If Trump happens to win (cue the shuddering), would he really have an easy time transforming the government into his plaything?

Unless he is able to facilitate a wholesale turnover of personnel, one might expect him to have a difficult time convincing certain people to bend the knee, to compromise themselves for the benefit of such a cowardly clown. Not to mention the blowback by more than half the country and their representatives in Congress toward his Presidency being illegitimate due to the four (3 by then?) outstanding indictments and numerous felony counts, including his involvement on January 6.

It seems to me that his path to success would be quite rocky and treacherous even if he made it back to the White House—which just can’t happen. It’d be the Democrats’ turn to delay, delay, delay.

Trump isn’t Putin. Sometimes I think we’re giving him too much credit when it comes to potential post-election scenarios, i.e. that he’ll just fill positions with cronies and lackeys and waltz into the perfect set-up that enables him to take over the Justice Department and dismiss the cases against him.

From all appearances, Trump seems incapable of being as sly and cunning and ruthless as someone like Putin. Trump is intoxicated by power but doesn’t quite know how to wield it, operate its levers. He’s more a bull in the China closet who can’t keep his mouth shut.

Hopefully, all of this handwringing and doomsplaining will never develop beyond conjecture, because Joe Biden confounds the pollsters and kicks the faux Jesus’ sorry ass even worse than last time.

The apple definitely has fallen further from the tree, rolled down a hill, and out into traffic.

Let’s see… Aaron Rodgers or Jesse Ventura for VP? This is where RFK, Jr. is at, as he apparently is serious about a 3^rd party run.

Sure, why not? Let’s add more insanity to an already bonkers election cycle.

It might make one wonder what’s going on behind the scenes. Is Bobby, Jr. closet MAGA? Is this some Republican scheme to syphon votes from Joe, or does Mr. Kennedy feel convicted, compelled to spread his own brand of off-the-wall politics?

Spare us.

Might as well pile on. Katie Britt’s response to Biden’s SOTU was over the top, unnecessarily dramatic, creepy, and of course overflowing with Trumpian, Milleresque darkness.

Always darkness with the Republicans, never a missed opportunity to paint a troubling, gloomy picture, describe a country that had many of us scratching our heads and wondering if she was talking about America.

It’s so predictable—this shit-talking, dystopian-themed fixation. There’s a difference between highlighting legitimate concerns and bald-faced fear mongering. The Republicans apparently majored in the latter in college, or wherever they go to get indoctrinated.

Maybe the Freedom Caucus is offering night courses.  

The morning after. Oscar night is over at last. But Trump is still ugly.

He’s decided to make a thing out of Joe Biden’s stuttering, which comes as no surprise. Maybe it’s a good thing, in a way. Maybe it’s a sign that the loudmouth loser from Queens is desperate, even more desperate than we thought—he doesn’t have much left in his arsenal of grade school tactics.

So, a stutter in the crosshairs. Why not, right Donald? Something else to share with your impressionable subjects at your foolish rallies, something else to laugh at like immature teenagers huddled at a table in the cafeteria.

1300

“Like it or not, we are members of a large and particularly noisy family called the great apes. Our closest living relatives are chimpanzees, gorillas, and orang-utans. The chimpanzees are the closest. Just six million years ago, a single female ape had two daughters. One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees, the other is our own grandmother.” –Yuval Noah Harari, from Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

I guess I had seen the book on Amazon, but didn’t make the effort to tackle it until this past week, after a recent interview Stephen Colbert did with the author. It was published in 2015. It is heavy—both literally and as a work of literature, science, history, anthropology, and sociology. It would make for an interesting, i.e. challenging read in a book-of-the-month club at your average house of worship, since Harari posits that myth-making plays such a huge role in our civic structures and governance, that agreed-upon myths are basically the glue that holds everything together, extending to religious beliefs many hold near and dear.

A bit further along (the above quote is on page 5), Harari focuses on the species Sapiens of the genus Homo, and how they emerged as the alpha among all other human species living on the planet—because they had developed the capacity for myth-making, and living and communicating in very large groups. He covers this in a section entitled The Cognitive Revolution. Somehow– and it’s not clear how– Homo Sapiens gained the ability to, as Harari puts it, cooperate successfully by believing in common myths, myths that only exist in peoples’ collective imagination. Myths that include things like the principles and ideals in the Declaration of Independence, or the tenets of Christianity or Buddhism, or the provisions of LLCs, or the existence of nation states.

One more passage from the book: “Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have thus been living in a dual reality. On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees, and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations, and corporations. As time went by, the imagined reality became ever more powerful, so that today, the very survival of rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the United States and Google.” (pg. 32)

OK, one more: “Since large-scale human cooperation is based on myths, the way people cooperate can be altered by changing the myths– by telling different stories.” (pg. 32)

Might we ponder the implications?

I’m on page 33. I don’t know where this book is going to take me, but I fully expect to enjoy the ride.

Night or day.

Dark or light.

Up or down.

Black or white.

Yes or no.

Depending on where one stands—whether blue or red—this is what one is liable to see, the assessment one is liable to get. No middle ground, just extremes.

Thank you, Donald. You’ve been so good for the country that we need another round of your Prince of Darkness routine. Well, you and the Steves. Or does Mr. Miller prefer Stephen?

The sparrows sound like they’re happy, robins meet the dawn with their soothingly familiar tune, there’s a squirrel that frequents our locale who just lounges about from time to time. High overhead, Canada and maybe Snow Geese have been heading north.

The crocuses are up and blooming, lilies are 6” tall, what grass we have is greening up, the hydrangeas and clematis are trimmed. We bought a soil thermometer the other day, so we can keep tabs on the germination schedule of all the crabgrass in our back yard—gonna try to nip that in the bud, so to speak, this time around. And we might even get a soil sample kit and send it off to Penn State.

It’s like we’re being serious horticulturalists this year. Looking forward to getting started.

Yes, people can get super-rich in a capitalist economy. Good for them. But it’s like Bernie Sanders says—it’s the power and influence and blindness that get concentrated in the hands of this microscopic minority, while a much higher percentage of Americans have to prioritize and decide between medicine or food.

I don’t begrudge anyone the opportunity to make it big, to be educated in the ways of commerce and business, to realize a vision. To be ambitious and talented and clever, or to just stumble onto something that turns into a pot of gold.

It’s more what happens after a business takes off into the stratosphere. There are interests at play, stakes and stakeholders, a desire to maintain a certain lifestyle and control. Even a desire to maximize market share and make more money than any one person would need in a thousand lifetimes.

And the opinions of some mega-rich probably matter more than they should, in part because forceful egos go into hyperdrive.

Words like “skewed,” and “corrupted” and “selfish” and “self-important” and “eccentric” start getting batted about. The rich get rich in part by not paying taxes, or paying significantly less than their fair share, hiding behind the perhaps unspoken assumption that their mere presence in any given community is like a gift from God and how dare they be taxed, and hindered from maximizing profits that get directed to off-shore tax shelters or into elaborate, ostentatious End Times bunkers that sound more like giant Playlands with flammable moats.

Apparently, this is what several mega-rich are doing with the billions they’ve gained under the pretense of producing desirable things. By fleecing America, gaming the system, and forgetting about everyone else. Giving back is a token gesture, and sharing the wealth is a four-letter concept, anathema to the average free-enterprise capitalist.

What the hell was Trump trying to do the other day? It couldn’t have been an effort to inspire. On his way to wrapping up the nomination, he calls us a third world country, paints a picture of failure and despair and darkness? What sort of strategy is this, besides a Miller-inspired rant?

People need to understand that the picture Trump paints is not the reality. It’s not what we aspire to. Good leaders don’t dwell on the negatives. They can surely acknowledge that we have work to do, but they don’t dwell in the dark basement and proclaim they are the only ones who can lift us into the light.

Trump does this all the time, and he never comes through. Because he can’t. He’s entirely incapable of exerting that much energy on behalf of anyone but himself.

It’s not like the border is the only issue on Joe Biden’s plate. Republicans will do whatever they can to ensure that it’s the only thing voters hear about, but surely we must know there are other items on a long list.

What will happen tonight? Will the President deliver a SOTU for the ages, or will Republicans do their best to distract and interrupt and act like tenth-grade morons?

Tough times for America right now. Trump has sown up the nomination, as has Biden. They’re both old, but Trump seems, overall, still capable of handling the rigors of a crazy schedule, even as his agenda is self-serving and absolutely awful in every way. Biden, on the other hand, seems frail at times, more likely to succumb to the never-ending obligations and stress of tending to so many fires.

I don’t know. I like Joe Biden. He was who we needed in 2020, but I have my doubts about his resilience and stamina over the course of another four years. He’s gonna need capable people around him. What no one needs, even if they don’t realize it, is another Trump presidency. Trump and his cronies are poison. A Trump victory cannot happen, for so many reasons. Maybe it wouldn’t be the end of us, but it would go a long way to rendering us unrecognizable in the eyes of many in the world.

Still eight months to go. Yikes. Time enough to envision what makes for true greatness.

Hint: it ain’t whatever Trump is selling, in all its dystopian, dysfunctional darkness.