Month: August 2017

By now, everyone except the solid 35% realizes there is no one at the wheel of the ship of state we call the USA. The Donald is campaigning for the election of 2020. Congress is in siesta mode trying to anticipate what’s coming next out of the Trump mouth, and everyone is sort of waiting for various shoes to drop. But this is a Republican problem. They brought him into the White House and they have grabbed majority control over everything. All we can do is hope no dire international crisis pops up while Donald Trump has possession of the nuclear codes.

You could write a book to describe all the ways people disagree with each other. But, in effect, they pretty much boiled down to one thing: partisan politics. For the life of me, I cannot understand why Republicans think the way they do, why they are not aghast at the shameful inequality of wealth and income that exists and continues to grow in America. And why problems we thought had been solved in the 60s and 70s are still with us today, as intractable as ever. How did the politics of division come to permeate all levels of government? Will we ever achieve that level of maturity where people can regard other people as equal for the reason that they, too, are human beings, whether or not they look like us? For starters, can we quit demeaning, insulting, and otherwise disrespecting those who think differently, and replace the negativity with positive proposals? Can we follow the builders and reject the wreckers without regard to their political label?

The only way America would ever elect a bigot as president would be if the bigotry were well concealed, below the surface, camouflaged by codewords, and inside jokes. Most Republicans knew very well Trump’s ideological makeup but chose to ignore its implications. They were blinded by the potential glory of total control of government if they could bring Trump’s know-nothing crowds into the GOP’s “big tent”. Okay. They have control now, and they also have both Trump and his skinhead minions. How will they handle the fallout?

Now that Steve Bannon is out, another big shoe is waiting to drop, namely: Will the GOP maintain its embrace of the alt- right voting bloc that put Donald Trump in the White House, or will they publicly denounce and distance the party from white nationalism and all of its progeny? It was that very sizable bloc that gave Republicans the majority in many elections. With it, they will remain dominant for the foreseeable future. Without it, the playing field should be more level.

“If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention.” That was a quote from the mother of Heather Heyer, the young woman killed in the Charlottesville riot. It could as well have been applied to any number of events of the past 150 years, but it took an impromptu performance by Donald Trump, in which he declared his support for advocates of white supremacy, to bring it front and center once again. Now we have a new universal watchword: “Pay attention to what’s going on, and let your outrage be known”.

As senior citizen, I am covered by Medicare, and as a veteran of World War II I am covered by the Veterans Administration Healthcare System. The VA system is great, but Medicare is better. It is a single payer system where the health care providers remain independent of the government, but the government simply pays most of the medical bills, and you can use any doctor or hospital you choose that takes Medicare. There is a lot of misinformation floating around about single-payer, all of it wrong. For instance, every one of these statements about single-payer is untrue:
*It is run by the government *It will lead to rationing *Costs will skyrocket *Drugs will be harder to get *It will cover less than what I have now *It will cost me more
So if you ever have a discussion, or need to cast a ballot on the subject, and someone throws out any of these negatives against single-payer, you will know better.

If you want a mental pick me up, Google or Firefox “Mussolini speech”. I noticed early on the remarkable resemblance of Donald Trump to Benito Mussolini in general appearance and body language, especially when he is speaking at one of his rallies. You will find the similarities remarkable.

When you think about it, why did Donald Trump choose that particular phrase “from many sides” to describe the source of the Charlottesville violence? Anyone familiar with the situation knew from the beginning that it was the joint action of several white nationalist groups. Fortunately some local official was quick to issue a correction, to wit: it was the white nationalists. In other words, a bunch of Nazis feeding off their torchlight gathering of the night before. But why try to spread the blame to “many sides”? The only apparent reason would be to divert some of the public revulsion away from the white nationalists, for whom Trump obviously has a thinly veiled affinity. He likes “all those white guys that put him in the White House”, (as David Duke was quick to point out). Now it is up to all right-thinking Republicans to demonstrate to the world that they are indeed not white nationalists. Are they up to it ?

Another aspect of inequality in America is that the presidency of the United States of America is a very large job, while Donald Trump, by contrast, is a very small man.

The danger of Donald Trump is not limited to some potentially colossal boo-boo he might make in an international crisis. A concurrent, and even perhaps greater, danger plays out every time he opens his mouth at one of his campaign style rallies. It consists of the effect his harangues have on the already considerably-warped minds of the white supremacists in his audience.