I recently attended my 50^th high school class reunion. Hadn’t been to one since the 5th. I was dreading it, because I began feeling like it wouldn’t be much different than being back in high school. I was partially wrong.

It was good to reconnect with some people I had last seen at graduation a half century ago. But I had had enough, after an hour or so, of manufactured conversation and wandering around like I was still lost among people who were still cooler than me and who had so much more to say. And more than a few people confused me with my cousin, a classmate and musician of some renown who probably wouldn’t have shown up for this even if he had absolutely nothing else to do.

I also read the names of those listed on the In Remembrance poster. The list included my best friend from late elementary school on, along with 31 others.

Kind of a mixed bag of emotions, though I guess I’m glad I went.

As I read Mark Liebovich’s book, Thankyou for your Servitude, it has become apparent that aspirations and dreams are as much motivational factors as any sense of duty, patriotism, or working for the public good. The enablers and toadies around Donald Trump certainly fit that mold.

Kevin McCarthy, for example. He really wants to be Speaker of the House, and he has shown he will do or say just about whatever it takes in order to make that happen. Wow.

With certain people in Congress, it really is all about the power and visibility. Constituents be damned.

Was coerced into watching the Nightly News but couldn’t handle more than a couple minutes of it, since the top story was The Picture, the crime scene photo of top-secret cover sheets laid out on a floor at Mar-a-lago, over which certain networks and pundits are all losing their shit.

I couldn’t watch the whole piece, since the anchor and reporters on the scene breathlessly spoke as if Trump maybe possibly might could be in real trouble this time. There’s never been anything more than that, though– conjecture, theory. Wishful thinking? Makes me think he’s gonna get away with even this. This will end up being the latest dismissive, albeit cliched, “nothing burger” that Fox and their ilk are always regurgitating.

I can’t conceive of how much wrangling and hand-wringing are going on behind the scenes right now. The DOJ is contemplating an indictment of a former sitting POTUS. Trump apparently has been caught red-handed with the goods, but… not really? Not this time, not any time? I can’t conceive of the machine he has at his disposal whose job it is to throw taffy in the gears and keep their boss above the fray, away from the ax.

Liberal media have been hovering like vultures, salivating like a Newfie eyeing what’s on your plate, while Fox and the rest are positively incensed that Trump could be treated in such a manner.

What level of mindlessness exists beyond insanity?

The son of a bitch STILL dominates the news and he’s been out of office for over a year and a half. Since when does this seem reasonable or healthy? It’s way past time to shut him down, to call his bluff and send him off into oblivion and ignominy.

Just caught a clip of some “expert” being asked questions about the Mar-a-Lago investigation. This person spoke for 3 or 4 minutes without offering anything definitive or insightful. In fact, if I didn’t know better, she sounded like a Trump apologist, spewing the convoluted logic of saying that if Trump had better lawyers, he wouldn’t be in the (seeming) trouble he’s currently in…

I know that networks have their biases and anchors ask leading questions, but if that was the case here, the person being interviewed didn’t bite, didn’t offer up any juicy tidbits or confirm or corroborate anything. She was avoiding straightforward answers, basically saying that, negligence or intent aside, Trump and his advisors merely lacked cunning, lacked a strategy, a devious plan that would have given them an out and opened the door to avoiding the current bad press and attention being paid by the FBI.

I don’t think she offered the answers the anchor was looking for. It sounded more like she graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Donald Trump School of Circumvention and Getting Away with Shit.

I’m discovering that I’m not always good with nuance. I have trouble being diplomatic, i.e. patient and thoughtful. I crave black and white, clearly demarcated good guys and bad guys. It’s easier that way.

I react more than I ponder or analyze. But then I risk getting lumped in with the hotheads and ignoramuses on the right who sound like buffoons and idiots, and I don’t want to be associated with that goonish mindset.

My ire is easily raised, though. It sometimes doesn’t take much for my bullshit meter to peg, especially when it comes to people like Donald Trump. Or Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley, Kevin McCarthy, MTG, Lauren Boebert, or even Kyrsten Sinema, she of the tortured first name and flamboyant fashion sense. Their public personas may be different from who they are in private, but what we see and hear often leaves the impression that they are in someone’s pocket, that they enjoy the limelight and speaking out of their ass and serving up the party line with a heaping helping of snark.

No one can be bested. Everyone wants to be heard. There’s a constant need to prevail, to win, to have the upper hand and the last word. There seems to be no room for concession or compromise, or admitting to speaking without knowing all the facts.

They have trouble being honest sometimes, and it seems they may not know the people they serve as well as they say they do.

With few exceptions, the Trump White House was basically a gathering of toadies whose job was to coddle and pacify, and dismiss and defend immature behavior. It’s both pathetic and rage inducing, and the opposite of comforting.

The “adults in the room” no doubt had their hands full, but let’s not forget that most of them simply liked being where they were— mindful of the idiot “in charge,” but also starstruck, on the inside, at the seat of power, standing to benefit, somehow, hopeful of advancing their own careers.

It’s an arguable point whether or not people took jobs in this administration out of a sense of concern, as if their presence could somehow be a steadying influence. I can imagine very few turning down an opportunity to work in the White House, regardless of who the President is.

I guess what bothers me the most about the Trump years (and they’re still going on, in some ways) is this unshakeable feeling that he was and will remain so unfit for the job, that he has always been in over his head, that in reality he’s a toddler in adult clothing who has rarely not gotten his way.

Trump is an unlikeable, obnoxious, seedy, needy, self-centered blabbermouth who loves the sound of his own grating voice, who lives for the chip on his shoulder and the adulation and obedience of his minions. His emergence on the political scene has been nothing but one long record scratch. And he doesn’t have the good sense to go away. Maybe, given the current state of affairs, he will be going away shortly.

Nah, probably not.

A new normal. That’s what we often longingly spoke of back in the midst of the darkest pandemic days.

It’s here now, and it is new, and it is not normal— not if our frame of reference is remembering being able to stop at the local coffee shop or restaurant any old time of day and expecting to be waited on. Some—many—of those places are closed now, or understaffed with reduced hours, because their employees never came back. And it’s not just eating establishments. Help Wanted signs are everywhere, and the signing bonuses are mind-boggling.

New car dealerships still have mostly used cars displayed out front, people are still being hospitalized with the virus, case numbers are still high, the only difference being that many of us are protected by vaccines or having already been infected. The fact that the virus is mutating and poking holes in the vaccine defense appears to raise few eyebrows anymore.

The CDC is offering a mea culpa, saying it could have done better, even though they warned us all along the way and their guidance wasn’t as confusing as some are making it out to have been. What seems to get lost in this conversation is that the President was doing his best ostrich imitation the entire time by telling everyone not to be concerned, preaching that there was nothing to worry about, or coming late to the party and pitching ridiculous and dangerous treatment options. Isn’t it possible that the CDC was off its game at least in part because the Trump administration had done a thorough enough job of controlling the narrative and itself cultivating mass confusion? The people who needed to be on the same page weren’t close to being on the same page.

One of the most frustrating aspects of this long nightmare was the tendency for many all of a sudden becoming experts on things they knew little or nothing about. Perhaps because they listened to and believed their heartless President, and the talking heads at Fox News.

My blog posts aren’t well-researched New York Times pieces, but I believe my opinions are rarely out in left field. While some of what ends up in a published post might be considered a collection of unformed or loosely connected thoughts and a shooting from the hip, I’ve more often written things that are sooner or later corroborated or confirmed to one extent or another.

Sometimes it’s difficult to tell if my insights are actual insights or if I’m simply forgetting where I’ve read or heard something and later writing as if it is an original thought. But I’ve seen enough over the years in pastoral ministry to make what I consider safe assumptions about human nature. While not a recommended path, one can on occasion make generalizations about what one hears from people, what they say and the way they say it. Stereotyping isn’t always a jumping to conclusions. Peoples’ words reveal things about them.

I’ll always believe that each one of us is a unique being, but this by itself doesn’t mean we are all equally endowed with a capacity to process information. There are too many variables, among them the wise guidance of an elder or the lack thereof, or a somehow deprived view of the world that engenders hopelessness and futility and anger.

It seems this neglect has loomed large over the last six years, though most likely longer. The mind-numbing reality that a person like Donald Trump could become President of the United States has led many to believe that this nation is in trouble, that cracks are being revealed, that America is following a path that well-intentioned, freedom-loving people eventually follow, or succumb to, namely that the burden of (relative) freedom is too much to bear and we just need a “strongman” to show us the way.

What is disheartening and extremely disappointing is seeing that enough people still take this bait, still believe such a thing to be true. And that America, sadly, is destined to be no different than other failed experiments strewn across human history.

How can Sarah Palin be winning a primary for a seat in Congress? I think people vote a certain way just to spite. They waste their vote but derive joy because they know it will piss off others of a different political stripe. They may even know she’s a quack, but that doesn’t matter. It’s all about not letting anyone tell them how to vote, and making sure the damned libs don’t get their way or have undue influence.

This “one nation under God” is falling apart, succumbing to paranoia and ignorance, wallowing in a cult of personality, listening to—and believing—the wrong people. Many like their people one way and one way only—white, straight, and Christian.

Liz Cheney lost her bid to remain in the House, to a trump-backed candidate. It wasn’t unexpected, but it still feels like a harbinger. She’s really gonna go all-in on orange hair now.

On a somehow related note, I wonder how potent the trump loyalists really are. Could they really foment a rebellion leading to civil war? And why would they want to do that? Which America are they so worried about—the one who finally wakes up to embrace its potential, or the one mired in narrowmindedness and old thinking? I guess both?

We have other things to worry about, namely a climate that seems to be deteriorating fast. A drought that’s affecting ¾ of American farmers. I’m beginning to hate the sun. Day after day of threatening clouds but no rain. I know that in the summer things can get dry, but it’s difficult not to think climate change has something to do with this. And the media’s constant harping doesn’t help.