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?

If Trump happens to win—and who knows if such an occurrence would ever be treated as legitimate—is it out of the question that all hell would still break loose, just for different reasons?

For all the talk about him and Project 2025 paving the way for a second term, can’t we expect pushback from Trump detractors who remain in Congress, hopefully uncooperative law enforcement and military, along with what would seem the inevitable unrest in the streets and statehouses across the land?

If Trump wins, either legitimately by a narrow margin in the Electoral College or because he was able to pull off some Maduro-like sleight of hand, I have to believe that there would be great unhappiness in the land, unless the current energy generated by and support for the Harris-Walz ticket dissipates and collapses.

It seems that come November 5, if things remain as they are now, the race shouldn’t be close. How can anyone in their right mind look at the two tickets and draw the conclusion that it’s a toss-up? Light versus darkness, needs addressed versus needs ignored, level-headed leadership and reasonableness versus paranoid fear mongering, heavy-handed religion, and incompetence.

Anything that’s now being promised publicly by Trump and Vance most likely and categorically contradicts the substance and intent of Project 2025. And the powers that be within the Republican Party, one would think, won’t stand for any departure from that script.

Did Republicans honestly think that Project 2025 would just cruise under the radar? Do they not realize that a majority of voters are sick and tired of Trump and Vance and their insistence on peddling negativity and hate? That the polls still reveal a close race is almost beyond comprehension.

Where would the hope and pride be in a Trump-Vance White House? If it happens, then we stick our heads firmly between our legs and kiss our asses goodbye.

Or, we gird our loins and reassess the wisdom and usefulness of the Electoral College, and prepare to somehow heal the open wound left us after Appomattox and Lincoln’s assassination. And of course there are the ongoing assaults leveled by hostile governments and people like Putin and the rest.

Anyone who still thinks accelerated climate change isn’t happening should simply take a look at the temperature trends over the last few years, including this current summer season. And by the sound of it, Fall is just going to be more of the same.

The trend is warmer, so by next summer, who knows what we’re gonna get? It’s a safe bet it’ll be even hotter than this summer has been. The storms and the flooding will get angrier and more widespread, too, and we’ll just keep trying to adapt until we can’t adapt anymore.

When the temperature is 100 degrees and the relative humidity hovers close to that, the human body cannot cool itself. Sweating makes no difference. But the people sitting in their air-conditioned board rooms at Exxon-Mobil and BP and the rest apparently are unmoved. All they still see are dollar signs.

But ninety-seven percent of actively publishing climate scientists are unlikely to be wrong. So, what’s it gonna be, world? It’s not like we haven’t been warned.

And it’s not like we have all day.

The “Border Czar” trope. Another mirage, another steaming pile. A nothing burger cooked up by the dimly lit minds of Donald Trump and his handlers.

Why not, in their thinking, commandeer a bipartisan effort on border security and attendant details, stop it in its tracks, and appropriate it as a contrived campaign issue?

Republicans are spending millions trying to drive home this fabricated tale, and the sad part is that it’s having some effect because people keep seeing it on the TV and hearing about it from Trump and Vance and the rest. It’s a variation on the strategy that says to keep telling people they’re not seeing what they’re seeing, or hearing or feeling.

It’s Grade A deception, insidious, slimy and manipulative. In short, right up Trump’s alley.

Had an enlightening conversation last night, about Donald Trump, of course. We got to talking about scenarios and how Trump’s narcissism blinds and informs at the same time.

One thing I wrestle with is why Trump, at the age of 78, wants to continue to pursue POTUS. Why wouldn’t he just want to sail off into the sunset, spend his remaining years at Mar a Lago or try to build another golf course, or something? There are the obvious reasons—he’s a sore loser and wants to win, he’s power-hungry, he’s gotten himself into so much hot water that he’d prefer to stay out of jail, etc.

But what was driven home in last night’s back and forth is that he’s actually incapable of generating the self-talk that might convince him of choosing such a path. He can’t do it, because he’s broken, and broken from a young age.

Trump is a case study in what happens when a person misses out on nurture and attention and the formation of a healthy self-image at a critical developmental stage. He’s practically incapable of self-assessment and course correction. Which isn’t a reason to dismiss his behavior, or forgive it. It’s just that we’ve given permission to a monster, of sorts. And the jury’s out on what or who is going to stop him.   

The earth is a vast system of impersonal forces. In an anthropomorphic sense, it has its own best interests in mind. It is inherently uninterested in our human proclivities and short-sightedness, along with the lip service we pay to claiming some sort of symbiotic relationship. Rather, Earth by nature is destined to survive whatever assaults we unleash on its air and water and what we call natural resources. The only catch? Earth’s survival implies our demise.

No doubt, we’ve followed the biblical protocol and seemingly “subdued” the planet, but the biblical mandate to “be fruitful and multiply” is just a fact-starved story—neither divine permission nor blessing.

The planet will get the last word.