Two Thoughts About Republicans

I recently shifted (in my own mind) from being a Democrat to being an independent voter. This doesn't mean I have given up on the Democrats; it does mean that, to get my vote, they will have to earn it. Mike McGuire, for instance, has earned my support many times over. I hope that there are people working inside the party to get it to listen to workers, Latinos, angry non-voters, Black Lives Matter and so on. Democrats should find out what people really want and then give it to them. That's how Democrats can win. (The majority of people do not sit around hoping for tax breaks for billionaires, for larger aircraft carriers or to see Latino families broken up.)

I have two thoughts about the Republican Party. The first is really a question. Why do they keep electing Presidents who are mentally ill? Nixon was paranoid. Reagan was senile in office. Now we have Minority President Trump, a malignant narcissist. Why do Republicans pick bobbleheads to lead western civilization? (My guess is that the hodge-podge of bad ideas guiding Republicans can't even be considered unless you first abandon reason.)

My second thought is that Ryan's current Republican health care plan will kill people who get cut off, abruptly, from lifesaving medicines and treatments. I doubt if a plan this savage will pass, but how can Ryan, who maintains he's Catholic, ignore the Pope and just bump off a million people to save money, money that will be converted into a tax break for billionaires who don't need it?

I can see why Trump would back Ryan's plan. Trump is mentally ill and neither sees nor cares what happens next. Ryan's excuse is that he is a Republican.

I Feel Good Now

I know I’m a writer because John Barth once told me I am.  Nevertheless maybe ten years have gone by since our local newspaper has printed one of my letters in its letter-to-the-editor section. I gave up long ago. But recently I was sufficiently outraged to try one more time, and on Saturday they printed my letter. They must have a new person editing that section of the paper. I feel good now. 

Deep State

In THE NEW YORKER, John Cassidy points out that what successful authoritarian leaders do is expand the social safety network. Then the people like them. Minority President Trump is too bonkers to grasp this history, and he has set off on a path to shrink the social safety network. (Yes, there is a "deep state" that is working against Trump, called ordinary American people.)

Slavery Revisited

Back when slavery was a fact in the United States, it had to be defended in print and in speeches by the rich white men who had invested in it. There was never anything good about slavery, of course. It was viciously inhumane. Defending slavery took a warped mentality, and the consequences remain to this day (look at how certain mentally warped Americans today find justifications for voter suppression).

Now some mentally warped federal bureaucrats are proposing to take the children away from undocumented families who cross our borders without papers. Breaking up normal families and removing children is a form of cruelty we haven't seen in our country since we freed the enslaved. It's absolutely indefensible cruelty, much as the Holocaust was absolutely indefensible cruelty. When we rounded up Japanese Americans in 1942, even then, we didn't separate the children from their parents and turn the children over to an inadequate foster care system. Should America really be considering a proposal this ugly?

The Arrival

A year or two back, about a quarter of our voters were still waiting impatiently for a certain kind of leader to emerge. They were hoping for someone tall with a large ass and hair transplants dyed yellow. Someone Aryan. He would have to have a simple vocabulary made up of one syllable words derived from Old English, a Germanic language. No three syllable words derived from Norman French.  The new leader would have to be as stupid and nasty as they were, so he could represent them, male and female, in matters like the grabbing of private parts. 

These voters had been waiting a long time, since the 1780s. They’d put up with the fancy dudes like George Washington and smarty-pants like James Madison, a college boy. Handsome empty guys like Harding and Bush came and went. The voters had suffered through the Presidencies of generals like Andrew Jackson, Grant and Ike. But soon it would be their turn, and the new leader would be, at last, one of them, a feckless turd. 

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Is Trump a Man?

Is Minority President Trump a man? 

Words have meaning, of course, and “man” has many meanings. Sometimes it’s an interjection, as in “Man! Did you hear what that President Goofy just said?” In other circumstances “man”  can mean “boss.”  (I’m working for the man, every night and day.) “Man” is what Wittgenstein called a family resemblance word, one with a variety of loosely related usages. 

“Man” is a descendent of the old English “mann,” which meant “a human person.” About a thousand years ago, that changed to “adult male.” In the United States it became “adult white male.” But a chess piece is also a man. “Man” can be a verb, as in manning a destroyer, and some of the men will be women. You man up to fortify yourself, and so on. 

Science claims that some examples of the category “man” are recognized as more central than others. Donald Trump clearly has several attributes of men. He has lungs. He has hair on his back, some of which has been transplanted to his head and dyed the color of urine. On the other hand, his vocabulary is so small as to be sub-human, and it contains non-words like “bigly.” Restricted to a meager hundred words, he repeats them like a parrot. “My day was great. It was really great. The Mormons I met were great people. I love Mormons. Many told me my speech was great. The fake news won’t say it was great.”

As I understand it, categories like “man” have central members. Minority President Trump is robotic, too stiff to meet the main definition of a man, but we have to give him this: he’s a fringe member of the category, nearly a person, the kind linguists and linguistic philosophers call a nutty creamsicle. 

The Fix Is In

Two weeks ago, Minority President Trump instructed that "all new pipelines, as well as retrofitted, repaired or expanded pipelines, inside the borders of the the United States, including portions of pipelines, use materials and equipment produced in the United States."

That seems to cover all pipelines. Buy American! But the fix is in. Yesterday the White House noted that "the Keystone Xl pipeline is currently in the process of being constructed, so it does not count as a new, retrofitted, repaired or expanded pipe line."

Hey, baby, let the good times roll.  

Steven Bannon's Talent

When I woke from my nap this afternoon, I understood Steve Bannon's talent. He's a world-class master of ass-kissing. Everyone who works for Trump spends night and day smooching that sagging Aryan posterior, but Bannon does it best. He has the best lips and longest tongue. He lets Trump pull his hair bigly.

Democrats Get Older and Older

I watched the first few minutes of the Democratic response to Trump's latest speech. Then I grew unbearably bored and moved on, as did nearly everyone, I'd guess. 

There was one moment when the ancient white fellow representing the Democratic party said something like, "I am a Democrat, I am a Republican, and I am an American."  To which Stephen Colbert replied, "I am a man, I am a woman, and I am a human being and a dog, ruff ruff."

The multi-millionaires running the Democratic party, lagging miles behind its ordinary voters, can't quite grasp that the party needs new leaders, new voters and new ideas. Many of the rich leaders do not care. The Democratic party is a pot of gold. 

The Clinton/Obama wing can't drag itself away from the past, when everything was right of center  Today it insists on repeating the stale mash that has lost them most states in the union, the House, the Senate, the Presidency and, soon, the Supreme Court. Loss after loss means you are losers. The Democrats should try to find out what people--particularly those who refuse to vote--actually want from the government. What would get citizens interested in going to the polls?