This shamrock plant is at least twenty-seven years old. Jim received it in 1990 at a boardroom meeting on St. Patrick’s Day. Each person was given a Dixie cup containing a little plant. Over the years this one has endured brutal winters, staying in the cold sunroom of the house in Colorado to the sun porch of the Florida condo, where it seems to thrive best. JB
Antique pen and inkwell
I don’t know my own country as well as I thought I did. In some ways we are strangers now, and I’ve been wrestling with the outcome of our national election to understand why I still feel so far away from the way things actually are.
I stayed up watching election returns last night until ten o’clock, when I decided that waking up this morning might feel like Christmas Day. Wow! Was I wrong or what? It was like waking up to find coal in my stocking with no explanation of what I had done to deserve it.
The myriad subterfuges and distractions by both political parties over the past year led me to misread and badly misinterpret the needs and desires of most of my fellow Americans. I saw their outward rage but failed to understand that their chief target was the status quo and its lingering, empty promises. I also neglected to grasp their profound nostalgia for a more stable America, one that existed before this present era of swift and extraordinary changes that, for many Americans, have made the world around them seem to be spinning out of control. Those needs required a revolution.
I omitted the strong factor of fear experienced by the working class, who find that “getting ahead’” is often only for other folks. My rose-colored glasses didn’t really see the terror through racial division and the ever-present, if subliminal, conviction that our Norman Rockwell, 1950’s, white- home, apple pie community was, to many, being sabotaged by a growing inclusion of Blacks, gays, Mexicans, Muslims, etc., (at least in the media), who were becoming a bit too uppity by enjoying more equal status and, therefore, had to be reviled by squinted info sources like Fox News, a media empire that has made The National Enquirer look like The New York Times.
In a subtler way, women themselves had to be punished for the supreme audacity of supposing they could actually be equal. Imagine a female who, instead of staying home to bake biscuits, was brilliant and courageous enough to be the leader of The Western World. This was simply too much for middle America to digest and short-circuited many brains in their monumental efforts to discredit and revile her, ignoring completely the great things she had done over many years and using nonsensical distractions against her over things only a tenth as dangerous as those done by male presidents of the past sixty years.
I finally reached the conclusion that the election process this time had less to do with actual issues than with fantasy and powerful emotions on the part of voters, who saw what they needed or wanted to see instead of checking facts carefully along the way. Myths are created when people need them and even need to believe them, good or bad. Demonizing with lies and tweaked “truths” became an art form during this election. The Republican candidate went over the top, hurling insults that sounded like a Las Vegas nightclub routine of Don Rickles or Redd Foxx that had nothing whatever to do with improving life in America. Denouncing the opposition reached a new political and moral low. Fear, misogyny, and racism became the ammunition sharpened and aimed carefully at everything and everyone outside Beaver Cleaver’s and Donna Reed’s households.
One of the greatest shocks for me was the cavalier way those calling themselves Christians excused the raw meanness of spirit of the man promising to “make America great again” as though Christ himself had been hijacked and replaced by some golden idol that could do no wrong and must be worshiped instead. I don’t think I was the only one to wear rose-colored specs. In the end, perhaps it’s really just about power and money, not about ideals, which in this election have taken on the nature of double-talk and hypocrisy.
The American philosophy of tolerance, charity, and equality has somehow, perhaps by anger, greed, fear, and ignorance, been packed away as though in some old cedar chest and replaced by things I cannot recognize. All I can do is wait and see what unfolds over the next four years. I’d be happy and grateful to find that even a pompous windbag filled with promises and empty catch-phrases could bring us together as a continuing and prosperous nation, but the word “together” no longer seems to have meaning in the new order, in which I fear we will be splintered and see mostly divisive chaos with only a very painful lesson to be learned before the next election (barring an impeachment process). The people have indeed spoken, but I fail to understand where they believe we’re going now as a country. JB
Our nation is filled with mistrust and rage right now, but it’s also filled with good people. If it weren’t, then there would be no hope and no reason for an election or striving to overcome what is already wrong. We’re all in this together, so we need to begin sharing some common goals. Personal attacks have not helped and have served only to distance people we believe are against us. It’s been an ugly campaign from both sides, but if we don’t find some common ground…beyond character assassination, our country will suffer even more from our energies being spent in creating a war zone in which nothing will ever get done.
There has to be a middle ground. We can’t be a half-nation or two nations in constant and ugly opposition. Otherwise we’re doomed to keep enduring more of the same. This election has been based much more upon suspicion, innuendo, and hysteria than upon cool reason, facts, and realistic goals. The stalemate is going to cost us a lot, if we’re not more level-headed and prudent. I still believe that our worst enemy is our love of self-righteous indignation. Nothing gives a better rush…but it’s dangerously destructive and blinding. Already, $5 billion dollars has been spent on leading us toward one candidate or the other.
I just read again George Orwell’s 1984 (published in 1949). Mind control isn’t just a myth, and it scares me that so many are so gullible to believe either candidate is without flaw that the zeal to elect one or the other is of religious intensity. Neither one deserves worship. They both have flaws, and we need to sift through them realistically and dispassionately.
God, I’m tired of all this! JB
Many would agree that the current political election campaign has been, at best, a back-biting, mean-spirited, divisive and hopelessly duplicitous experience for most of us who tend to take elections at all seriously. There have been other vicious election campaigns in our relatively brief history as a nation, including the one for Abraham Lincoln, who was vilified and threatened with assassination even before he was elected President.
The same kind of hateful chasm exists now between the two major parties in which most voters I know personally are totally and emphatically for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. No one is on the fence, because there is no middle ground. Almost everyone with whom I’ve talked on the subject grimaces at the mere mention of the opposing candidate, because the feeding machines of propaganda on both sides are prodigious and prolific in their churning out material that renders anything resembling the truth to be something from some galaxy far, far away. Fox News (Faux News) is, for me, the worst source of “information” in its cranking out one tabloid feature after another in a predictable plethora of rage-inducing silliness to keep anyone’s crazy uncle amused for hours on end.
The media, of course, know their audiences and, like puppeteers, they can manipulate their viewers by stirring up their righteous indignation to fever pitch over any claims by the “opposition.” This phenomenon has produced a laser-like devotion and loyalty on both sides that will allow not even a glimmer of light to enter from the other candidate. The process has become more like a sports event for a championship game than for making our country a better place, where comparing and sharing ideas can actually occur.
Minds have been made up and unlikely at this juncture to change much, if at all. Ice doesn’t melt often in an emotionally and intellectually Arctic climate, where everything has become rock-hard in terms of viewpoints and personal prejudices. Nothing can hide The Trumpster’s racism, misogyny, egomania, ignorance of world affairs and government procedures, his temper tantrums, his tendency to bully others, and his embarrassingly unsheathed vulgarity, all traits that may appear amusing for a moment to some after too many beers but which on the world stage could damage our already waning national prestige.
A recurring fantasy I’ve been having over the past few weeks involves a revelation and game-changer of monumental proportions before Election Day even arrives…when Donald Trump steps up to the podium while on national television (world-wide telecast) and before a boisterous crowd says, “Ladies and gentlemen. After much soul-searching, I want to share with you all something that has been on my mind since last spring. I’m going to step out of the race for the presidency as of today (pause due to the agitation of the audience). Please let me finish before you burst some blood vessels in surprise or anger. My leaving the race isn’t because I believe Crooked Hillary will do a better job than I thought I could do, but rather that my experiment has come to its end.
That experiment has been one testing America’s confusion, gullibility, and ignorance, an America which I was able to convince was in crisis mode and that I was able to persuade to join a dark side of hatred, sexism, suspicion, and fear not known since the days of Italian Fascism under Benito Mussolini, whom I admire very much. As you know, I’ve always seen myself as a winner, and I still do. The game is simply over, and I have won again in my having been able to hoodwink half the nation into accepting catch-phrases as truths, and morally degrading slogans as healing. It’s been a tremendous awakening for me, as I hope it will have been for you whose level of skepticism has been that of backward children, hungry to believe any nonsense that sounds good to them at the moment. My shady reluctance to share my tax returns and official medical records should have been a signal, but you all ate up everything I said, no matter how vile, to the point where I could actually do no wrong. Maybe that’s because when you were kids, your only real authority figure was an unprincipled loud-mouth braggart and pompous windbag, which is exactly what I am, folks, in case you hadn’t noticed. What a terrific revelation this should be for you all. It might even make America great again. Maybe in the future, you’ll be more careful about who your idols and political leaders are. As for me, I’m off to my villa in Aruba, where I intend to enjoy a life away from politics.” JB
Over the past year, like most of my relatives, friends, and acquaintances, I’ve been observing the political landscape in our nation, and its descent into a dystopian battle between two sets of what we used to call “ideals.” It has seemed thus far like being enveloped by some impossible Orwellian tale of societal and psychological shackles from every direction.
The key word for me here is “psychological,” because so little of what we have been observing in this Machiavellian campaign has any basis in the reality of so many American families. The one-upmanship war has reached a point of no return that makes Richard III look like Mr. Rogers.
I understand the rage felt by many Americans who feel cheated out of their fair shares of The American Dream. The symbols of material success in The United States are the fat cats at the top of the system, a system that seems to continue without threat from the bottom feeders who keep them afloat. It’s the kind of anger that opens the gates of revolution, and it’s why The Tea Party movement was born. Such fury always needs a scapegoat. The abstract image of government itself provides one, of course, but actual names make better ones for those who need targets for their disappointment and seething rage. The President himself has become a Wicker Man on which to burn enormous amounts of public exasperation through mountains of tabloid nonsense that, as Roger Ailes has said, if repeated enough times, people will believe without question.
Both the presidential candidates themselves are “fat cats” in terms of material wealth, though Trump’s being one doesn’t seem to matter to his devoted worshipers. The Trumpster’s not giving a damn about protocol and his thumbing his nose at common courtesy and tradition give his fans a vicarious sense of power against a government they feel is responsible for their own discontent. One of the catch-phrases used to defend Mr. Trump’s candid, irreverent style is that “He speaks his mind.” Common sense tells me that this is not enough for someone to become President, especially when I think of an old friend of mine now in a nursing home, where he says whatever pops into his addled brain at any given moment, entertaining the staff there with his unfiltered comments that make the aides chuckle and shake their heads at every outrageous assertion he utters. Yes, he does “speak his mind,” but I don’t want to see him in The White House as leader of the western world.
One of my other friends sees this election as a terrible choice between Emperor Nero and Lady Macbeth. No president in our history has had a pristine record of not occasionally robbing Peter to pay Paul through decisions that cause disagreement from one group or another. That’s part of what politics is. Such tough decision making should be put on the same ground for both men and women.
For me, all the actual political issues aside (which for many Americans seem of only secondary importance anyway), as I stand back to see our political climate from afar, like a report on The Weather Channel, I have a different take, which may be closer to the middle of things (wherever that may lie), which is certainly hard to find in the media, except perhaps on PBS, because TV coverage on Fox News or MSNBC seems to bang me over the head with black and white visions of whatever they see as “the simple truth.” I’m not sure there is always a simple truth, but I’m terrified occasionally by views of some of my friends and relatives based upon stilted, undocumented sources that make The National Enquirer look like the New York Times or The Washington Post (which aren’t infallible either).
Hillary Clinton is certainly not “perfect” either, but I have seen her unfairly reviled over and over again (often by people who are most vocal about calling themselves “Christians”) as no man has ever been. The most recent news concerning Donald Trump’s comments about women brought to me a revelation, not about him but about his voter base. I believe that in America we still have at least a subliminal level of misogyny more illogical and intense than any other places outside The Middle East. Our Norman Rockwell ideals of women remaining in the kitchen and at home as domestic servants (or the code word “goddesses”) have been disturbed over the past sixty years, and I believe strongly that many Americans (women included) are frightened by such change (the supreme manifestation of which would be a female as Commander in Chief) and would gladly express their devotion to that older America with the albeit inappropriate and ironic dictum of “Women have become too big for their own britches.”
For some men this may represent a difficult power struggle, and for some women it may symbolize greater responsibility and competition. Either way, they have made Hillary Clinton a magnate for a level of loathing not seen since Salome or Messalina. The irrational barbs of this campaign against Clinton would certainly have a different response, were they directed at Mr. Trump, barbs which according to his own words and to the actions of his most ardent followers, would have no effect. The defenses, by his wide-eyed worshipers, of his comments from twelve years ago say it all. In their eyes, he can do no wrong, while Hillary can do no right. This is more emotional than rational, but many people can’t step back far enough to see it with any cool-headed clarity. They’ve made up their minds and don’t wish those minds to be cluttered with anything except praise for The Trumpster. This glaring partiality is probably true for folks from both political parties.
The intelligence and cool reserve we have often associated with masculine traits in governmental position have become blurred in this election process, leaving many men and women flummoxed, angry, or frightened. For them, a strong, capable woman is good in the kitchen but not in The White House. However, a puerile, lunatic flashing the finger at the establishment (and at people in general) is all right. Where have we gone wrong? JB
Life in my Pompano Beach condo has been enjoyable the past few years that I have been a Colorado/Florida snowbird, and now that the Colorado house has been sold and we’ve purchased a new one in Oakland Park, Florida, we’ll be keeping the condo but renting it, completely furnished, for extra income until old age (which could come any moment) requires us to move back to it, since everything here is done for us. The move to the house will be in another month or so, but in the meantime, I continue to enjoy watching (with binoculars) the golfers on the green across the little lake outside my sun room. Part of that entertaining spectacle comes from the varied and sometimes eccentric attire of the players. Some of the more elderly males seem to prefer Bermuda shorts, narrow-brimmed, feathered, straw hats, and wing-tipped black shoes with dark knee socks. No cartoonist could hope to capture the side-splitting humor of this stereotypical clothing, but more entertaining still are the occasional tantrums of golfers, who throw their clubs, or become even more enraged falling into the lake while trying from their little golf carts to retrieve errant golf balls before disappearing among the banyans and palms . Honestly, it’s better than anything on cable, with the bonus that this voyeurism is absolutely free of charge.
Then there have been interesting and eccentric neighbors among whom was Molly, two doors down from me. In her late seventies, she was someone who spent most of her time watching TV soap operas and drinking prodigious amounts of wine, which rumor suggests she actually put instead of milk on her morning corn flakes. Molly had to give up the daily gallon glass jugs of wine she had been purchasing before last year. The sound of each empty bottle being hurled down the trash chute on our second floor sounded like a bomb going off in the steel receptacle on the first floor. Molly would often choose to dispose of those big glass jugs late at night, perhaps with the flimsy hope that the rest of us would never suspect that she was drinking enough to keep a hockey team permanently drunk. Nevertheless, more than once I peeked out my window blinds after these incidents, believing at first our complex had been invaded by terrorists, but then seeing Molly instead wearing her chenille robe and weaving back to her apartment, twice leaving behind one of her pink fuzzy slippers, like some impossible, aging and intoxicated Cinderella.
Another neighbor caught Molly discarding one of those massive jugs one night and awakening the whole building again. The neighbor’s only comment to her was, “Molly, if you ever toss one of those jugs down that chute again, I’m seriously going to hurt you.”
After that, Molly bought only Franzia boxed wines, ensuring (thanks to the angry neighbor) that the rest of us in the building would get an uninterrupted night of sleep without having to phone 911 to report an alleged, lunatic bomber.
There is a neighbor in the apartment on the first floor just under mine. Mrs. Felding is a widow from Canada who, like me, had been living here only during the winter. Her dog is a Boston Terrier with the nastiest disposition I have ever witnessed in a canine. Since Mrs. Felding uses a walker for her mobility, she is unable to walk her fifteen-pound dog, named Cujo (and for good reason). Cujo spits, snarls, barks and lunges at every living creature he encounters. Mrs. Felding’s son Warren, who lives elsewhere in Pompano Beach, visits daily to walk the dog at least three times, and my introduction to Warren included a menacing explanation about the terrifying Boston Terrier.
“Be sure never to come near Cujo! Only Mother and I can be around him without danger of bodily harm.”
“Thanks for the tip, jackass,” I thought. Then I asked myself what could possibly turn a household pet into such a psychotic, vicious creature that should under any normal circumstances be cuddled comfortably in a plaid, flannel dog bed surrounded by adoring family with ruddy-faced children before a blazing fire. It seems they can’t even buy any toys for Cujo, because he simply eats them, I mean completely! They have never found Warren’s bowling ball, which disappeared last year and sends my imagination reeling.
Everyone else in the building is aware of Cujo and his violent nature. Window blinds can often be seen cracking open before residents venture outside, as though they need to make sure Cujo is nowhere in sight first. At times it appears that this fifteen-pound dog is holding our building hostage and that the world’s fear of Pit Bulls is entirely misplaced, when indeed, all the Pit Bulls I’ve met have been sweet-natured, playful dogs, totally unlike the unfair and inaccurate stereotype created because a few morons have bred them for fighting. As a dog lover, I feel awful that in rare cases like that of Cujo the Boston Terrorist, the dog cannot be peacefully and lovingly approached. Cujo has made me perhaps unnecessarily wary around new dogs for the first time in my life. In any case, maybe I can blame his unsociable behavior on a Napoleon Complex. I mean, have you ever met a mean St. Bernard or Great Dane? JB
We live in a nation that has a terrible phobia of aging. Our youth-centered values saturate the media on everything from cars to clothing and entertainment. Since the 1920′s, “the age of gin and flappers,” we have increasingly shunned the idea of growing old, even if gracefully, and the result is that youth and their aged counterparts have become more separated than ever before.
In centuries before the 20th, young people mingled more with their elders, because often grandparents ended up living with their children, so that the household was a blend of generations. Also, travel was quite a different challenge in that riding a horse or taking a carriage was not usually a spur of the moment decision. Entertainment was at home, whenever there was leisure time. Music, games, and conversation were much more multi-generational, out of necessity. Nowadays, teenagers seem desperate to escape their homes to be anywhere but with their older family members. Though there has always been the phenomenon of youth seeking its own identity through distancing itself from elders during teen years, that separation was not as pronounced until the 20th Century. It has now become almost a chasm.
Perhaps behind our terror of growing “old” is a fear of death itself, which in our time seems, to many, more of a finality than in previous centuries, when an afterlife was more of a reality in general belief than in modern times. Today our associations with all things “chic” are connected in some way with the beauty, energy, and health of being young. Too few images of contented elders are shown in the media. We tend to see being aged as the end of a journey instead of a journey in itself, one that can provide time, not just for rest, but for further exploration on one’s own terms and at one’s own pace.
I resent ads that speak of getting rid of gray hair as though it’s some kind of cancer that will prevent participation in the modern world and any kind of happiness or respect by others. People with gray hair are not lepers. This morning I read about studies being done in England and Germany toward a “cure” for gray hair. Cure? Growing old is not a disease, but the article suggested that it was, and that not having gray hair would bring back a flaming youth and happiness that would otherwise not be possible. What rubbish! Sexiness is wonderful in its place, but so are things like experience, character, and wisdom, all of which gray hair can represent. And who says that someone with silver hair can’t be sexy anyway?
Almost all the people I know personally, who have gray or white hair are comfortable, stable friends, who have taken care of themselves and are enjoying their golden years. I include myself among those who are enjoying their “declining” years, still in excellent health, and with goals and projects that keep their creativity and joy of being alive realities. My hair is silver and on its way to being snow white eventually. That fact will never keep me up nights worrying that something has been lost. In fact, I know that much has been gained. JB
Occasionally I have the impression that time stops, mostly from wishful thinking that a moment of joy or beauty linger just a little while longer. I suppose time can be recaptured in old photographs, hand-written letters, music, the sound of an old friend’s voice over the telephone, the patter of rain, the aroma of freshly baked pumpkin pie, or the long-forgotten taste of a candy from childhood. Our senses organize and store all of those stimuli better than any computer or card catalog ever could. The fragrance of Shalimar Perfume brings back the vivid memory of my maternal grandmother, and Irish pipe tobacco summons happy recollections of Grandpa Starks grinning beneath a halo of its smoke.
Sadly, I see too many people attached to electronic devices that provide visual and audio cues that mesmerize them into forgetting physical realities and natural beauty all around them. A painful irony to me is seeing someone engrossed in a portable video game while sitting in a public park filled with the beauty and aroma of flowers, water dancing in fountains while the player is too captivated looking for Pokemon to be much enthralled by the plethora of sensory stimuli all around him (or her).
My suspicions about and criticisms of technology are certainly not new. Many people were frightened or appalled by early steam engines, of electric light bulbs, automobiles, and radios. Each stage of our love affair with technology seems to separate us a bit further from nature. As the Earth’s un-synthetic wonders shrink little by little in man’s preoccupation with ever increasing speed and what he sees as convenience, even at the cost of any future environment in which we will all have to live. Our infatuation in accelerating production and consumption has even invaded our food in a blind or greedy effort to amplify amounts while sacrificing nutrition. Profit has too often taken precedence over health benefits and caution for the future of our planet (the only one we have).
I sometimes wonder what the world will be like (if it still exists) millennia from now. Sensitive and intelligent science fiction writers, like H.G Wells, Aldous Huxley, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and William Gibson, have conjured images of a desensitized planet of humans, who have become androids. Such things are not difficult now to imagine in a time when we see how cellphones and laptops disconnect many families, even at mealtime, and how so many individuals, present at accidents involving human injury, prioritize using their cellphones to take “selfies” instead of helping the victims, even by calling for help immediately. Such scenes make me afraid about what we as a species may become by even just a thousand years from now.
I wonder if technology is doing anything for our levels of patience, tolerance, or compassion, especially since that technology bombards us with images of suffering all over the world so that we shut down after a while and become jaded or immune to the pain of others. How much more like cyborgs will we have become, and is there anything we can or should be doing now to ensure that we don’t continue our journey as a species that becomes increasingly more insensitive in our continuing deification of electronic devices for personal pleasure and convenience?
What are we leaving out that might provide a balance between ease and efficiency for individuals and a more collective awareness for the common good? I’m not sure the answers can be found on Google or on my cellphone, where even texting has become the newest and most omnipresent form of public rudeness to which we are becoming frighteningly accustomed in a world where taking a momentous “selfie” is, for many, more important than saving someone else’s life. If such fears make me a human anachronism, then so bit. I’ve a strong feeling that I’m not really alone in my apprehensions about where our species could be headed if we’re not more vigilant JB
Electronic devices have brought convenience, but they have also elevated the need for constant entertainment to a dizzying height for our kids (and for adults as well). Patience and perseverance have suffered terribly as a result and pave the way for our children to expect every moment to be a circus of amusement. The sad part comes when they begin their lives in school or in the work force and see that making a living and raising a family can’t be Disney World every second. The habit of having someone or something to entertain us constantly seems OK during infancy and pre-school, though ingenuity suffers if the habit continues into school years and we become dependent upon outside sources to give us diversion on demand. We seem to be turning into a society in which almost everything is done for us every minute of the day and night. Our lives have become wireless in more ways than one. This is true, not only for kids.
There is such a thing as overstimulation and forgetting that learning sometimes begins with internal innovation that occasionally includes boredom and the need to escape it. Hard work brings rewards that can’t always be cushioned by synthetic stimuli just for the sake of diversion. Maybe that’s why students have a harder time now staying in focus. What happens when or if they become actual adults? I agree with chores and other responsibilities that can produce a level of pride in achievement through work and following through with something for more than a few seconds. Maybe we all need to learn that we can’t push a button for everything we want. We’ve become lazy and spoiled in that way, not to mention impatient. Self-reflection has become something we do through “selfies” instead of through meditation. Many of us can’t stand silence or the absence of a screen in front of us flashing something amusing or otherwise engaging.
Our culture has lost something in our shrinking collective sense of forbearance in having to do things sometimes that are not “fun.” We expect every problem to be solved by something that requires batteries. It’s becoming a Brave New World that reminds me of the one described by Aldous Huxley in his novel from 1931. Instead of Soma Tablets, we now have iPhones and myriad other toys that seem at times to be turning us into automatons. JB
I’m continually fascinated to the point of being a bit frightened by the adulation received by Donald Trump. Explanations and theories for The Trumpster’s behavior seem to be flying around us like insects in a tropical jungle, and I’ve remained awake nights trying to make sense of his being an idol to masses of people who seem honestly to believe the man can do no wrong.
One possible endearment shared by Trump’s worshipers is a disgust and even rage at the seemingly inert functioning of our government for such a long time. Of course, Trump devotees don’t see Republican obstructionism as a reason for our nation’s political constipation. Animosity, disgust, and a terrible level of indignation require a more singular scapegoat so that a lone symbol can be the target of mutant vitriol. What better choice than President Obama himself? I mean, the birth certificate vendetta failed, so why not use the President as kindling for a hostility that is certainly intense but otherwise too broad to focus on the abstraction of government itself? That kind of disgust needs a proper noun in the form of an individual.
The result is that conservative and liberal views have become black and white (no racial reference intended here), no gray areas or subtle blends to be seen, probably because they’re too difficult to process and understand. Maybe the ecstasy of a good adrenalin rush of outrage requires all or nothing, as in the elation of a laser focused lynch mob or the bliss of townspeople carrying their torches to burn down Dr. Frankenstein’s castle. Moderation and reason are so boring and have little or nothing to do with that level of angst.
In no other political campaign I can remember in my life has there been such absolute division, as in the clash between Soviet versus American ideals of the 1950’s. Nothing either party says seems to have any effect upon the opposition, except to drive it further into a deeper sense that a life and death duel is in progress. No news item in between or from either end of the political spectrum (i.e. Fox News versus MSNBC) affects voters through facts or historical precedent, while both sides continue to see their individual candidate (emperor or empress) wearing invisible garments without being able to admit there is anything wrong, in fear of having to concede there may actually be some middle ground. People on both sides seem predisposed in their choices, as though those choices were innate, which makes the many millions of dollars being spent on public persuasion a terrible waste.
Mr. Trump has channeled public rage like a fundamentalist preacher, while amazingly maintaining an almost lovable persona, like an aged and dotty uncle with dementia, saying crazy, disconnected things in the nursing home while the family smiles and winks at his speaking his wandering mind and outrageous assertions about anything that pops into his blithering consciousness. The difference is that Donald Trump’s appalling and often reprehensible off-the-cuff statements on the world stage are quite a different matter with very different consequences for us all. JB
