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Posts Tagged ‘Politics’

Los Desaparecidos (The Disappeared)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 15, 2025| 4 Comments »

Lawlessness is a self-perpetuating, ever-expanding habit.

–Dorothy Thompson, The Courage to Be Happy (1957)

Let me preface today’s blogpost by saying that I am sorry for being compelled to write this but, though I knew it could, I never truly thought such a thing would happen here.

I didn’t know much about Dorothy Thompson before a few weeks ago. She was a journalist/ radio broadcaster who died in 1961 at the age of 67. She was, to put it plainly, an asskicker and a truth-teller. She interviewed Adolf Hitler in 1931 before he came to power for the magazine Cosmopolitan and soon after wrote a book, I Saw Hitler. Published just before Hitler became German Chancellor in 1933, she warned of the grave dangers presented if he were to ever take power.

The book infuriated Hitler. As a result, she was the first American journalist expelled from Germany in 1934. Arriving in Berlin she was greeted in her hotel within hours by Gestapo agents who gave her 24 hours to leave the country. A crowd of journalists gathered at the train station the next day as she left, presenting her with bunches of American Beauty roses as a symbol of their solidarity.

She became a celebrity, on equal footing with Eleanor Roosevelt in as being the most influential woman in America according to Time Magazine in 1939, as well as a symbol for journalism’s role in fighting fascism.

She spent the 30’s on a crusade to warn the world and particularly the USA of the threat that Naziism and Fascism posed to all countries. She famously disrupted the infamous 1939 German American Bund at Madison Square Garden, heckling and laughing at the speakers until finally being escorted from the building. Her efforts against totalitarianism were tireless.

And of course, many brushed it off as hyperbole. It might be no coincidence that she was married to Sinclair Lewis from 1927 until 1942, a period in which he wrote the prescient and dystopian novel It Can’t Happen Here which outlined just how an American candidate who fomented fear and division while making empty promises of instant prosperity is elected president. He then immediately takes complete control of the government and sets up a totalitarian regime.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

I came across the quote at the top from Dorothy Thompson a few weeks ago and its truth screamed at me. Looking her up made wish we had a journalist like Dorothy Thompson right now who had the guts and the brains to speak truth to the naked lawlessness we are experiencing.

If you’re not paying attention, it’s high time to get your head in the game because as Thompson said, lawlessness is self-perpetuating and ever-expanding. In short, it’s going to get much worse if something doesn’t bring an end to it soon.

As an example, the idea that due process can be thrown out the window for any reason should terrify everyone. Without due process, anyone can be whisked off the streets and dispatched to a distant or even foreign detention center (you can read that as slave labor or concentration camp) without any chance to seek legal counsel or defend oneself against the charges–if there are even charges.

Without due process, they could basically disappear anyone at any time for little to no reason and with no determined length of sentence. You are just gone. You cease to legally exist. And there is no telling when and if you might return.

And you better believe that this has been part of their plan for some time. In fact, at yesterday’s meeting with the El Salvadoran president, Trump told him that El Salvador needed to build about five more even larger prison camps as Trump was planning on starting to send native US citizens there. He used the term home-grown.

Don’t try to shrug this off and say these people being whisked away to camps here and El Salvador probably did something to deserve this kind of treatment because without due process there is no way of knowing that. Due process provides the evidence, charges, and adjudication that have been the backbone of our legal system for as long as we have existed as a country.

It feels like we are about 8 seconds from being fully into fascism here as this administration totally ignores Supreme Court orders and openly makes plans to disappear all sorts of people. Disappearing people has long been one of the go-to moves for totalitarian regimes. Think of the several thousand people disappeared in Chile under Pinochet in the early 70’s. %o years later Chile is still dealing with the repercussions from that time. Or think about Argentina in the late 70’s/ early 80’s when it is estimated that around 30 thousand people, mainly political opponents or activists who spoke out against the dictatorship that was put in place by a military junta that overthrew Juan Peron, were seized and never heard from again.

The numbers that are being thrown around here would dwarf those from Argentina.

The idea that they could sweep anyone off the street and imprison them indefinitely without charges should concern you deeply.  You might think it doesn’t affect your life but it portends an even darker future where this corrupt and lawless government may very well affect every aspect of your life. Now is the time to stop this madness. The window for action is closing fast and there may not be an opportunity in the future. And depending on how the Supreme Court responds to their orders being tossed aside, that window might already be closed.

You might be shaking your head and saying that I should calm down, that this is all hyperbole. That such a thing couldn’t happen here. Dorothy Thompson heard that all the time and look what happened then when people ignored the repeated warnings from her and others.

It can happen here and will if we don’t act now. The crisis is now at hand and there is no avoiding it.

Here’s a song off the 1983 album Voice of America from Little Steven. The song is titled Los Desparecidos (The Disappeared) and is about those who were surreptitiously taken away in Argentina at the time. I urge you to pay attention to the lyrics here and be aware that it might well apply here now.

It can and will happen here unless we stop it now. As I stated at the beginning: though I knew it could, I never truly thought such a thing would happen here…

For more on Dorothy Thompson there is a fine article online from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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Tight Rope

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 13, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Dividing Line

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

–Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)

Have truer words ever been written about those who seek power?

It takes only a glimpse at the Rogues Gallery that surround our would-be king to understand that that this country is tottering on a tightrope today. Two words immediately jump to mind that I feel best describe our current government: kakistocracy and kleptocracy.

The first, kakistocracy, is a government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens. We got that in spades, folks.

The second, kleptocracy, is a government based on virtually unlimited grand corruption. one whose ruler– the thief-in-chief— grants almost absolute immunity to those he has authorized to loot on his behalf.

We are seeing textbook examples of both. Well, they would be textbook examples in a society ruled by a government that didn’t rewrite textbooks in their own image.

It leaves us up there on a shaky tightrope with little chance of keeping the balance needed to make it across with little to save us should we fall since we’re now working without a net since they dismantled it.

It is almost as though they want us to tumble off that rope.

I could be wrong, of course. I keep saying that, but they never seem to prove me wrong. And if I am wrong and this is truly the best and brightest that have been assembled to lead this country, we are in worse shape than any of us thought.

The kakistocracy and kleptocracy we are witnessing brings to mind another word– idiocracy. I have read many times that we are living in the most stupid of times and while it is terrifying, it also gives me hope that it cannot exist for too long.

The worst and the dumbest can only hold off the best and the brightest for so long. Only one can make it to the other side of that tightrope and my money– and effort– is against the worst and the dumbest.

Stay up there, folks.

Here’s a predictable song for this week’s Sunday Morning Music. It’s the late Leon Russell and his Tight Rope. I was surprised to see that I never shared this song here in the many years I’ve been doing this blog. Well, let’s fix that today, as well.

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Hineni…

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on January 17, 2025| 1 Comment »

The Noble Spirit— At West End Gallery

And all the time — such is the tragi-comedy of our situation — we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more drive, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or creativity. In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

–C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1943)

When I first read this paragraph from C.S. Lewis, I actually felt better that the lack of courage, selflessness, honor, honesty, and self-sacrifice that is openly on display among our leaders was not a new phenomenon, that even in the midst of WW II there were many weak and dishonest leaders. Maybe not so many as our current batch but they were still there.

But then I felt far worse for the same reason. It is disheartening, to say the least, that we always seem to get far less than we expect from the people we choose as our leaders.

But maybe what we end up getting is a more accurate reflection of ourselves.

We say we want to be led by people with those virtues– courage, selflessness, honor, honesty, and self-sacrifice– but when such a person is put before us, we reject them out of hand. We refuse to accept their virtue as real. 

Instead, we opt for those who exude dishonesty and selfish corruption, who unendingly spew lies and false accusations that benefit only themselves. People who take credit when none is due and place blame on others when the responsibility is theirs alone. People so weak that they attack the defenseless and wither before those who they see as powerful.

We see these less than honorable people as being more real than those who display virtue.

More like us.

We understand lying. We understand selfishness. We understand evading responsibility. We understand cowardice. We understand cheating and deception.

It’s more real to us.

It’s who we are. 

I know that seems like a searing indictment of us as a whole. And maybe it is. But I have to add that there are many, many people of great virtue among us, selfless and fully realized humans who lead courageous and compassionate lives that benefit their families, friends, and their communities. They hold this country together. Unfortunately, they would most likely be destroyed by the toxicity of the money-driven political machine if they ever attempted to extend their sense of virtue to a wider audience. 

Which is the point of Lewis’ passage at the top. We expect the best but refuse to accept it and end up with the dregs. 

And that is where we are as we head into the last weekend before a new and potentially much darker era begins on Monday. I know it sounds cynical and maybe it is rightfully so. I have been dreading this as inevitable for about 45 years when I first began to witness the inexorable march that brought us to this point. I have never wanted to be more wrong on anything. But I fear I am not.

This is going to be the last diatribe I share on this subject. I will still pay attention and do what I can but want to focus on things that give meaning and hope to people, myself included, here on the blog. 

Of course, that could be a lie. That is who we are, after all. And that being the case, maybe we’re getting what we deserve. 

Here’s a song from Leonard Cohen, one of his last efforts before his death. I first played it here four years ago but it seems destined for this moment. This is You Want It Darker.

I wrote this about the song before the 2020 election. It applies even more today:

With its ominous bass line and its focus on our mortality mixed with Old Testament imagery, it seems fitting for these times.

One of the words used in the chorus of the song is Hineni, the Hebrew word meaning Here I am. It was the response from Moses to God speaking to him through the burning bush. It was the answer from Abraham to the voice of God who then instructed him to slay his son. And it was the response from Isaiah when he hears the voice of God ask, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” It is generally an indication of faith and total commitment without question while awaiting one’s appointed task.

Here, Cohen seems to be questioning God. He’s not asking the listener if they want it darker. Seeing the way the world has descended into darkness, he is grilling God, almost questioning whether this deepening darkness is somehow the desire of God. There’s an edge of anger when he asks and replies: You want it darker/ We kill the flame.

It’s a powerful song, one that haunted me this past week. It reminds me that we are in for some trying times in the months ahead and that we need to be fully prepared to endure whatever is thrown our way.

Ready to say, with total commitment, Hineni— Here I am.

Hineni…

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Nearing Election Day/ Rockwell

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 4, 2024| Leave a Comment »

norman-rockwell-election-day

I talk democracy to these men and women. I tell them that they have the vote, and that theirs is the kingdom and the power and the glory. I say to them “You are supreme: exercise your power.” They say, “That’s right: tell us what to do”; and I tell them. I say “Exercise your vote intelligently by voting for me.” And they do. That’s democracy; and a splendid thing it is too for putting the right men in the right place.

–George Bernard Shaw, The Apple Cart

Shaw’s dialogue above is both the best and worst of a democracy. It extols the power of the voter while at the same time acknowledging that much of the electorate wants to be told what to do. Blindly following any candidate certainly is not a surefire method of putting the right man in the right place. There is ample evidence of that.

My hope is that the voter understands their power and the responsibility that comes with it, which is to fully examine the issues with clear eyes and an open mind before voting for that which is best for the country as a whole.

Country over party or self-interest.

With that in mind, I thought I would show a couple of previously posted paintings concerning our election process from Norman Rockwell who chronicled this country for many, many decades and often seemed to get to the core of things in his work. At the bottom, I included a couple of his most famous paintings to show that our elections are something more than popularity contests. They do indeed have consequences. They do shape our view of and in the world.

Voting is our right, one that has long been battled over. People have bled and died for this right. But more than that, it is an obligation. We must play our part, to raise our singular voice in how our nation moves ahead in a way that is best for all its citizens.

Do not take this right and obligation lightly–VOTE.

norman-rockwell-election-day-with-dog

norman-rockwell-elect-casey

norman-rockwell-election-debate-october-9-1920

norman-rockwell-the-obvious-choice-1948

norman-rockwell-at-polls-368x448

norman-rockwell-undecided

norman-rockwell-a-time-for-greatness

norman-rockwell-golden-rule

norman-rockwell-the-right-to-know

norman-rockwell_the-problem-we-all-live-with

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Psychotics in High Places

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 1, 2024| 5 Comments »

GC Myers- The March

It is very comforting to believe that leaders who do terrible things are, in fact, mad. That way, all we have to do is make sure we don’t put psychotics in high places and we’ve got the problem solved.

—Tom Wolfe, Our Time (1980)

I wasn’t going to write about the election today, instead focusing on art or music or anything else. This election has been an overwhelming time for many people, me included. A break seemed in order.

But seeing the words that the GOP candidate spoke at one of his events last night made me shake with fury this morning. It needs to be seen and addressed by every single American today.

For those of you who were not aware, this is what he said at an event last night in Glendale, Arizona. He was in the midst of an unhinged tirade against his perceived enemies, calling them scum and other things throughout. These are the words he directed at Liz Cheney, the ultraconservative former GOP rep who has stood against his authoritarian march:

Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.

Nine barrels shooting at her face…

That is not political rhetoric. It is not hyperbole. It is not an offhand comment meant for comical effect. This is dangerous in every possible way. It borders on psychotic. This has to stopped now.

I know there are legions of gutless GOP politicians and operatives who are going to hit the airwaves trying to defuse the situation, claiming his words were misinterpreted in some way. And his cultish followers will accept it fully and even cheer it on even further.

We are about nine years of his madness and throughout he has always had an army of people who are constantly trying to explain away his crazy bullshit or divert the meaning to something altogether different. I have never seen a politician with so many minions willing to debase themselves by twisting words and meanings into illogical pretzels.

But throughout those nine years, he has always revealed himself clearly despite the best efforts of his minions. We know what he is and what he wants. You can’t cover that up with all explanations or makeup. There’s not enough bronzer in the whole goddamn world.

It has been evident to me since he began his first campaign that he wanted absolute power. The funny thing is that he had it in his hands but didn’t know what to do with it.  The power that he had as president far exceeded the perceived power he so adored in foreign leaders. His ignorance kept him from recognizing that he held all the cards against the authoritarian leaders out there that he fawned over. With all due respect to the people of these countries, Hungary, Turkey, North Korea and Russia pale in magnitude alongside the strength of our nation. Yet, he often sees America as somehow lacking when compared to these countries as he speaks glowingly about these autocrats who hold tight grips on their countries.  He just wants to be part of their little club, even if it means subjugating himself and this country.

It shows his weakness of character, both as a person and as a leader.

I think this stems from a dislike he holds for the principles of America– justice, equality, fairness, sacrifice, responsibility and accountability.  To be honest, I don’t think he truly likes this country or its people. This just happens to be where he is at the moment, and we are just the rubes to be exploited.

He doesn’t hold a single drop of care or empathy for the plight of any one of us. Or this country. If he did, he wouldn’t try to hurt or destroy so many of us in his quest for power. He would sacrifice any or all of us to get what he wants. That is only form of sacrifice he understands. Never self-sacrifice.

If he has to, he will burn down the house with all of us in it. And unfortunately, he has convinced some of us to willingly stand in the fire he has set.

If he somehow gets back in power, expect the worst, just as his words imply. It is up to each of us to stand against him now with our votes and voices. Especially our votes.

I am sorry if this isn’t what you wanted to see this morning. I get that. I sure didn’t want to write it nor even have to feel the need to do so. But I had to post this, for myself, if only to get it out into the air. I felt that if I could somehow ignore such language and intentions, others will as well.

The psychosis then becomes the norm. And I don’t want to have any part in that. Just vote, okay?

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Last Best Hope

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 28, 2024| 2 Comments »

statue-of-liberty-flame-torch

Oh, all you immigrants and visionaries, what do you hope to find here, who do you hope to become?

–Michael Cunningham, By Nightfall: A Novel

I love this line from Michael Cunningham, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Hours, which was later made into an Academy Award-winning film. It’s a line that seems to crystallize the appeal of America for the immigrant, in the voice of a destination that whispers that here you can follow your dreams and transform yourself.

Immigration is always in the news these days, especially as a tool of fear-mongers who often portray immigrants in sub-human terms. You have seen ample evidence of that in recent months of the current election. I will admit that there are problems with our system of immigration that need to be addressed in a clear-eyed and humane manner. That is obvious. But that is on us and not on the people who seek to make a home here.

Myself, I am personally heartened by the idea that people are still drawn to this nation, that they still see us as their last best hope. That, of course, echoes the words of Abraham Lincoln who in addressing Congress in 1862, during the Civil War, said:

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.

He saw this nation as the last best hope of earth and that has long been the perspective of the oppressed and hopeless around the globe. A place where there is still hope for a better life for their families and the opportunity to become something more than they were allowed to be in their own homeland.

A place they can envision themselves calling home.

I personally like that these people still see us that way and seek to make a home here even though we have often not lived up to our outward attractive appeal. That they still come means that we have not lost our way yet, that we still have the ability to welcome them and weave them into the everchanging fabric of our nation.

How many other nations can say that? Are people abandoning all they once knew so they might swim rivers and cross deserts, risking their lives, to get into Russia? China? Iran or Saudi Arabia?

You know the answer– no.

I don’t want to become a nation where people wouldn’t want to come here. That has been the one quality that has differentiated us, providing the basis for American Exceptionalism. That is a term that generally makes me cringe, mainly because the people who spout that term the most are America First nationalists and their ilk. They often cite it as justification for any behavior, abhorrent as it might be, that furthers their aims.

The point they don’t seem to understand is that it is our welcoming nature and the opportunity we offer to all that makes up our exceptionalism. The idea that we are the last best hope is our sole superpower.

To take that away, to close ourselves off while vilifying those who seek to make this land their home, also takes away that exceptionalism. There is nothing exceptional in rank hatred. It makes us smaller, mean-spirited and cruel.

It weakens– no, it rips apart– the fabric of our nation. It is important that we remain that last best hope, for the oppressed around the world and for ourselves as a nation, because once that is lost our own hope is lost with it.

Thanks for reading this far. Vote.

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The Great Dictator

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 14, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Charlie Chaplin The Great Dictator 1940

Charlie Chaplin- The Great Dictator, 1940

Our knowledge has made us cynical
Our cleverness, hard and unkind
We think too much, and feel too little
More than machinery, we need humanity
More that cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness
Without these qualities life will be violent, and all will be lost

— Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator Final Speech

The final speech in The Great Dictator the 1940 Charlie Chaplin film that brutally satirized the Naziism/Fascism that was then a dire threat to the entire world, feels very relevant to this moment in history.

The Great Dictator is about a Jewish barber in the fictional nation of Tomainia that is ruled by a ruthless dictator, Adenoid Hynkel. Without getting into the plot, Chaplin portrays both the Jewish barber and the Hitleresque Hynkel. At the film’s end, the barber is mistaken for Hynkel and is forced to make a speech, one in which delivers a message of hope to the world rather than the hateful rhetoric that was expected.  

It is a direct appeal to the people of the world to reject the brutalism of such dictatorships and fight for the humanity of mankind. It was controversial at the time and Chaplin’s friends and advisors tried to dissuade him from including it in the final cut, telling him that it would cause him to lose a million dollars, a vast sum in 1940. Chaplin responded that he didn’t care if it cost him 5 million.

It feels though we are at a similar point in time with a presidential candidate who threatens to unleash the military on US citizens who oppose him, to imprison his political rivals, to revoke the licenses of TV networks who displease him, to monitor and control pregnancies, and to first round up then mass deport millions of illegal immigrants along with many who are now legal. And so much more.

These are not inferred threats or hyperbole. These are his words. 

It is never wise to dismiss such threats. I hope enough people understand the peril we face.

Please take a few minutes to watch this final speech. It is inspiring in the context of history, then and now. If you get a chance, I urge you to see the whole film. It is both funny and heartbreaking on many levels and Chaplin exhibits his brilliance throughout. Jack Oakie is hysterical as the clownish Mussolini-like dictator, Benzino Napaloni, of the neighboring nation of Bacteria. He would have been a great choice to portray the current GOP candidate.

Anyway, here is the final speech from The Great Dictator:

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Pragmatist

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, tagged , , on March 11, 2020| Leave a Comment »

One of the memories that I carry from the 2016 election season that haunts me is that of a forum with delegates that was broadcast from the Democratic Convention at the end of its first night. One of the delegates, a Bernie Sanders supporter, said that if Hillary Clinton was the party’s nominee she would never, under any circumstance, vote for her.

She went on to say that if that caused the GOP candidate ( you know how I’m talking about– don’t make me use his name) to win the presidency, so be it. They would simply come back four years later and get what they wanted then. Simple as that.

The sheer naivete and shortsightedness of her words made me quake. The GOP candidate’s agenda was already revealing itself to anyone who really looked hard. Those who did look could see that his election would mean an unraveling of many of the progressive strides made by this country. The nation under this person would head back toward a time without environmental protections or the regulation of financial institutions. You could even then see that he would try to persecute his rivals and would stack the courts with judges with the most radically right views possible. His implicit racism would curb any steps for social justice or equal footing for people of color that had been put in progress and his views on immigration were xenophobic and downright frightening.

To believe that we could allow this type of governance for four years then simply push him out in the next election and go right back to where we were was irresponsible madness.

In less than four years, he has stripped away many protections for our land, our air, our water and our people. He has attempted to make the Department of Justice his personal attack dog. How many children has he caged at our borders? Does anyone really know how many of them are still imprisoned there and for how long? He has weakened our longstanding alliances around the world, instead opting to cozy up to despots and totalitarian regimes who he fawns over. He has blown up our national debt, even without a crisis like a war or a pandemic, which is going to add even more. He has dismantled many of the gears of good government, including sacking the Pandemic Response office in  2018 for no reason at all.

This is just an off the cuff recall of his time in office and doesn’t even go into the damage he has done to our press freedoms or his incessant lying or the openly corrupt manner in which he stuffs his pockets and those of his friends and family from the public trough. If you give me a few more minutes, I am sure I could fill several more pages with all the ways in which he is negatively affecting this country.

So, to think that we would just let him be and then calmly take him out in 2020 was ridiculous.

Everything changes and does so quickly.

If, by the grace of some god somewhere, we do elect him out of office, we are not looking at the same country that we saw four years ago. There is a lot to be cleaned up and a lot more that we must rebuild once again to even get close to where we were before the 2016.

And if we somehow allow him four more years, all bets are off on where will be in 2024. We may be looking at a country that is totally unrecognizable to most of us. We will have elected an unfettered monster who unleash all his wrath on anyone who has wronged him or speaks out against him.

I do not believe I am speaking in hyperbole here.

I like Bernie and would love to see some of his ideas come to fruition. But I also know that unless we steady this ship, all is lost. This is not the time for the absolutism of many of his followers, like that delegate four years ago. The problem with all or nothing strategies is that you often end up with nothing.

No, this is a time of pragmatism. Would I like Joe Biden to be even further left? Sure. But I also know that he is, by virtue of the progressive changes that have taken place over the past thirty or forty years, further left than most Dem presidential candidates in that same time frame.

Joe Biden is not a perfect candidate. He is flawed and has made mistakes. He will make more. In the words of a rabbi that I recently read online, he is an imperfect mensch.

A mensch, for those who don’t know, is the Yiddish word for a person of honor. A good and caring soul. A real human being. A Holocaust survivor that I knew once called me a mensch and of the few accolades I’ve garnered in this world, that might be the one that I hold closest to my heart.

Biden is not perfect and won’t take the Bernie Bros all the way to where they want to be. But he will get them closer, setting our course in the right direction. Maybe even building a bridge in that direction that they can someday cross.

I trust him to try to do the right things. To be steady. I believe he will listen to the experts, will trust scientists, and will seek advice from the best minds. I believe he will not willfully hurt this country or its people and will try repair the damage done to our house and maybe build something better, even if it’s only incrementally better.

To continue this house analogy, Joe Biden might just be the firestop that keeps the whole house from burning to the ground.

That kind of pragmatism might not be exciting. Might not be the stuff of legend.

But it’s what we need in this moment.

And sometimes doing what is needed rather than what you want is, in itself, heroic.

To my Bernie Bro friends, think about that, please.

 

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Register!

Posted in Current Events, tagged , , on September 25, 2018| 2 Comments »

Today is National Voter Registration Day. I truly urge anyone who has not yet registered to make today the day that you finally take the plunge and join our democracy.

You are needed more than ever.

We are at a vital point in our history, one that may well rival the Civil War/Lincoln era of the 1860’s, the Great Depresson/FDR era of the 1930’s or the Civil Rights/Viet Nam era of the 1960’s in importance to the history of our country. There are still alternate paths to us going forward and this coming election may well dictate which path this country follows.

One takes us closer and closer to a government ruled by a private governing elite of corporate power that is wholly released from public accountability. This includes privatization of prisons, the military, education, infrastructure and social safety networks as well as the removal of most environmental, financial and workplace regulations.

The citizen will live to serve the corporate bottom line.

The other moves us back towards a government that elevates the rights of citizens over those of corporations, one that looks to insure that the safety net that has saved so many of us from falling into abject poverty over the years stays intact. This path better protects our environment, our healthcare decisions, our workplace protections and our finances.

A government that would exist to serve the citizens.

This may well be the most important election that we will take part in. Some of you will say that is foolish hyperbole, that it will all work out for the country however you vote. In other times I might agree with that. But today that is precisely what they want you to believe. You see, we are at a point where a concerted effort over the past four decades by wealthy idealogues to weaken our public institutions and reconstitute the government in a way that serves and protects their purposes alone is coming to fruition. Part of this effort has been concerned with disenfranchising voters, both in making it more difficult to vote and in convincing would-be voters that their vote means little.

They want us disinterested or distracted. Or misinformed.

Prove them wrong. Be informed. Make your vote count.

I will not try to sway your vote but while I am known as the Red Tree guy, my favorite color is blue. Especially come November 6.

 

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The Angst

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, tagged , , on March 6, 2016| Leave a Comment »

gc-myers-the-angstI don’t want to turn this into a political debate but watching the Republicans lately (or for that matter, over the past several years) is a lot like seeing a terrible car wreck.  You want to turn away.  You want to cover your eyes and make believe it’s not happening.  You try to think happy thoughts but, oh, the horror of it all, it won’t go away.

So you have to look,  just to see if anyone can somehow miraculously climb from the carnage.  All the time there’s this gaping pit of sickness pooling in your gut even while a small grain of self-satisfaction appears as you tell yourself that this was inevitable, that for someone driving that recklessly and with so little regard for others on the road this was bound to happen.

You feel bad for the folks in the car just along for the ride but you know that it was their decision to trust this group of questionable characters (yes, I mean this to be plural) to steer their vehicle.

There was no need for this, no need to drive like maniacs and, despite what they claim, they were not forced off the road by a black man in an Escalade.  They were just blinded by their own fears.

Unfounded fears.

Think about it, folks, and try to be honest in remembering how things looked in 2008.  We were looking at the collapse of our stock markets and our housing markets while unemployment had skyrocketed in the prior years.  Lives were in disarray.   Do you believe that things are as bad after the past seven years as these reckless drivers claim?  The only thing keeping us from realizing how close we are to some form of prosperity is this promoted  and irrational fear.

That’s what Warren Buffett believes and I tend to agree with him.  As he said in his 2015 letter  to his stockholders in which he makes a compelling and detailed argument (please read it) against this overstated fear that we are on the brink of disaster:  while it would be irrational to be excessively optimistic all the time, it’s useful to remember that the greatest deterrent … remains their excessive focus not on what can go right in the future, but on what might go wrong.

Get that?  Focus on what can go right, not only on what can go wrong.

Before you go crazy and point out how awful the world is in your eyes,  let me point out that I understand that things are not perfect right now.  The point is that no time has ever been perfect and none ever will.  That is simply the nature of life, especially life in a large and constantly evolving country that has interests all over the world.  It’s a shifting puzzle that looks different from day to day.  But if you are always told and believe it’s going to look bad, it will look bad.

But some will always see the end of the world coming in the present and some will try to benefit from this. They’re going to want to drive the car, say they know a quicker route and that if you don’t let them at that wheel now you’re all going to die soon.

But give it some thought and trust your own mind, people.  The sky is not on fire and the four horsemen are not scourging the land yet.  Take the wheel and go with the flow…

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The painting at the top is an old piece from about 20 years back that I call The Angst.  

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