Turns Out, We Did Know, Then, What We Know Now...

It starts with a little test tube.

During a first season episode of the landmark drama, "The West Wing", some twenty years ago, now, a conversation takes place between C.J. Gregg, the White House Press Secretary and Josh Lyman, the deputy White House Chief of Staff.

Josh has been given an ID card that will give him access to an escape plan in the event of a nuclear attack and is struggling with the personal morality involved in realizing that, because of his rank in the executive branch pecking order, he has been designated for survival while many of his co-workers, his friends, even family actually have not. And those friends and family are almost sure to be sacrificed when, he, Josh, will be spared.

The conversation takes a poignant and profound turn when Josh offers this insight on how unprepared, even unaware, so many people are about how quickly life as they know it can be stunningly altered. Even ended.

".....It's not gonna be the red phone and nuclear bombs," Josh begins,   

"......It's gonna be this.... Smallpox has been gone for 50 years. No one has an acquired immunity. Flies through the air. You get it...you carry a ten-foot cloud around with you. One in three people die...

.... If 100 people in New York City got it, you'd have to encircle them with 100 million

vaccinated people to contain it. Do you know how many doses of smallpox vaccines exist

in the country? Seven.... 

.....If 100 people in New York City get it, there's gonna be a

global medical emergency that's gonna make HIV look like cold and flu season.....

....That's how it’s gonna be, a little test tube with a rubber cap that's deteriorating... A

guy steps out of Times Square Station. ... Smashes it on the sidewalk...Pshht...."

Witty punchline surfaced a few months ago and I find myself using it from time to time these days.

"remember....the first 15 minutes of every disaster movie is people rolling their eyes and clucking about how ridiculous the idea of the "impending catastrophe"is...."

Because, first, of course, denial, or, at least, its brutal cousin, mind numbing disbelief is pretty much always the immediate go-to in the human psyche when it comes to being confronted, even assaulted with disaster.

And psychologists almost surely have some clinical term or another to describe the inclination most of us have regarding that level of catastrophe.

Kind of a global destruction spin on the old fashioned "well, it's just a little lump....it can't be all that serious....if I ignore it, it'll just go away...."

We've all seen enough "big event catastrophe/disaster" movies by now, though, to be more than familiar with how it plays out.

There is the first hint that something just isn't quite right.

Cool heads and keen eyes realize that it's actually worse than that.

Those folks do their best to convince those in a position to do something about it that they need to...do something about it......

At this point, insert "eye rolling and clucking" about how ridiculous the idea of the "impending catastrophe" is.

And, then, the next thing you know.......

...either the volcano erupts or the earthquake begins or the tsunami appears...or there is a blinding flash of light and, on the horizon, a cloud of dust in the the unmistakable shape of a immeasurable mushroom rises......

....and eyes stop rolling and clucking ceases, replaced by eyes wide open in fear and panic, hysterical screaming....you know how the script reads. Feel free to fill in your own dramatic details.

There's a problem with Armageddon....or, more to the point, our consumer point of view conception of it.

It's bad enough that we roll our eyes and cluck our clucks and dismiss the little warnings until it gets to full blown volcano/earthquake/tsunami/nuclear blast status.

But, add to that, our very very naive notion that life altering, even ending, level disaster will only come in the form of full blown volcano/earthquake/tsunami/nuclear blast.

And that those little warning signs are the predicable, recognizable ones we've seen in hundreds of movies, give or take a Dwayne Johnson.

Possibly, even probably, as Josh pointed out, via the brilliant words written by Aaron Sorkin, it won't be red phones or nuclear bombs at all.

Possibly, even probably, it will all start with a little test tube.

A little test tube filled with bigotry, prejudice, hatred....fear of another and others because of their color or their religion or their gender....a little test tube with a rubber cap that's deteriorating....and some guy steps on to a stage at a "rally"....and stands behind a podium with a once upon a time sacred seal.....and for no better reason than his neurotic addiction to praise and worship and adoration....smashes it on the stage........and no one has an acquired immunity......so a thousand people get it....and spread it to a thousand more....who spread it to ten thousand more.......

...and the next thing you know.....

....explosive devices start showing up in mailboxes and on front porches......

Not a volcano...or earthquake.....or tsunami.....or blinding nuclear detonation in sight......

Just a little test tube.

Lying smashed to pieces.

 

"We, The People", from the Latin, Meaning "You're One Of Us, Right?"

Don't it just make your blood boil when you see somebody stomp on the American flag?

Of course it does. There's no other reaction to be expected from any reasonable and/or reasonably intelligent citizen of the good old U.S. of A.

Turns out flags ain't the only thing too often stomped in the land of the, give or take, free and the home of the, depends entirely on how you look at it, brave.

Madam Secretary is a weekly TV drama portraying the life and experiences of a fictional female American Secretary of State.

For the Hillary bashers in the cheap seats, sit your asses down and hush. The fictional Secretary Elizabeth McCord is a woman and is Secretary of State. And there endeth the similarity.  

In what is both poetic irony and poetic justice in a period in American history that finds a misogynistic blunt tool of a blowhard bully taking up space behind the desk in the Oval Office, this fictional look at a fictional family whose Mom is the fictional head of the U.S. State Department was created, is produced and is, very often written, by......you know where this is going, right?.......

...of course you do.....

...a woman.

But the topic du jour is neither feminine empowerment nor egregious sexism. It has, actually, nothing to do with the whole "place of woman in the workplace, let alone society" debate/discussion. What follows could have just as easily been written by a man and offered up by a man.

But it wasn't and it wasn't. It was both written, and spoken, by women.

The impish provocateur lobe of my brain gets a tingly about that simply because it's yet another fun for all ages way of sticking it to the misogynist blunt tool behind the desk.

Who has, of late, been doing way, way....way more than his share of the aforementioned stompin'.

Not on the flag....at least, not exactly.

At the end of a recent episode of Madam Secretary, Elizabeth gives an address to a group gathered after one treaty signing or another, the usual gang of geopolitical suspects in attendance and articulates beautifully on one of what has been, until recent times, one of the qualities that made America shine...from sea to...well, you know the rest.


"What".....the Secretary begins, "... is an even greater threat than nuclear weapons? That which makes the use of them possible.

Hate.

Specifically, the blind hatred one group or nation can have for another.

And that is why I am convinced that nationalism is the existential threat of our time.

I want to be clear.

Nationalism is not the same as patriotism.

It's a perversion of patriotism.

Nationalism promotes the idea that inclusion and diversity represent weakness, 

that the only way to succeed is to give blind allegiance to the 

supremacy of one race over all others.

Nothing could be less American.

Patriotism, on the other hand, is about building each other up and embracing our 

diversity as the source of our nation's strength.

"We the People" means all the people.

America's heroes didn't die for race or region.

They died for the ideals enshrined in our Constitution.

Above all, freedom from tyranny, which requires our unwavering support of a free press,

freedom of religion all religions the right to vote, and making sure nothing infringes 

on any of those rights, which belong to us all.

Look where isolationism has gotten us in the past.

Two world wars.

70 million dead.

Never again can we go back to those dark times when fear and hatred, 

like a contagion, infected the world.

That, as much as ending the threat of nuclear war, is what today is about.

And it's why we must never lose sight of our common humanity, our common values, 

and our common decency.

I was reminded recently of our nation's founding motto, e pluribus unum.

Out of many, one.

13 disparate colonies became one country, one people.

And, today, we call on all Americans and people everywhere to reject the scourge of nationalism.

Because governments can't legislate tolerance or eradicate hate.

That's why each one of us has to find the beauty in our differences instead of the fear.

Listen instead of reacting.

Reach out instead of recoiling.

It's up to us.

All of us.

There are, at least, a couple of things noteworthy about that profound soliloquy.

It presents as empirical evidence of the power of words. The right words. At the right time, spoken in the right tone with good, sincere intent and in a spirit of seeking solutions.

And it underscores the irony, not to mention the injustice on display, of words written into a script for an episode of weekly television by someone who most assuredly would be branded with the scarlet letters, H and E for Hollywood Elite, with a dash of L and S for Libtard Snowflake, contrasted with the garbled, meandering, meaningless stirring of the shit pot theoretically disguised as "presidential" oratory.

Nationalism is not the same as patriotism.

It's a perversion of patriotism.

Don't it just make your blood boil when you see somebody stomp on the American flag?

Of course it does.

Does for me, too.

Just like when I see somebody stomp on sacred, bedrock foundational American values.

Like patriotism.

By equating it with nationalism.

Or, depending on your level of education and/or political affiliation, better known to you in a couple of more familiar versions.

America First.

and...

Make America Great Again.






 

Less Than Less Than Zero

It's more than just a little ironic that, during the Days of Donald, a brighter light than usual has been shining on the vocabulary deficiencies of the average Joe and Jane.

Part of that, of course, traces back to the root cause of a lot of the woes we face.

Lack of education.

Which is also known, in some instances, by the term tossed about by political pundits from mostly the disloyal opposition.

Being uninformed.

Somewhere along the way, the traditional life path of educational pursuit in America, from kindergarten to elementary, from middle school to high school, from college to post graduate, fell not only out of fashion, but even out of favor, as if, somehow, being educated was the intellectual equivalent of being rich.

As far as those who weren't were concerned, those who were were nothing more than snobby, spoiled pricks who thought they were better than everyone else.

Never mind that it's very much a false equivalency because while not everyone can achieve whatever is necessary to acquire great wealth, there is nothing stopping anyone from acquiring as much information, read: education, as that person desires and/or is willing to put the time and energy in to find.

Especially today, with the public library still open for business and ready to welcome one and all. Not to mention the library that houses a billion times more information and education than the finest brick and mortar collection of the printed word.

The Internet.

Now, this is where the inevitable "but, what about" brigade chokes up a hairball, something in the form of "what about people who can't afford computers? huh? what about that, Mr. Informed Educated Snobby Spoiled Prick Who Thinks He's Better Than Everyone Else?"

Yeah. About that. If you're reading this, then you already have a computer or you have access to one. Most likely in the form of that smartphone that you probably stood in line for two hours to be first to get.

And if not, then you can, at absolutely no charge, get access to a computer at least six days a week by stopping into your.....wait for it.....public library.

Meanwhile, vocabulary be deficient.

And here's a word you're going to hear a lot in the coming days, weeks, months that a lot of people actually don't fully understand.

Deficit.

Here's the easy to find (right there on that computer or smartphone I mentioned) dictionary definition.



Deficit.
 noun

 

(in sports) the amount or score by which a team or individual is losing.

"came back from a 3–0 deficit"

 

 

 But here's the application you'll more often hear about when the word is used in those coming days,weeks, months.....

 

     
       an excess of expenditure or liabilities over income or assets in a given period.

       "an annual operating deficit"

 

        And even closer to home for you...... 

 

      The amount by which something, especially a sum of money, is too small.

synonyms:

shortfall, deficiency, shortage, arrears negative amount, loss "a large deficit in the federal budget"

Okay. At this point it seems a little unfair, even a little rude, of me to start us off down a path of snarking about how deficient the American vocabulary is these days and then rattle off all these syllables.

Let's put this in living in a short burst, texting world fashion.

Deficit is just a fancy, educated snobby spoiled prick way of saying "debt".

As in what you owe.

As in, what you're in.

As in, how are we ever gonna get out of?

Here's another hilarious, obviously elitist edition of the def.

A deficit occurs when expenses exceed revenues, imports exceed exports or liabilities exceed assets.

Like I said, debt.

Too much out goin'. Not enough in comin'.

And debt is a lot like extra poundage. One of those things that just sort of creeps up on ya. I mean, come on, nobody goes to bed on Tuesday night and wakes up Wednesday morning to find they've put on a hundred pounds.

There's at least a couple of Thanksgivings, two or three Christmases, some long football seasons with too much beer and pizza and one whole hell of a lot of stress eating before you get to that moment when you start your morning by steppin' on the scales and blurt out "what the fuck?"

Of course, as with everything else they do, our governments, be they local, state and/or Federal, surpass us like we're standing still when it comes to the fat of the land.

Those dudes and dudettes can put us in a hole faster than a serial killer whose main get off is digging the graves and burying the bodes.

Here's something your more insightful financial gurus will tell you.

One factor that plays a large part in the accumulation of debt but doesn't always get the attention it both deserves and needs is hidden costs.

Again, the nerdy bookworm description reads: Unforeseen expenses added on to purchases.

Usually, those expenses refer to things like fees. Credit card fees, hotel and resort fees, the always intriguing, but less than amusing "handling" fee, as in "you just pay shipping and handling."

Unless there's some kind of orgasm involved at the end of the process, it seems a little arrogant of product merchants to be charging you for simply using their hands.

And, of course, during the great American adventure of buying a car, there's fees in places most people ain't even got places.

That's the thing about buying things.

Or, while we're at it, buying into things.

More often than not, there's a hidden cost.

Or costs.

The America offered for sale by Donald, during the Days of Donald, is filled with hidden costs.

Pretty much exclusively paid by those who continue paying for a ride on the once amusing, now more sad than amusing, Trump Train.

The rest of us....well, the rest of us don't buy it.

Which isn't to say we're not paying for it.

Here's some examples....and, for the sake of the examples, let's assume that you're still an enthusiastic participant in Trump transactions.

You're buying that the tax cut he and his posse carved out a few months ago, and the additional tax cut that's sure to come right after the midterms, assuming they remain the majority party, are going to ease your fears, lessen your burden and set you down the path to financial happy ever after.

The hidden cost? Every educated, qualified financial expert on the planet Earth, regardless of their politics, predicts that the massive debt already resulting from the loss of tax revenue will either trigger a recession, even depression, of a magnitude unseen in five generations...or...loss of revenue will have to be offset by going after the funds currently being paid out to me...and you....and your loved ones....in the form of Medicare....Medicaid.....Social Security...... 

You're buying the myth that he is a "successful businessman" and "not a politician" who can efficiently "run America like it's a business" bringing financial prosperity to me and you and...your loved ones.

The hidden cost? The list of bankruptcies, hotel and casino failures, meat product sales failures, private university failure, etc, reads longer than the list of failed relationships and marriages in the Kardashian family and could be an entire semester's worth of an economics class entitled "How NOT To Run A Business If You Want To Succeed.". And none....none of those failures is untrue or incorrect...or "fake news". None. Those failures and his method of "successfully running America like it was a business" pretty much has you putting your entire financial well being and the well being of everyone you care about, never mind any of the rest of your fellow Americans, on the number six on a roulette table, where the roulette wheel has only one number on it. And that number isn't six. Oh...and as far as "he's not a politician" is concerned?  By handing over the reins of power to a failed businessman with no quote, unquote, political experience, no intention of listening to any voice but his own, no ability to learn from mistakes because he is pathologically convinced he has yet to make a mistake....ever....about...anything..... you have essentially hired a third rate carpenter....to perform life saving heart valve replacement surgery on the person you love most in the world...and millions of others in the world awaiting the same operation.

You're buying the idea that random arrests of undocumented people, with no particular game plan or end game strategy, badly organized and sloppily carried out, is making the streets of your town safer.

The hidden cost? Your family, friends, anyone and everyone you theoretically care about and/or concern yourself regarding their impression of you are seeing that you aren't at all bothered by children being taken away from their parents and placed in cages like the ones you see at your local mall pet shop. And when all of that madness is finally brought to an end, you will never....ever....be seen the same way you were before you allowed, even encouraged, that to happen. And your streets are no safer than they were before that first child was torn, screaming, from their mother's embrace.

You're buying and endorsing, by not condemning, his endorsement of, and not condemning, white supremacy, Nazi-ism, bigotry, prejudice, hatred, extremism,"body slamming" journalists, live dismemberment of journalists, mistreatment, even abuse of women.

The hidden cost? What possible explanation for that endorsement will give you any....any chance at all of redemption and/or forgiveness when your time comes? You truly needn't give a moment's care to what I think....or what those people in your circle think......or what anyone in this life...anyone....thinks of what you've allowed to go on.......it isn't this life you have to worry about........

You're buying that lies are acceptable, disrespect is a virtue and not a vice, any and all means justify any and all ends....bullying is bravery. Cowardice is to be congratulated.

The hidden cost? A forfeiture of whatever simple, basic human dignity and decency you possessed before you became...what you have become.

Whatever else you may, or may not, be perceiving in the days of this demagogue, as benefits,, any objective auditor, regardless of their politics, could look at your balance sheet and alert you that your investments of time, energy, money, spirit, even soul are costing you considerably more than whatever profit there might be.

The thing, though, about our value systems, our core belief systems,...our hearts, our minds...even our souls.....is that trying to describe gains or losses puts our already under-stocked vocabulary to the test.

If only there were a word that sums up the abandonment of better angels in favor of surrendering to fear, prejudice, hatred, ignorance....indecency.....as it applies to the human spirit.

Turns out there is a word.

Deficit.

Let Me Explain What You Need To Think, So You'll Think I Get It

Lyndon Johnson was a vain, petty, self absorbed narcissist.

But he had one critical quality non-existent in the DNA of the Donald.

Historian and author Doris Kearns Goodwin, who has written Pulitzer Prize winning works on such national notables as the Roosevelts, Lincoln, the Kennedys and Johnson, himself, sat with Bill Maher recently and among other insightful contributions to the conversation, made this dead center bullseye observation....

….this man has no humility which is an important part of every president; he has no empathy; he has no resilience; he says the reason he's so humble is because the Pope is very humble just like Donald Trump.
I mean, you can't think that way. You can't be a person that says the most important thing is never to lose, that you always have to win. Every president that I've studied has gone through adversity and they came out stronger at the other end.

Ernest Hemingway said, 'Everyone's broken by life but sometimes people are stronger in the broken places.'

He says he's never experienced loss and that's why he has the very, very best temperament of anyone whose run..... this is not a leader. This is not a man whose experienced any kind of empathy for other people.

One of the loudest screams amongst the screaming irony of which Goodwin reminds us is that Trump was elected and, in large measure, continues to be supported, endorsed, even celebrated by people who were razzled, dazzled, charmed, conned and/or otherwise convinced that he was "one of them" that he understood "their problems, their hopes, their dreams". That he was the only human being on the planet, let alone the ballot, who could make it all happen for them.

What he was faking and fakes....empathy.

What he was practicing and practices....pandering.

Empathy...is defined as "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another."

Pandering...is defined as "to gratify or indulge an immoral or distasteful desire, need or habit or to indulge a person with such a desire"

I'd add to that that the "desire or need" need not necessarily be immoral or distasteful. Sometimes, for example, in recent times, the desire or need has only to be desperate. Motivated by fear and uncertainty. Too easily gratified and indulged by someone with an ability to create the illusion of empathy with one of the oldest tricks in the book when it comes to convincing someone of something.

Telling them exactly what they want to hear.

Terrific healthcare, the very best healthcare, for everyone.

Bringing jobs back for all the coal miners.

Give a 35% tax cut to middle class families.

Propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all of Congress.

Build...a....wall.

The problem with empathy, when it comes from someone who is biologically incapable of empathy, is that all it can end up being.....is pandering.

Old saying, known well to those who live in either mountainous/woodsy areas or swampy parts of the nation.

Be careful that you don't pick up a snake.......to kill that stick you just looked down and saw.

Empathy.

Pandering.

One of them is a stick.

One of them is not.

Hark The Herald Angels Sing, Should Auld Acquatinance Be Forgot

October 10, at this writing.

And you know what that means.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

But, let's forego the predictable, traditional, seasonal ho, ho, harping about having to climb over the floor displays of tinsel and tree toppers and lights (oh, my!) to get to the friggin' fun size Snickers to give away to the little ghosts and goblins..three weeks from now.

Let's even go so far as to put our charitable money where our mouths are and cut retailers the slack of understanding that a lot of them make their entire year's profits with their holiday sales, so, if they need to put a stack of canned flocking next to the stack of WD-40 in the old aerosol cans section three months out to keep their families off welfare, so be it.

By the way, it's worth mentioning that you need to take care that you don't confuse the flocking with the WD-40......screw that up and either the tree will be too slippery to hold the ornaments....or your front door will still squeak...and it will be all flocked and shit.

Let's leave the decoration debate to the Do It In December Debbie Downers and, instead, sing a different tune.

Ah! The sounds of the season.

And why Christmas music in October is a lot like actually getting to participate in an orgy.

Too much, too often, going on for far too long and, ultimately, your enjoyment of it is inevitably replaced with a passionate desire for it to be over as soon as humanly possible.

Not only that, we got medical evidence that....you know that joke about too early Christmas music actually making people crazy?....yeah, turns out it's no joke.

In other words, when it comes to holly jolly, too soon with too much holly ain't at all that jolly.

Linda Blair is a British clinical psychologist, columnist for the Times, the Guardian and the Daily Mail, as well as the author of several books on mental wellness, including Siblings, Birth Order and The Key To Calm.

Not to be confused, of course, with the Linda Blair who played the demonically possessed kid in "The Exorcist" and, besides being the antithesis of mental wellness, will most likely, when the time comes, leave behind an obituary that somewhere, somehow, includes the words "pea soup."

The un-possessed Blair writes, recently, that the "constant barrage of Christmas tunes too early in the season" forces people to remember all the things they have to do before the holiday. The songs are, Blair says, a reminder to buy presents, prepare and/or cater parties, organize travel, brace for the family gatherings and all the more stressful, mind numbing, nerve rattling, psychotic breakdown causing tasks and burdens that are such a delightful part of that most magical time of the year.

Meanwhile, hearing the same songs over and over and over and over day after day after day make store workers "struggle to tune it out" and, Blair says, they become unable to focus on anything else.

"Christmas music", Blair sums up, "is likely to irritate people if it's played too loud and too early.

This is one of those things in the long list of things in life that seem like insightful, even helpful and/or useful, analysis but are, in fact, nothing more than just potato, patahto, tomato, tamahto....

...let's call the whole thing off.

Or more practically, let's just resign ourselves to the fact that some people don't want to hear Christmas music starting twenty four hours after the Labor Day beach weekend is over, some people would be delighted if Christmas music showed up in their everyday routines more often than misspelled, garbled grammar Tweets from the garbled grammarian in-Chief and some people treat Christmas music like so much, daresay, too much, and too many things are treated these days.

Whatevs.

If the "immatura nimis" harping traditionally hurled at the traditional holiday harks of herald angels has any real case to make, it can be offered that too much of anything that's too loud and/or too often, too early or not, is likely to irritate people.

Couple of random thoughts at this moment:

First, "immatura nimis" is Latin for "too early, too much" It's included in this piece for the benefit of our NPR level readers, not only to ostensibly class the place up a little, but, also, to offset the weariness of enduring a culture that takes a break from "trolls" by rubbing up against "bae" to do a little "Netflix and chill".

Not to mention everything, and anything, that is whatever it is...AF.

Second, for those, either fer me or agin me as a rule, who are poised and ready to pounce on what they perceive to be my inevitable connecting of the "anything that's too loud and/or too often is likely to irritate people" to anything and/or everything that has to do with Trump, stand down.

I've decided to take a break from that inevitability this time around. Because when it comes to dissing he who, on the hour, most hours, "breaks the Internet", even I get weary AF...no matter how "on fleek" the diss.

None of that, by the way and obviously, has anything even remotely to do with Christmas music.

Whose too loud, too much and too early arrival, and the accompanying debate/discussion/piss and moan about that arrival, has actually, ironically, become as traditional as the music itself.

Hmm. There's a point to ponder.

Perhaps even sufficient material for an in-depth dissection and discussion.

Let's get together right back here, say, Dec 4th or so.

When we're all giddy with the dual adrenaline rush of both anticipating what Santa is going to bring us this year.....and the sugar rush of that Valentine's Candy we just scored....

....stacked up right behind the flocking and WD-40....

....across the aisle from the Easter Peeps.

It Is What It Is, No Matter What It Is You Want It To Be

Let me share with you a simple, succinct pearl of wisdom and insight from one of history's most renowned and respected political analysts.

"Morality is the basis of things...and truth is the substance of all morality."

Truth been takin' a beatin' the last cuppla years.

Maybe not so much a knockin' as a neglectin'.

As if it were a Sony Beta-max, at one time, every body had it, wanted it, relied on it, trusted it, believed in it because it was reliable, dependable. a workhorse of a thing that has, all of a sudden, been treated like it just doesn't matter anymore.

Cue Kellyanne Conway. And Sarah Huckabee Sanders. And Mike Pence. And Lindsey Graham and all the other sycophantic servants in the palace guard. 

And anyone, and everyone, else who hears the truth and dismisses the truth as if the "alternative fact" or "optional outcome" or any other of the half dozen new era nicknames for good old fashioned, garden variety bullshit were a shiny, state of the art, Dolby Surround sound Blu Ray player.

And the truth?.....well, the truth was just a....say it with me......Beta-max.

The inanity, cruising right on up, ever so nonchalantly, up to, over and past the line into insanity of what's going on here in the land of the free, home of the brave, white radical Christian conservative edition these days has, in very large part, very largely to do with the treatment the truth has been getting.

Here's another chestnut dealing with and defining truth.

The truth is the truth even if no one believes it. And a lie is a lie even if everyone believes it.

Here's the thing, though.

The current palace guard, following the example set in stone by their man/child king, religiously adheres to a more build-it-yourself model when it comes to dealing with fact and fiction.

"The truth is what we say the truth is on any given day at any given time depending on what we decide we need the truth to be."

Ordinarily, that kind of moronic bonehead babbling would be walked right by on any street, USA, kinda the same way we deal with those guys in the tinfoil hats who yell out "the end is near" as we pass.

But, ain't nothin' much goin on in the way of ordinarily, these days in the land of the free, home of the brave, white radical Christian conservative edition.

And normal? Normal is only one of two things these days.

A setting on your dryer.

Acknowledgment that your body temperature is a not to worry 98.6.

The truth, at least acknowledgement of it, is as far from being normal as are the chances that the man/child king will step up to the podium at one of those "I love how you love me" hand-job festivals and...well....speak a truth. Any truth.

Here's a truth.

“You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November. There comes a time.”


Now the sycophantic soldiers in the palace guard and the assorted hopeful, desperate followers of the man/child king would be (perhaps, even, at this very moment, are) inclined to give a rousing roar of approval to that eloquence of time and tired.

Two reasons that's not really gonna happen amongst those faithful.

First, that eloquence comes from a speech given in 1955 by a pioneer of human dignity and values and truth.....and someone that the followers of the man/child king do not, bet the farm, have high on their list of most admired.

Martin Luther King.

Oh. Sudden quiet in the rally hall. Well, nice words and all. But wrong color, don't ya know.

Skin pigmentation notwithstanding, there's something both intellectually and soulfully resonating about the thematic running through Dr. King's words.

Comes a time.

And while the "love me" rally attendees would, in the best tradition of their hero, likely shove their way to the front of the line to chime in, assuming, of course, that the "tired of" this and "tired of" thats I'm heading into here have anything and everything to do with their own annoyingly off-key renditions of "Poor Poor Pitiful Me", fact is....not so much.

Where we're headed, for the moment here, isn't about their "anger and frustration"....it isn't about their resentment at "not having their voices heard". It isn't about their hatred for libtards or sno-flakes or towelheads or spics or kikes or even, and here's an adjective from the oldies but goodies stack, uppity...as in niggers.

Like Martin Luther King.

Y'all need to put your misspelled "Rather Be Russian Than Democrat" signs down, push your, by now, worn and frayed red MAGA caps and/or well worn white hoods back on y'all's heads and listen up. Or, if that's simply not a skill-set you've ever possessed, let alone used, then just help a fellow white boy out here and hush up for couple of minutes.

Comes a time.

Comes a time when truth, like cream, rises up no matter how much you deny it, avoid it, mock it, ridicule it or just plain ignore it.

And just so we're crystal clear here or, more to the point, just so things are as plain as black and white, let me run your little four wheeler of push back right off'n the road and into the ditch where it belongs.

Like I said at the outset, the truth is the truth even if no one believes it. And, to that, let's add this:

The truth is the truth because it is. Not because I say it is.

Which, as you'll hear now, is the point.

The sun doesn't rise in the morning and set in the evening because I say it does. It rises and sets because it does.

The sound of a beautiful melody doesn't stir something inside of us because I say it does. It stirs us because it does.

The sound of gunfire in a school hallway isn't obscene and unforgivable because I say it is. It just is.

The intentional mocking and ridiculing of people to get other people to applaud and cheer isn't cheap and offensive because I say it is. It's just wrong.

The tearing apart of families under any circumstance isn't inhumane because I say it is. It just is.

The caging of children isn't beyond unacceptable because I say it is. It just is.

Letting fear and ignorance and hatred and bigotry and prejudice determine how we treat others isn't cowardly because I say so. It just is.

Turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to any assault on human decency isn't a crime against humanity because of what I say. It simply is.

Even worse...defending, supporting, endorsing, even taking part in those assaults isn't immoral because I say it is.

"Morality is the basis of things....and truth is the substance of all morality..."

A simple, succinct pearl of wisdom and insight from one of history's most renowned and respected political analysts.

Mahatma Gandhi.

Yeah.

I lied about the political analyst thing.

And it was wrong to lie.

Not because I say it is.

Because....it just is.