One recent commentator posits that the Dems need to be careful when it comes to mocking Trump.

I agree. As tempting as it is, why would they want to stoop to his level? I thought they had embraced the mantra of “when he goes low, we go high,” but current behavior indicates that maybe that’s no longer the case.

In a way, why not give him a taste of his own medicine? On the other hand, why go that route and jeopardize public opinion because your opponent is such a juvenile and he sometimes gets under your skin? I thought Harris and all were doing pretty well keeping the focus on issues, but I guess since I stopped tuning in, I’ve largely missed this apparent shift in tactics.

Don’t do it, Dems. Keep your focus, keep your noses clean, at least most of the time, and don’t sink to Trump’s basement level antics. Or at least be more selective when it comes to fighting that fire with fire. Remember that he’s been the way he is for most of his life. He’s had years and years of practice.

People probably think I’m a crusty old pessimist. My take on some things might lead one to believe that not much hope dwells in my heart.

There still burns a flickering flame for things ending well, but only after one fucking trial by fire after another.

Our extrication from the Trump debacle isn’t going to happen without stress and strain and some level of violence. January 6 might have been a foretaste.

Our political place in the world demands that decisions are made and actions taken that have often served and will continue to serve as catalysts and lightning rods. I can imagine some saw the advent of NATO as a guarantee that there would never again be fertile ground for world-wide conflagration—that its mere existence would be deterrent enough to ward off any future wide-eyed megalomaniac’s designs on world domination. Putin has declared that the world should hold his beer.

Warnings and warning signs have not been heeded and we’re free-falling toward ecological and environmental calamity. We’ve been warned endlessly that the clock is ticking, but many still think that’s some sort of government ploy to take our freedom away.

Technology has given us shortcuts and, in some ways, made life easier and better, but it has also stunted our imaginations and is turning us into little islands of apathy and laziness. Social media have provided cover and a worldwide platform for all manner of skewed, incendiary darkness.

I have come to believe that there are indeed good and hopeful people in the world, but that we have not evolved enough to rise above more base instincts that tack toward self-interest and mere survival. Our moral development, our sense of duty and responsibility, our capacity for kindness and empathy is so dependent on who our role models are. Many have been shortchanged and jaded in that regard.

And let’s not forget about the mysteries that still baffle us with regard to the human brain.

We’re still behaving like hunter-gatherers—worried about supply and demand, looking over our shoulder, “protecting our own.” I don’t see a pivot toward “kinder and gentler” anytime soon, except as we make a collective effort to head in that direction.

Four dead, others wounded. 14-year old assailant. AR-15 style weapon. Previous suspicions and warning signs. Vigils and flowers and candles and prayers. I need not say more.

Because what’s the use?

One could get the feeling that Russia is just toying with Ukraine. Ukraine’s daring incursion into Russian territory is doing nothing more than annoying Putin and forcing him to unleash the next level of weaponry in the arsenal, not to mention drawing everyone closer to a wider conflagration.

It’ll be 3 years in February, and the world still stands at arm’s length, shipping arms but mostly watching, as a country with a gigantic arsenal beats up on its feisty but outgunned neighbor because a little man with a grudge feels he has a right to deny Ukrainian sovereignty.

Do Russians have anything at all to say about this, or are they just oppressed, conscripted sheep led to slaughter? It’s hard to believe their hearts are in this.

The human proclivity for domination sometimes appears terminal. How can so much power be concentrated in the hands of one person? Or is Putin a puppet, too, a prisoner of his own making?

Lindsey Graham is being too kind. “Provocateur” and “showman” are way too generous when it comes to describing Donald Trump. They reflect an attempt at saying something positive about someone who deserves no such deference, i.e. “Let’s see… how can I describe a lying, obnoxious, bloviating idiot in a palatable way, so as not to incur his wrath?”

Leave it to Lindsey. He’s pretty good at this obsequious kowtowing. It’s his bread and butter.

That either ticket can stand at rallies and make policy promises is part theatrics and folly. Maybe it’s like printing money simply because you need more money. It’s necessary for people to hear what your plans are, but surely we the people must also realize that for any legislation to become law, certain realities best be in place.

Harris and Walz can promise housing starts and lower prescription drug costs and a codifying or reinstatement of Roe, but it is all dependent on the mix in Congress. Blue won’t pass much of anything if red is the dominant legislative force in the House and Senate. The same goes for Trump and whatever it is the Republicans say they’re cooking up for us—they won’t be able to do much of anything if the House and Senate are majority blue. That’s why we need to temper enthusiasm for either ticket’s proclamations and promises with the reality check of down-ballot results.

I have no idea how Project 2025 fits into this flow, other than it is likely nefarious and underhanded and less dependent on the usual Congressional orders of business.

And let’s not forget the Supreme Court.

One might get the sense that desperation is setting in for the Trump campaign (you think?!).

There’s little left to them, other than trying to destroy reputations and drag Harris and Walz through the mud. They don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to policy, other than Project 2025. It’s all stupid name calling and ignorant racist and misogynistic remarks and digging up their greatest hits and other old stuff that will unfortunately sway some but shouldn’t make a difference to most.

Our choice is clear. We don’t need to see any more than what we’ve had to deal with for the past nine years or more. We should all know Trump’s strategy— whine, complain, name-call, gaslight, lie, fear-monger, tell us over and over again that we’re not seeing what we’re seeing. Or hearing.

Ho hum.

Anything they might dig up, we can find more recent examples to counter their narrative, such as that is. The choice is clear: decency versus overt criminality; capable versus incompetent; hopefulness versus whatever darkness Republicans can muster.

What would there be to celebrate if Trump wins? Republicans would have done nothing more than slay imaginary dragons, and they—and all of us—would be left with a “leader” who is absolutely bereft of any leadership qualities. Our future would be in the hands of a person and a party more suited for operating in a vacuum, where they can’t hurt anybody and eventually implode.  

Slick talking…

It’s all you need to have in your arsenal to be a politician. That’s of course a rash over-simplification, and I don’t want to demean or undervalue the intelligence and motives and idealism of many members of Congress and those who have occupied the Executive Branch. But in general, just know what to say and how and when to say it.

Not everyone gets the hang of this, and occasionally somebody with a twelve-word vocabulary and a penchant for self-indulgence and hyperbole—not to mention lying—slips through and has a chance to take the folly to a whole different level and do some damage. Like right now, for instance, and for the last nine years or so.

It’s not just Trump. There’s a whole cavalcade of misfits and loudmouths and people who say they love America but have a weird and dubious way of saying and showing it. I probably sound like one myself as I attempt to explain how we’ve arrived at a moment in our history when a total incompetent gets to compete for POTUS for the third time in a row, and this time after being accused, tried on, and convicted of 34 felonies.

It’s way past time for MAGA fanatics to admit that Trump was never a fresh face, nor an apolitical “force” who could come in and shake things up. He’s shaken things up, alright, but in an unironically dark Chauncey Gardiner sort of way.

I’ve often felt that the stakes aren’t as high as most media outlets and pundits make it sound. But why would anyone want to press their luck and take a chance with Trump and the collection of string-pullers who seem to be trying to take America in a direction a majority of us don’t want to go? 

After my 8/30 post, I got to thinking a bit longer about the leaders we’ve lost over the years at the hands of people who somehow were able to act on their anger and dissatisfaction with deadly results.

Assassinations have left us with a lot of “what ifs?” Do we ever really put such pain behind us? Do we ever stop to think about how things might have been different if these people had not had their lives cut short?

I’m not familiar with the circumstances or the beefs people had with Garfield and McKinley, but I’ve spent time reading up on Lincoln and was in 4th grade when JFK was shot. To this day, certain images and feelings from that weekend in 1963 are seared into my psyche. I was only 9, but I was affected by the grief and shock that was evident among family members and on the faces of those featured in the newsreels.

In subsequent years, we might wonder how things would have been different if Kennedy or Lincoln had gone on to serve their full terms. In Lincoln’s case, Andrew Johnson turned out to be a less than effective stand-in when it came to Reconstruction. Who knows how or if things would be different today if Lincoln had had a chance to oversee the efforts to rebuild and heal after the Civil War?

In Kennedy’s case, the whole Camelot vibe was probably destined to flame out, but it was his style and optimism and sense of humor, his ability to capture peoples’ imaginations with ambitious ideas, and his willingness to appeal to our better angels.

As George Carlin observed, for some reason we weren’t and still aren’t ready for such people, the ones who call us to find ways to live together peacably and care for each other. Lincoln, Kennedy, MLK, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, John Lennon, Gandhi, Jesus…

We’re hobbled, wounded, and diminished by such violence, robbed of potential victories and growth. Such events are jarring, unnerving, and disorienting. It leaves many wondering who, if anyone, can come along to fill the voids and replace the ones we’ve lost. And we more often than not discover that they were all one of a kind, with their own unique voice and perspectives.

But still we wait for the next ones to shine long enough to leave their mark and move us further along that road to some better place.

“We are not all equal. I worked very hard my entire life to get what I have. Most of the people I know have, too. I deserve where I am in life. I will not give up what I have earned so that someone who has not can feel ‘equal’. Nor will I assume their debt. I have had to pay my debt. I insist everyone else be held to the same standard.“

This quote, floating around on Facebook, indicates to me someone who is likely to think that Donald Trump has his shit together. It is an incomplete thought, echoing a familiar yet lazy self-interest and suspicion of anyone who might get what would be considered a handout.

Someone who proudly uses this quote as an example of “what they believe”– as if such belief indicates a true-blue American with “American” values– only tells me that they’ve likely ingested the Kool-Aid, bought the tired and short-sighted premise that immigrants and poor people are inherently lazy and even amoral.

And these true-blue Americans just know they’re right. Assumptions are made, no grace is given– “Those people are all gaming the system. They must be on the dole, with no plan for or intent of getting off of it.”

I can hear the tone of voice, the disgust, the self-righteous indignance. The ignorance is palpable. I think it’s the selfishness, the rash generalizing, the unwillingness to consider someone’s circumstances that bothers me the most.

I, of course, make my own generalizations, pass my own judgment on people who think they know so much about how some stranger’s life is going. This attitude is nothing more than a symptom of the MAGA mindset. It’s lazy in its own right. When I hear someone express it, I want to know if it’s what they actually believe. Or are they just parrots, having heard it somewhere and only too willing to repeat it?

What’s fair is fair, the thinking goes. We make our own way. Simple enough. Maybe that’s the problem, though– people want simple. People expect transactions– you get something, you give something. You don’t just take. What are they being taught, after all?

When I read something like the above quote, it has me wondering if there’s some selective remembering going on, as if all the critics have never needed a helping hand, can’t relate to being down on their luck.

“We are not all equal… I deserve where I am in life…” Really? No pause for self-reflection or gratitude? Just pure bootstraps, right?