So, it’s July 4th, and what are we celebrating?

America- land of the free and home of the brave? Or America- land of vested interests and tiny world views. America- land of opportunity and open doors? Or America- don’t come in unless you look like me (i.e white and Christian).

I don’t know what to feel lately. Proud or embarrassed? Optimistic or fearful? I’ll fly the flag, not really knowing why. The days of blindly ascribing to some idyllic view of America The Beautiful are over. But there’s always hope.

Some things aren’t difficult at all.

Oh, we invent impressive excuses for why things are difficult. And complicated. But they’re really not.

Take, for example, the current issue at our southern border. Children being separated from their parents, kept in tents, and cages in an abandoned Walmart. All in the name of deterrence.

I can imagine that some of those Americans who live along the southern border have a different perspective than me and the rest of us who don’t live there. But there is something that transcends whatever concerns they have. It’s our common humanity.

Our trouble is that we don’t want the hassle of caring for people we don’t know. We have our own lives to live, after all. Our own families to feed and care for. Our own dreams to get on with. So there is often a reluctance to acknowledge a bigger picture.

Nevermind that these potential immigrants are parents looking out for their families, too – trying to find a place to live where they don’t have to worry about dying all the time, or going hungry, or jobless, or being exploited in some damn way. Imagine the fear and desperation. Try to imagine these things. Try to understand. Can you? Can we?

Political expediency aside, the reason Trump had to reverse his course is because there are, among other groups, a lot of parents with fresh memories of the bonds that form between parent and child, and who find such a policy to be heartless and cold and appalling. Not to mention evil.  

Simply beyond the pale of how we treat each other.

I don’t get the point Trump supporters try to make by saying that Trump’s style is the point-  that it’s about putting an end to “business as usual.” What’s the point if Trump’s methods are Chairman-like, despot-like, and just acting like a 2-year old who doesn’t get his way?

I’m beginning to think that the way I feel about this amounts to nothing more than sour grapes, the disjointed dance that happens when the party out of power descends into name-calling and constant critique. I’m not alone in (still) feeling the disgust of a Trump victory, but it seems that my feelings don’t much matter. Even though in my gut something feels terribly wrong, it just isn’t going to matter, because there are millions of others who don’t at all feel the way I do. They love the fact that Trump prevailed. They love the fact that us “liberals” are crying in our beers. He plays to these every day. And besides, the Republicans rule in both House and Senate. At least one Senator is saying there is a “cultish” feel to this apparent lock-step behind the current President. Yikes.

The thing is, I’d be all for someone coming along that didn’t carry on with business as usual. But Donald Trump? How desperate does one have to be to vote for Donald Trump? Didn’t they know and understand what they were getting when they voted for him?               It will always boggle the mind.

But hey, we are winning. Winning all the time. Win, win, win.

It was still raining a bit, and the conditions were right, even though it seemed like the sun might have yet been a little too high in the sky. Anyway, a nice diversion on a late Tuesday afternoon.

Ah, Longwood Gardens. It does a person good to be in the midst of such beauty for a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon.

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Or any other day of the week.

I recently had the opportunity to travel to the Denver, CO area for a family event. There was time for walks through one of the Open Space areas near where I was staying. The suburbs around Denver are expanding so rapidly that there is need for a considerable amount of planning regarding land use and maintaining natural features and habitat- to keep from paving paradise and putting up a parking lot, or another apartment complex or retail space.

These Open Space areas offer local residents- and visitors- a place to walk, run, or bike, most often with views of the snow-capped Rockies. They leave no excuse for not getting out and being active, and they afford folks the opportunity to encounter everything from red-winged blackbirds and magpies to prairie dogs and coyotes.

It’s no mystery why people are flocking to this neck of the woods. Even in the midst of everyday activities, there are the glimpses of the mountains, the reminders of where you are.

And Red Rocks is a short drive away.

So, is moderation the cure for our ills? Liberal v. conservative hasn’t been working very well, at least lately. Labels are both badges of honor and liabilities. Both sides are entrenched, convinced that they are the only ones with the correct view of things. I know The Donald thinks compromise is a bad word, but he’s a unique brand of clueless. Hey, but he loves winning. Win all the time. Nothing like winning 24/7. Win, win, win.

Anyway, maybe both sides need to realize that things can’t always go their way. They must know this. Compromise. Moderation. Imperfection. I know it’s a dog-eat-dog world. And principles and all that. But shouldn’t we be trying to turn the Titanic, go for kinder and gentler? Sounds wimpy, but if our Christian faith means anything to us, if it indeed informs our actions and our hearts, then it’s where we need to be headed. And besides, kinder and gentler is its own form of strength.

Stephen Colbert is quoted as saying, “If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.”

I’m so tired of politicians touting their Christian faith while simultaneously twisting it and shaping it for convenience’ sake. Or just plain not living by it. It could make one think that it really means nothing more to them than what it can offer in political capital. Many of them seem to be living with partial understanding of certain Pentateuchal books heavy on law while conveniently ignoring the New Testament. Cherry-picking texts and verses that appear to support their positions on a variety of social justice issues, all the while ignoring practically all of the Sermon on the Mount.

Maybe we shouldn’t be a Christian nation. How about one nation, under God, and leave it at that?

With liberty and justice for all.  Right?

Spring is coming. It’s taking its time getting here, but it’s coming.

Planted two rows of garlic last Fall. It poked through the ground a few days after planting, survived the winter, and now it’s ready to take off, hopefully. We’ll see what happens.

I frequently wonder how supporters of the current president sleep at night. I’m sure they’d be only too happy to tell me, “Just fine, asshole,” secure in their conviction that everything is ok, that America is on its way to being great again. Whatever the hell that means.

I grow more weary every day, more convinced that this president is a freak, a puppet, a monster. 

I grow less hopeful that the Mueller investigation will offer up the biggest prize- Trump himself- or that ultimately it can operate above and apart from efforts at obstruction. That it won’t end up being relegated to the bone pile as, at least in part, just another expensive partisan witch hunt.

We are left to endure and wade through the invective, the distractions, the accusations of fake news. It all moved beyond tiring and frustrating a long time ago.

We are in a bad place right now. This so-called leader of the free world doesn’t really care about the world. All he cares about is his own image and undoing everything from the previous administration.

He’s a bridge burner and a wall builder, and he’s making America great again. He’s trying to bring coal back and instigating a trade war, and he’s making America great again. He’s elevated the practice of nepotism to new heights. He appeals to the worst aspects of human nature. He plays to fear, to an America closed in on itself. He’s the voice of the local racist homophobic misogynist near you. He’s the voice of the paranoid “patriot” who’s just aching for The Government to give him reason to load the AR-15 and play militia man. He appears to be in the back pocket of the NRA and Vladimir Putin. He thinks paying taxes is for schmucks. He emanates the fragile courage of a schoolyard bully. He says he doubts the science behind climate change. He appeals to Christians who think people and dinosaurs lived at the same time, who think the world is 6000 years old and maybe flat. He thinks President for life is an idea that has merit. But he’s making America great again.

Or maybe he’s none of that and he’s just wingin’ it, playing to his “base,” a front man for the vermin and incompetents who populate his inner circle. Either way, this conduit for sewage trying to pass for someone who cares is just a dispenser of bilge water. And paper towels. 

Nothing more than a high-stakes reality TV host. Which, unfortunately, is right up his alley.