Indiana Oh Indiana

Colorful buildings in Havana.

No Republican candidate for the presidency (not even The Trumpster) can raise my adrenalin and ire faster and more effectively than Ted Cruz. I don’t think there is an iota of sincerity in him, but he continues to twist issues enough to render himself a proverbial martyr in the political scheme of things, and of course, President Obama is generally the evil wizard at the castle door, ready to destroy Ted’s fantasy land of the 1950’s (assuming it ever really existed in the first place).

On Saturday Cruz spoke at a campaign rally in Provo, Utah, slamming President Obama’s trip to Cuba on Sunday, claiming that a dangerous message was being sent to “political prisoners languishing in dungeons across the island.” Cruz went on to suggest that the Obamas would be rubbing elbows with only the elite rulers of the oppressed land. Though Cruz has not previously been very open about his Cuban heritage, he is suddenly telling the press about his Cuban immigrant father, “who was beaten and tortured during Batista’s regime” and the President’s visit would send only a message of approval to the Communist rulers who are still using oppression to deny basic human freedoms.

Most of What Cruz said had little, if anything, to do with the President’s purpose, which is long term in bringing about some level of positive change for the Cuban people. What Cruz forgot in his ridiculous editing of Obama’s visit is that it isn’t really about Raul Castro, his brother Fidel, or about Batista, or any other dictator with no regard for humanity or individual rights. It is, however, ultimately about the Cuban people, about victims, reform, and compassion. Did Cruz expect the President to arrive with six-shooters ready for a gunfight at some corral?

This is a slow process, Mr. Cruz, one that has been tossed aside for the past fifty years, one that will require patience, diplomacy, and intelligence, all of which President Obama has in abundance. Get your story straight and stop editing everything the President does in order to make yourself look like some political savant or persecuted angel, neither of which you can ever be. Work instead on telling us something constructive you plan to do in order to make America and the world a better place. If you know so much about present conditions in Cuba, why aren’t you there with your people to help bring about change, and if you were to become President, what would YOU do? Please remember that snubbing our noses at the dictators is also a way of ignoring their people, people who need to be brought into the 21^st Century, not by bombs and force, but with diplomacy of the most cunning kind.   JB

I usually don’t let anger get hold of me when it comes to politics, but there has been an accumulation of outrage going back for some months over the obstructionist tactics of the Republican Senate.

The utter equivocation offered today by Mitch McConnel, Majority Leader of the senate, absolutely squeaked of a desperate attempt to make the blocking of Merrick Garland seem non-partisan. McConnel was right about one thing. The refusal to consider Garland for the Supreme Court had nothing to do with the man, at least not THAT man. It had everything to do with President Obama, whom the reactionary Republicans revile beyond all reason. Embarrassed again and again by the President’s cunning and his political triumphs, Mr. McConnel and his cronies saw yet another opportunity to upend whatever Obama wanted to accomplish.

Predictably, there is no plan except to shut down in terms of letting inaction prevail as it has so often in Congress during this administration. Such work could be accomplished by people who are comatose or have padlocks on their brains, but because they actually still walk and make disapproving grunting sounds, they remind me more of zombies, who could have achieved just as much for America via the Senate during the past eight years.

McConnel criticized the President for staging his choice as a political ploy. Honestly? I had to hear the silly speech three times before I was able to believe that anyone would actually take such a ridiculously transparent commentary seriously instead of the duplicitous mask it was.

I’m weary of McConnel and his monumentally and politically constipated followers doing nothing for the nation except impeding whatever the President is trying to do for the good of all citizens, not just a small group of disgruntled senators who are bitter about Obama’s successes. The denial isn’t about Garland. It’s about the chance to put a knife in the back of the President in an easy way while calling it something else.

All the Republican Senate has to do is nothing, which is what they’re so accustomed to be doing. It’s another case of “not backing down” being a passive refusal to create some level of harmony and needed action. It’s personal. It’s rude, and it’s bad sportsmanship of the worst kind, especially in light of the two-faced excuses offered to the press today by the majority leader.

The pawn in this is Merrick Garland himself, an eminently qualified and politically moderate choice for a seat in the Supreme Court. I believe that accusing the President of political shenanigans is once again the pot calling the kettle black (no pun intended). Sometimes I feel like Jimmy Stewart in the film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, a man too idealistic, expecting the Washington political machine to serve the people instead of catering to a small group of jaded, out-of-touch codgers who believe the government was designed to serve them personally and exclusively.

Frank Capra is turning over in his grave.   JB

All candidates become media creations…one way or another, through a combination of vitriol and sentimental hogwash, eventual belief in any of it depending upon the viewer’s predisposed political views. As much money and work go into such propaganda as in Oscar-winning films. With the right material arranged cleverly, Joseph Stalin became a media god to his own people. I’m cautious about any such blurbs of anyone running for public office.

I’d rather see a combination of good and bad things in making up my mind, based primarily upon facts and my own intelligence to tell the difference between truth and media hype. I’m just as suspicious of those little films about Hillary, Bernie, and all the other prospects as I am about The Trumpster. Candidates who are reviled by the opposition appear also in misleading clips edited almost to death in order to make those folks appear villainous (i.e. President Obama via Fox News). The media cannot just influence our political views. The media can create them, so I take all such TV coverage, positive AND negative, with a grain of salt, which usually puts me somewhere in the middle between extreme conservatives and wacko liberals.

This is another reason that listening to only one television network for one’s political views is probably dangerously skewed. On television the two extremes are Fox News (hyper-conservative) and MSNBC (hyper-liberal). Issues are tweaked on both, though I gravitate toward the latter, as I believe its fact-checking is rigorous most of the time, and I’m not sure that Fox News even knows what fact-checking is.

We sometimes think of “propaganda” as being used only in third-world countries or in regimes like that of Mao Zedong, Hitler, Mussolini, etc., tweaked truths shifted to recreate, enhance, or hide a leader’s image, but the fact is we still use the media to cajole, convince, persuade or convert especially those who may still be on the fence about their affiliations.

A brief but perhaps expensive film placed in the right time slot with the right images, narrative and music can create loyalty or loathing, depending upon the viewers intellectual and emotional inclinations. Such media tactics can reaffirm one’s already established views or sometimes alter them, but it’s one of the reasons campaigning is so exorbitantly expensive in America, though there generally has to be some level of charisma in a politician’s profile to make even the most expensive commercial have any effect. Jeb Bush spent an enormous amount of money (more than any other candidate) on his campaign but didn’t have the draw in terms of his own personal charisma to build much of a bonfire and ended with hardly a candle flame to illuminate whatever political prowess he had.

Finally it’s up to every voter to do his homework about anyone with whom he or she is politically smitten. It’s important to see various views from various news sources in order to avoid the all too comfortable state of being rendered another of the many marionettes voting for an image instead of a living, breathing person.   JB

Yesterday morning I took my dog Dudley to Petco for grooming. Because we were a few minutes early, I decided to wander with the Dudmeister through the store and look at dog toys. Indoors when I wear my sunglasses on top of my head, I look like an extraterrestrial from a bad B movie in the 1950’s, so I decided this time to keep them in their position over my eyes as Dudley, still on his leash, continued walking ahead of me. Then I heard a young woman’s voice asking, “Excuse me, sir, but are you blind?”

Believing there was a blind man nearby, I tightened my hold slightly on the leash in anticipation of Dudley’s possible reaction to another dog in the vicinity. Then I was surprised, turning around, to see the woman who had posed the question, looking at Dudley and me. She and her male companion were both examining me in the most sympathetic way, as though I were a lost puppy or an injured toddler. Feeling my face turning red, I lowered my sunglasses to gaze over them at the couple, saying to them, “No, I am NOT blind,” which brought to the woman’s face a look of both relief and embarrassment.

“We wanted to pet your beautiful dog,” she said, “and it looked as if he was leading you. What breed is he?”

“He’s a West Highland White Terrier,” I answered. “The breed isn’t used as guide dogs. Those are usually German Shepherds or Labs.”

“Well he’s adorable,” She said. I was tempted to say, “Well, I guess he fooled YOU.” But I held back and responded instead with, “You’re welcome to pet him. He loves people.”

Then she and her companion knelt to greet Duds, who was enthusiastic over their attention.

“He’s a handsome dog,” said the man.

“He’ll be much handsomer after his grooming today,” I answered. “Right now he looks a bit like a dust mop without a stick.”

“Thank you,” said the woman, as she and the young man continued walking through the aisle of dog toys.

The experience gave me pause (paws?) to consider for the first time how I might appear in public with my slight limp from neuropathy in my right leg, my dog on his leash, seeming to be leading a man with gray hair wearing dark glasses indoors.

My perspective changed irretrievably, regarding my age, but I must remember also the dependable glint of humor from such experiences as they become more frequent with the years. I guess I’d much rather age while smiling than age through embarrassment and fear.   JB

Teenage rebellion is nothing new. During my seventy years I’ve seen and perpetrated jabs at the establishment and was certainly witness to a long festival of revolts from criticism of the war in Vietnam to anger over having the school gymnasium as the venue for the senior prom. When a teen does something deliberately off the beaten path in a vocal or visible way, it’s often because he or she is making a statement of malaise about existing conditions or to establish his or her own identity, which often means just copying other teens.

 Such displays or demonstrations of revolt have generally been done through music and fashion from punk rock to miniskirts and Mohawk haircuts. Rock and roll of the 1950’s began a wave of new identity that made bebop of the 1940’s and jazz from the flapper 1920’s look tame, but music has been tweaking itself ever since Bill Haley and Elvis in order to create a subculture of the young that continues to push boundaries to raise eyebrows and scream, “I’m here!”

One of the forms of rebellion in clothing of recent years for teens is sagging jeans that show undershorts, because the pants waist is worn so low that it makes the wearer look either like a troglodyte with stunted legs or an adult donning a loaded diaper. The origin of this “fashion” statement seems to have been gang-related and encouraged by some forms of Hip Hop and Gangster Rap, whose origins were also very anti-establishment.

Sagging pants are just another in a series of nudges that are meant to push the buttons of adults. Those nudges go back to things like DA (duck ass) haircuts of the 1950’s and newer statements like nose rings, steel tongue inserts, eyebrow pins, etc. The more disgusted we adults are, the greater success the teen statement to repulse us. Save photos of them though for when those kids actually grow up (assuming they ever will). Parents will have loads of blackmail material for years to come. If kids think that vomit-covered tee shirts will get a negative reaction from adults, those tees will become a sensation and fly off the shelves of clothing stores overnight. It’s all about getting a reaction, and I imagine such behavior goes back in history many centuries. Laughing at them is probably more effective than having painful grimaces on our faces. Everything goes back to achieving an identity, even if it’s a moronic one.

Someday we might look back at sagging pants with nostalgia after kids come up with other stuff that is yet more ridiculous and offensive. The bottom line on this for me is parents themselves, the ones who give carte blanche to their kids, sending a message that either the parents don’t care, or that the kids are in charge and may look as stupid as they wish. Those boundaries for many parents have been let go so that there is no longer any border or authority. Thus, a kid’s model for behavior becomes that of his dumb friends, who also have oblivious parental guidance. So it goes.

One wonders what possibly dangerous and irreversible fashion statements may lie just around the corner. Are there any places on the human body where metal inserts haven’t been embedded, or any places that haven’t been tattooed? It may be sad eventually to see kids of today when they’re in their 70’s and 80’s, withered flesh held together by metal pins, barbs, and rings that, on the bright side, will at least render electrical storms more exciting. Stay tuned.   JB

Science and religion are like two different countries that one can visit separately but not both at the same time. My thoughts today on religion would probably have had me burned at the stake in former times and today as well if that practice were still legal, which some folks in our nation would cheer if it did return.

I was raised by two loving parents who attended rather a fundamentalist church in Indiana, a church that was all white with doctrines so narrow and specific that they defined and demanded absolutely precise rules be obeyed regarding baptism, communion, tithing, and scriptural interpretation by the pastor only, which gave the congregants a comfortable, if questionable, sense of direction. I attended that church through high school, battling with my parents and the minister over their literal views on the Bible, the Old Testament of which was, to me, a wonderland of violence, egomania, intense cruelty, and blind obedience that made me gasp in bewilderment at the reverence people showed it.

When I escaped to college, I discovered a wider view of religious experience through friends who were Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, Jewish, Muslim, Lutheran, and Buddhist. A door was opened to let in fresh air about what faith could mean through more sensitive, thoughtful, and tolerant views of whatever God might signify. It wasn’t that we all agreed, but we agreed to disagree and to find whatever tenets could be shared in the most universal ways. I no longer felt like a recalcitrant child being sent to his room for defying the powers that be.

My best experience with “formal” religion was with The Disciples of Christ, a much more liberal protestant faith begun in Scotland by Thomas Campbell in the early 19^th Century. I joined the congregation near our college campus in 1964 and stayed with other Disciples congregations until I moved to Colorado in early January of 2008. I was an active member, serving on countless committees, being moderator (church board chair), deacon, and elder, as well as chair of the Pulpit Committee and Pastoral Relations Committee. I even wrote and gave sermons from time to time when the pastors were away. I felt at home with those people of faith, who allowed and encouraged a more analytical approach to religion (Is that an oxymoron?) and the search for individual views of faith, which for me became at once broader, yet more personal.

As I approach my 70^th year in this world, my views have become more and more general, based upon common sense, science, and history itself, including my own history. I honestly don’t know if there was a resurrection or if there will be a Rapture, as many Christians believe so literally and staunchly. Such considerations to me are more in the realm of magic than practical thought. I’m actually the same person with or without them. I’m concerned with my time in this world and using that time to be the best person I can be, without the promise of a reward of some pie in the sky. I have not observed that religions of the world have made us treat each other any better. In fact, I have noticed that the history of world religion and its influences have scarred humanity with intolerance, hideous violence, and divisiveness on a scale without all of which we might have done a bit better, but certainly no worse.

The intolerance, exclusivity, and actual meanness of spirit I observe in so much religious fervor today make it too easy for me to question its value, except for creating groups that huddle together perhaps in delusional pockets of US against THEM factions that seem finally not to have brought us any closer to world peace and brotherhood. Arguments over religious dogma seem such a horrific waste of time and energy, not to mention the barriers turning self-righteous groups to hatred, fear, and weapons of mass destruction, too often in the names of their gods. I will certainly never understand the ardor and even ire with which so many human beings insist upon “saving” others through conversion. Saving them from what?

Maybe I’m too rational and will have to call myself an agnostic, since I am apparently no longer capable of declaring  belief in things of which I’m not at all sure anymore. No one has come back from the grave (except in legend or religious doctrine) to speak of another life after death. I simply don’t know, but I don’t believe not knowing should be considered a crime either. Believing and wanting to believe are not the same thing any more than wondering and knowing are the same thing. My morality is based upon how I treat my fellow beings and the planet which I inhabit. Those are realities I can observe and influence daily. They are not speculative but are physical realities. Postponed rewards are abstractions to me that some religions dangle before us, sometimes based more upon pointless suffering and personal denial than upon actual good deeds and practical help given to our fellow creatures. I do believe in the important immediacy of charitable acts encouraged by some religions, but I don’t expect a halo or wings after I die as rewards for my kindness. Good will is its own reward. Jumping through doctrinal hoops won’t enhance that reward or be a substitute for it. We are in this world together. All of us. Our purpose includes taking care of each other and nurturing the planet itself. Too much religion today has forgotten these things in favor of some kind of glory in being “right.”

Despite my being a doubting Thomas, I still believe in a very broad vision of God. I cannot and do not wish to nail his image (no pun intended) or to specify what or where He is. I don’t know how or why creation was accomplished, but I can put a name to it by calling it God. Scientists know much more than I do about origins of solar systems and life, but I would wager that when it comes to God or life after death, theologians don’t know any more than I or anyone else does, for all their dazzling verbal acumen and millions of pages written about what is perhaps only a collective hunch, as Lily Tomlin might express it. My comfort zone should fit some level of reality itself (whatever that turns out to be), not reality and doctrine made to fit my comfort zone, which is what I see so often by people who cherry pick or choose, cafeteria-style what they want or need from their religious beliefs.

Strangely enough, I still pray for all those who are suffering and also for the healing of our planet. There may be a power we don’t yet understand but that exists in a large network kind of way among all human beings through some cosmic energy. I don’t know, but I call it God in any case. I don’t think prayers are like text messages to some awesome deity, but I do believe in some way that the universe and its physical laws are basically user-friendly, involving some level of karma, which is no stranger than believing about water being turned into wine, walking upon water, or the reality and significance of the empty tomb. As human beings, we must deal with supposition when it comes to the “maybe” of religion.

I know that I’m not alone in being skeptical about so much formal doctrine that so many other people seem to accept blithely and without question or doubt. My heart (not a very scientific source for much except pumping blood) tells me that the only sin in this world is deliberately hurting ourselves or others. This should be no less valid than a friend’s heart telling him that there is a holy trinity or a Rapture on its way. I suppose if I lived my life based just upon what I can know factually, there would be no literature, poetry, music, or art that would mean much to me. There might be only books of chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Then we would be automatons and not concern ourselves with the mystery of remote and essentially unknowable things, the last of which perhaps really is God.   JB

It is so difficult to live in the moment. More and more we seem to be bombarded by conflicting stimuli that are unwarranted and often not wanted. All around us are the distractions of traffic when we are driving, drug commercials when we watch television, the interruptions of phone calls and text messages, and extraneous noise so constant that we become almost numb to its presence.

Of course, some people are so accustomed to constant “noise” that they cannot do without it, as though it were some kind of heartbeat without which life would lose all meaning. The illusion of being “connected” to other people via cellphones and texting constantly is a symptom of our growing addiction to ever more stimulation resulting in a terrible unexpressed fear of quiet moments of seeming inactivity, when perhaps we may feel entombed and alone. Also, because we are assaulted as never before by frequent images on television of slaughter or its aftermath from terrorist attacks and occurrences of domestic killing, we cannot always bear the silence of looking inward to process such horrors. Ultimately we are afraid of death itself, the final silence that comes to us all.

Many of us are healed by those moments in nature when we feel part of creation itself. There is something about the special silence in nature, in sounds of breaking ocean waves, the buzzing of bees, the whisper of a breeze, the flutter of birds’ wings, the music of their songs, the crunch underfoot of autumn leaves, or the color and fragrance of flowers that gives us humans a different perspective on our place in the grander scheme of things, a scheme of which we are only a small part.

Because so many of us live in a world that is both loud and intrusive in so many ways and getting louder all the time, we need as individuals and in groups too those quiet times away from the hustle bustle of modern life. Retreat through meditation, communing with nature, expression of gratitude through prayer, and escape occasionally from electronics that can otherwise turn us into unfeeling automatons can, I believe, heal wounds of which we are not always even aware.

The “something else” which we have forgotten in contemporary life, because it does not have a button to push or knob to turn in order to activate it, is already inside us. It is a something that can be turned on only by, at least once in a while, turning off the machine-ridden world around us.   JB

America’s fascination with celebrity for its own sake has become, in recent years, not only something of a preoccupation but also what many may call an obsession.

During the 1960’s and 1970’s my paternal grandmother read with great zeal the tabloids, like The National Enquirer, which Grandma knew was only a gossip sheet filled with outrageous stories like, “Elvis Is Living in My Basement.” Other features included bizarre snippets like, “Woman Mistakes Glue stick for Deodorant: Can’t Take off Dress for Ten Days.” I’m not sure that many readers believed the stories were real “news,” but the entertainment value was not unlike that from Mad Magazine or Cracked for us kids. No one expected such reading to be on a level of The New York Times or The Washington Post.

Today’s entertainment industry and news about famous people seem to have merged into one massive and somewhat frightening glob of silliness that many people take seriously. There is an endless number of fan magazines, as well as television programs about people like the Kardashians, who are famous mostly for being famous. Fame for its own sake has become enough in our culture to merit not only attention but also some cultish form of adoration. In addition to more fan magazines and television programs with all their gossipy tidbits and ads, we now have Twitter, Facebook, and electronic social networks through cellphones and computers spreading tittle-tattle that would have given our great grandparents cardiac arrest.

At the gym yesterday, while on a treadmill, I was a captive audience watching on a large television screen a program called The Wendy Williams Show, which besides giving advice on such matters as dating, focuses on “news” about celebrities from television, sports, and film in the show’s segment called “Celebrity Fan Out.” Ms. Williams, a sumptuous diva with breasts the size of beach balls, sits, as though upon a throne, dispensing the latest tidings about the rich and famous, as the audience sits enraptured by often mundane details about what the celebs are up to. Cameras zoom in on faces in the crowd, faces that nod knowingly about the smallest trivia of the rich and powerful, even about the new way someone is parting his hair or how high a movie star’s heels are.

All this, at least for me, creates an almost creepy form of fake and unwarranted intimacy that leads one to believe that there are people who live vicariously through celebrities they have never even met and that knowing what kind of face soap a well-known (or infamous) national or international personality uses somehow elevates the fan’s life to a new level of quality or glamor. This is, of course, the basis for using celebrities to endorse almost everything the rest of us buy, from cars to toothpaste. In fact, I don’t really give a damn what kind of cough drops a famous quarterback uses or the brand of life insurance purchased by a celebrated singer, but the power of such advertising is often subliminal. It has nothing whatever to do with rational thinking. It is where fantasy and reality merge as they do for children, who demand a certain brand of breakfast cereal recommended by a favorite cartoon character. In that respect, most celebrities are part fantasy anyway, manufactured by publicity experts, the media, and by fans themselves. That fine line between what is real and what is imagined is hopelessly blurred for many gullible worshipers.

I sometimes wonder what, if any, repercussions there are for people whose thoughts hover almost incessantly over the remote, sometimes fantastic or mythical creatures of Hollywood and sports whom they will never even meet, while relationships with friends and family come second. It is unlikely that any real epiphany is in sight for those folks mesmerized by celebrity, mainly because, however impersonal and distant the artificially constructed influence of the rich and famous, that influence is big business.

JB

During any political campaign, especially one for the Presidency of the United States, there will inevitably be the need to reduce candidates to their bare essentials, that is to caricatures of their personalities with particular focus upon their weaknesses. The number of such drawings for each candidate at this time for the next elections is staggering, and I continue to be fascinated by each artist’s renderings in depictions that are distilled down to non-verbal likenesses of those in competition for the highest office in the land. I’ve been collecting such caricatures and will share my favorite ten here, in alphabetical order. I included two for Donald Trump, because I couldn’t decide which of the top two was my favorite. The reader may draw his or her own conclusions about which ones work best.   JB (That’s John Bolinger, not Jeb Bush)

Jeb Bush

Ben Carson

Chris Christie

Hillary Clinton

Ted Cruz

Rand Paul

Marco Rubio

Bernie Sanders

Donald Trump 1

Donald Trump 2 (Dairy Queen Donald)

There you have them, folks…the candidates for President of our country. Caricatures are made generally for the most prominent people in the news, people of huge importance for one reason or another. No one here was favored,  just exposed through the humor and occasional pathos of visual art.   JB

District of Columbia, United States of America.

I’ve never been particularly political, though in high school I did campaign for Louise Bryk with posters that beamed, “Every little breeze seems to whisper Louise for president of the senior class.” She lost the election.

I have found people to be generally more emotional than rational regarding sports and politics. There is something purely tribal about exclusive devotion to one team for baseball, basketball, football, soccer, or ice hockey or to someone as a candidate for President of the United States. I have friends whose loyalty to a particular team is so rabid that it becomes almost comic, at least to me, who doesn’t know one player from another as they compete for points in activities that are so remote and impersonal that it is like watching predatory behavior in some documentary about life at the bottom of the sea. I realize too that this makes me very abnormal, but I don’t know any of their names, and they don’t know or care about mine either. The phenomenon remains a mystery to me, but as I am entering the 70^th year of my life, it seems highly unlikely that any revelation is imminent.

I do experience increased levels of adrenalin from time to time over politics, mainly because there seems to be almost nothing rational about the political arena these days. Personal attacks and skewed information exchanged between candidates and political parties often have nothing to do with social issues or my own life. Listening to insults about a hairstyle or who stayed in the restroom too long serve only to distance me still further from the backbiting tactics of those vying for public office. I’ve discovered that as someone born and perpetually residing in the middle of our nation’s social fabric and despite my having voted in national and municipal elections since 1968, my individual life has not been much changed by any election in memory.

It has been said that it is our civic duty as citizens to vote in order to maintain a satisfactory status quo or to modify it. If an idiot is elected (and I can think of several state governors in this category), he or she will be ousted when a conscientious public bands together with enough common sense and outrage. Otherwise (and I know this is a jaded question), how much difference does it make nowadays who is elected to any office? The answer is that the more we become collectively complacent, the more ground will be gained, inch by inch, by the already enormously wealthy puppeteers, who pull many strings in government and in society at large and for whom greed for its own sake seems to be a sport in itself. Bernie Sanders, a man for whom issues are paramount, has helped me to realize this truth, despite wrangling by other candidates who have turned politics into a puerile shooting range of insults unworthy even of seventh graders. Those insults and personal attacks are meant to distract voters with the absurd, partly subliminal machismo with which Americans have been enamored in both sports and politics for generations.

We need to think carefully about the differences (if any) between our favorite teams winning football games and our political favorites winning  elections. Neither win is really personal for me, but the latter may have consequences well beyond a scoreboard or the rhetoric and other verbal shenanigans that are such annoying adjuncts of elections, especially on the national level.

Many voters have become enraged by the duplicity and sloth of Congress to the extent that those voters want nothing more than to distance themselves from anything even suggesting traditional politics and are more in favor of apolitical figures, who gain notice and popularity by thumbing their noses at the Washington establishment and anything related to our all too familiar political landscape of the past fifty years. My concern on that subject is that whoever becomes our next president will need to have a strong grasp of national politics and government with all the complexities of the Washington scene, for better or worse. That grasp can be accomplished by experience and razor-sharp intelligence, but the logic of electing someone who eschews political experience and knows little or nothing about the extremely complex machinations of government is flawed at best. The same “logic” might suggest that someone who has had a bad experience with a plumber, electrician, or carpenter should hire someone disconnected from such backgrounds and skills. Frankly, if my kitchen sink is leaking into the basement, I want someone who has specific experience to make repairs. In Washington I want a President who knows the ins and outs, along with the trickery and lies of politics in all its subtle chicanery, to lead my country, someone who will bring together a nation that has fragmented into too many personal agendas.

Several kinds of specific expertise and experience are necessary for this most difficult and thankless job on the planet. Avoiding those attributes in favor of a sentimental but honest greenhorn is the same level of thinking that would vote in someone who simply has an honest face and isn’t cagey enough to pull anything over on the nation. In that case why not elect Homer Simpson as President of the United States? His being a cartoon doesn’t seem to make him less qualified or more unreal than several of the current candidates.

I don’t want a puppet. I want a president. There must be a middle ground, where we find some level of cold, hard sanity instead of the flood of political snippets, half-information, innuendos, and ridiculous posturing that have become the shaky bulwark of this carnival of a presidential campaign.    JB