich family get admitted regardless of standards. The object is build up the place's funding. Trump, a Fordom mediocrity, got into Wharton because his family was wealthy and knew people. 

Once someone like Trump gets admitted, he hires someone on a scholarship to write his papers. No sweat. As a dude close to him once said, "You don't know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump." And I don't. Trump likes to play golf because he can keep his own score and cheat. Try to imagine him playing chess.

Rasmussen

I read someplace long ago that the Rasmussen poll is Republican. It's not like some other polls, which attempt to measure things. Rasmussen apparently aims to be inaccurate. It's a Republican liar. For example, this morning it shows that President Spanky is slightly below the fifty percent line when it comes to approval. The legitimate polls show much worse numbers. 

I used to wonder why anyone wanted a poll that lies, but maybe it's useful in encouraging voters who prefer stupid candidates. If they believe the election is close and the candidate is dumb,  they turn out. (Remember what a friend of the President said: "You don't know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump." And, honestly, I don't.)

The Question That Matters

In graduate school I attended faculty senate meetings along with many other spectators. At one meeting a famous professor challenged somebody even more famous, asking him if he really understood deconstruction. “Understand it? I haven’t even taught it,” was the response. That’s when I discovered how professors learn a new subject. Get a textbook and teach it, and try to keep a page ahead of the students.

All that was a good thing to know when, ten years later, a dean called me into her office, put down her newspaper and told me that I was going to be teaching religion. I explained that I knew nothing about the subject, except that God was three persons, a father, a son and a holy spirit, some kind of identity crisis. And then He sent Himself down to be crucified by the cops.

 She sent me out to buy a survey text. That's how I became a professor of the desert religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and Greek and Norse stuff and Buddhism and Hinduism and others. I learned that the Yazidi did not eat lettuce, which strongly recommended them to me. Only a fool eats lettuce. I became religious, apparently. But students found the course disappointing. The text did not even try to answer the obvious if simple question that has mattered most for ten thousand years: which God is best?

The Bang Your Head Cafe

In the 1970s there were large, flat parts of the nation where dining choices were limited. My wife and I drove across the country and back maybe twice a year; and one summer we stopped for lunch in a small town in the endless cornfield of Nebraska. 

Calvin Trillin once claimed, on seeing this cornfield, that the state motto of Nebraska was "Too long." 

I remember that, and I remember a comic who claimed that the state motto of New Jersey was "Shuduppa you mouth."

We entered the small town's only cafe and sat the counter. I asked the server (as they were not called in those days) what sort of sandwiches they had. "Meat," she said.

After a few seconds my wife said, "What kind of meat?"

"Meat! Meat!" The server, apparently a high school girl, stared at us with concern, perhaps wondering if we spoke English. 

We ordered meat sandwiches, which turned out to be grey beef between slices of white bread. As we were slowly chewing, the server turned and stepped to the side and rammed her head into a huge refrigerator with a projecting ledge.  For a second I thought she'd done it on purpose.  The girl staggered back a few steps and stood with her back to us, holding her gong in her hands. "Are you all right?" my wife asked.

"Yes."

We went back to chewing meat, and the girl wiped down the counter and twice more in the next ten minutes, banged her head into the high metal ledge.  

We left a big tip and drove on. We had dinner 200 miles west at a chain called  Stuckys, cheese sandwiches that came sealed in plastic.

The Posse

Last night my granddaughter Daisy, 12, sang four songs in her first gig. They were mostly pop songs from the 1990s, I think. As usual she got huge applause. She sings like a pro. Now she is a pro.

I was struck by how warmly supportive the women in the room were and by what I finally realized is Daisy's posse, a group of about eight good friends and several parents who show up even when it means crossing a bridge into another county. At intermission the kids jumped out into the garden and ran around together, enjoying the night in a way possible only for the young. 

A Postmodern President

Postmodernism is ten thousand different things and not to be pinned down by the likes of me, but an example of one facet of deconstructive thought is found in THIS MODERN WORLD, a cartoon strip by Tom Tomorrow. In a recent strip he had Rudy Giuliani saying, "Truth isn't truth! Also, objective reality is just a construct! If nothing is real, how can Donald Trump be guilty of anything?"

Postmodernism reached its sophomoric height after World War II. Some of its inventors were former Fascists or former members of the Nazi party. But how could they be guilty of anything? We gave them a pass. 

Kill The Messenger!

I have not called myself a liberal since Hubert Humphrey supported the war in Vietnam. Also too many liberals pride themselves most on following correct procedure and obeying the law. Procedure is more important to them than an outcome. (This can also be true of some conservatives.)  For them, correct procedure is more important than, say, sneaking a paper off the President’s desk that might launch a nuclear war, which someone in the White House resistance actually did. He may have prevented a genocide, but can the semi-elected President trust him? That’s what counts for procedural liberals like Chris Hayes, who need to get a pair. 

Consider the uproar over the anonymous messenger who published a letter in the TIMES today. A White House big shot, he revealed that cabinet members have considered starting the Constitutional process that would remove an idiotic President from office. I’ve been watching the liberal talking heads on TV react to this. They’ve been denouncing the leaker, indignantly whining about his not having given his name. The messenger, they tell us, this new Deep Throat, is himself deeply immoral, for not publishing his name. He’s self-seeking. Kill the messenger. 

Let’s say that Anonymous gives his name. Trump has already labeled him a traitor. Nunes will call Anonymous to a hearing and ask for the names of the White House resistance. Anonymous will refuse to give names, be cited for contempt of congress and go to prison. The procedural types will be satisfied. Anonymous will dream of Edward Snowden.

But people like Mark Felt and Anonymous are not stupid. They prefer not to go to jail. They understand that at times rules should be broken. People are fallible. The rules people make aren’t always appropriate. 

My sense of how best to attack Trump is any way possible, including anonymously. Attack him from the front, back, both sides, the top and the bottom. Defend us. 

The Meaning of It All

Twenty years ago Perseus Books published three lectures that Richard Feynman had given in 1963 at the University of Washington. In these talks—THE MEANING OF IT ALL—Feynman applied brilliant, logical common sense to some general observations about science and opinions and so forth. Below is what he had to say about the Stalinist Soviet Union. 

“The Soviets are very very ingenious and clever indeed. They even tell us what they are doing to us. . . . And what they want us to do is lose faith in the Supreme Court, to lose faith in the Agricultural Department, to lose faith in the scientists . . . and lose faith in all sorts of ways . . . and to paralyze us.” That was 60 years ago.

Putin is not Stalin, who had an ideology. Putin just dislikes the West.

That said, I have lost faith in the Supreme Court and the Agricultural Department. The Republicans have lost faith in scientists. None of this can be credited to Russia. We’ve done it to ourselves, lost faith in some of our important institutions, because they betrayed us again and again. No major party is going to tell us the truth about what we have lost, but that is what we need to get on track.