We Must Pursue the Best of and In US

From the speech JFK was to give, had he not been assassinated:

"There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternative, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility.

Those voices are inevitable. But today other voices are heard in the land. - voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality...most especially from the right and Republican. Voices of quantitative, not qualitative considerations, with little or no regard to that of quality, or compassion.

Impassioned with numbers, not Humans.

We can no longer expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will, "talk sense to the American people."

But we can hope that fewer people will "listen to nonsense."

Breaking that down as we can clearly see today, Kennedy's entire first paragraph refers to and defines today's Republican party.

JFK's second paragraph refers to the extremes the GOP follows like ravenous puppies in they striving for never-ending power and wealth. While people die, while the earth dies around us.

JFK's final words define those of us who take the time to find what is real against the unrealities so very perpetrated ad nauseam by the right, by the greedy and by our few but singular and elite enemies within Russia and elsewhere.

One sets precedents to build upon, not to revisit out of vainglory and bigotries, our foolish and removed beliefs of inculcated ignorance we now see fanned into flame merely for the purpose of power and corruption.

Women have rights, minorities have rights, Reality has rights, over the many and varied disingenuous right-wing evangelicalizations.

Those are our Rights, our Human rights, our American rights.

And yet the rightwing conservative thinking, especially the religious-sects wish to tear down our advances from ignorance and self-indulgence.

Yes, we should be forcing decency upon this country, no matter your orientation or party. Not religious decency. But human decency. Yes, we should be supplying healthcare for everyone, and any argument that it cannot be done, be damned. We can do anything we put our minds and hearts to!

Though we might have to stop giving entitlements to the rich, to corporations who don't need it, to the military, to the petroleum agenda, to war hawks who keep us in never-ending vastly expensive wars merely so they can claim we cannot support our citizens, our infrastructures, rather just those citizens who have been impoverished and deluded into traveling the world murdering for us.

Yes, of course, we need a strong military. A wisely smart military. Not the one imagined by unwise politicians.

Rather than us doing the hard work and using politics and economic forces to aide the world, so we do not HAVE to have neverending wars that enrich the wealthy and powerful in a neverending cycle of draining our resources while enriching the wealthy.

We do not need to support the worst citizens of this world in such as Donald John Trump, or Mitch McConnell, or Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, or Pres. Xi in China or the ridiculously conservative and rich, right wingnuts to the point that they are racist in actions, if not outright white supremacists in the likes of Marie La Penn in France, Putin in Russia, or Trump in America.

We should be building UPON these things, not trying to tear them down. Otherwise, it is like graduating grade school, then fighting tooth and nail to get back in that elementary school door again.

Brown v. Board of Education, established that racial segregation is unconstitutional.

Roe vs Wade, ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman's liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restrictions such as the GOP are pursuing today all across America. And under the guise of religious reasonings. Which should have no place in an American government that is based on a secular model exactly so that free citizens could worship in their own ways, or not at all.

That latter part is far too frequently pounded upon and ignored by those who are entitled, or in power. Religious have for far too long been used to abuse, to wrest power from the ignorant and the kind. Or kind minded.

The trial, of John Thomas Scopes, commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case in July 1925 in which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school.

These have been laid to rest. They are settled. Let us move on, and forward, not downward and backward!

For Trump supporters, IF you do not see Trump doing anything you do not like, outside of his personality or demeanor, in the areas of policy or actions, that is your FIRST sign that you are deep in not the conservative or Republican mindset, but the Trump echo chamber where you have lost your way.

Even during Obama, I liked just about all he was doing. And one did have to give him mass respect for putting up with all the Republican uselessness, abuse and racism he was up against.

You typically can't listen to the vocal extremists and haters but you can listen to those even-tempered and rational opponents. In hearing some of their comments, I took a look at some of Obama's actions and I did find them lacking, seriously so in some cases.

Still, MOST of the manufactured Republican noise against Obama was utter bullshit.

As it was with Hillary.

But some issues under Obama I did find concerning. Such as how whistleblowers were handed, how national security issues were being handled, how Putin was (NOT) handled. These were serious issues. Issues I know had much to do with Obama getting poor advice and of his own ignorance. but also of his trying to be functional at all under an onslaught of Republican abuse and obstruction.

What is so interesting there is most of the noise from the right against Obama was indeed utter nonsense.

But even as much as I respect Obama, he wasn't perfect. No one is. But sadly, that offers no excuse whatsoever to Donald John Trump.

if you think Trump is perfect, then you are outright defective in facts and reality and quite lost in the Trump "echo chamber" of utter and sincere bullshit.

Trump himself, is bullshit.

That hasn't been a secret at all, all through his years in New York. Everyone at his level knew it. And many far below him.

The Trump GOP is now bullshit. The establishment Democratic party is now far too much bullshit.

We do indeed need a change. Bernie Sanders appears to BE that change. Like it or not, that may be where we are headed. And if that's the case, ew somehow have to make it work.

As for Bernie as POTUS? I'd far prefer someone with decency and a concern for others, rather then just some dumb schmuck like Trump with little or no management experience other than to have his ego sucked whenever he wishes it.

Tar too many are all too ready to fall in his wake to perform. And to have free range to act the bully and never be called out for it or feel the actual responsibility of things like managing people, dealing appropriately with women, or actually making money.

Let's Change! But let's try something new. A change for the better!

Let's make it work!

Let's do the hard work. There are no easy answers and Republicans love those. Push-button fixes that fix nothing but kick money upstairs. Shallow explanations that fail with time. Shallow people who fail with time and then are promoted upward or outward. Or escape after damages with a |Golden Parachute.

Let's purge America of the despicable, the underhanded, the criminal in our government who have through the Trump Republican Party overtaken and begun to dissolve and destroy our government administration, overtake our judicial system and implode our Executive branch as well as our Legislative. 

We need to put this country back on course, back on a better path, back on a path to the future and not the past, not our worst selves, but our better selves.

Back on Our Path. Back on the Path the Founding Fathers hoped for and worked hard to produce.

Really all we have to do it keep people from destroying it and it should run like a well-oiled machine. If only we could stop people from trying to subvert it for their own selfish interests and desires.

We can do this. We just need to do the hard work.

Shouldn't We Be Appalled?

Shouldn't we? Well, um, yes, I do think we should. Just look around us lately. Watch the news. Look at just about any social media. I know I'm appalled, and in no particular order by:

• Support for authoritarianism. Especially stupid authoritarians.
• Greed in general and especially in politics.
• Big money. 
• Conservatism, especially extremists forms.
• Did I say, Extremism?
• Religion, especially dumb ones, especially in politics. 
• News as entertainment with little concern about the consequences. 
• Racism and harm as some kind of populist activity.
• Did I say, sexism? Racism? And classism, that is abuse by the rich of the poor.
• Over concern about one's sexuality. TMI already.
• A lack of more than superficial understanding of reality by far too many if not most.
• A need to feel important by randomly killing people who have nothing to do with you or your especially ridiculous faux ridiculous issues.
• Mistakenly believing some issues are more important than actual imminent issues and ideals over real human beings.
• Presidential support for white supremacists where even speaking out against it falls hollow.
• Entertainment as news replacing news as a necessity.
• "Privileged" believing they are being persecuted.
• "Privileged" believing they are being persecuted while persecuting others.
• Drone strikes where and when innocents are harmed or killed with rationalizations for their allowance as collateral damage.
• Ridiculous support for ridiculous issues such as racism, religion and conservatism or authoritarianism. I would rather be an extreme progressive than an extreme conservative because one leads to progress and one leads to stagnation.
• Lies becoming truths when spoken loudly enough or from a great enough position of power so that they are believed.
• Such a disregard for the truth that it becomes not only utterly inconsequential but an irritant.
• Constant wars.
• War too closely associated with monetary issues and mere imperialism. 
• Corporations and money controlling so much of our reality, our government, and religions.
• Religions controlling so much of our governments and our money.
• Art and the Humanities in education so frequently being considered unnecessary when they are extremely necessary to our remaining human and humane.
• Not understanding there are and should be limits to wealth.
• Thinking that freedom of speech means freedom to speak anything, no matter how destructive or meanly intended.
• Seeing the poor, the uneducated and the homeless (for whatever reasons) as a burden and an irritant.
• Seeing immigrants especially refugees as an irritant and as criminals merely for existing.
• Finally a president who is crude, ignorant, arrogant, an utter bore and just pretty much pathetic as presidential offerings do tend to be from the Republican party. 

And of late simply too many other things....

I'm feeling like it's utterly useless. There's just too many ignorant people about, too many twisting reality and knowing it merely to serve their own superficial and selfish purposes. There's too many lies and liars, too many bullies, and far too much abuse.

Here's what I think is happening.

We (Americans) set up a country with good intent. But once we really started to think about it, things went immediately awry, plummeting downhill. It brought on the Civil War for one.

A rational description of what's going on from Christy Coleman, the black CEO of The American Civil War Museum in Richmond, VA went like this:

"I realized that an important flashpoint had been reached. We go through these cycles whenever there's forward progression on social movement and social expansion of civil rights. There's always a very violent, quick and very hot pushback. This, is how the cycle works. This is what happens when we turn history into nostalgia."

That's refreshing to hear. Rather than feeling as we have that we've suddenly gone two steps back in our social progress, it's just a temporary pause for those backward types to catch up and just let us know, it hurts them to become more mature more than it hurts most of us. Still, they do have to catch up.

Whenever we try to implement a functional version of our American ideal we get push back, we get anger, hatred and at the bottom of it all, fear, if not outright terror from those whose lives would change, who might have to give up some of their privilege which they should never have had, or shouldn't have gained on the blood and backs of others they had control over.

This seems to come from the right, from conservatives, from extremists in religion, in Christianity mostly. Odd that. Not all, just for the most part the easily frightened, greedy or ultimately ignorant ones.

In modern times here, this nearly always seems to come from Republicans.

All we have to do to stop this is to stop trying to implement America as a real and living concept and go back to simply giving lip service to what we have professed is our ideals, what has drawn so many millions to our shores. Back when we wanted them. If ever we did. Kind of like how we treat religion. And yes, even the religious.

Sometimes, I wonder though.

I guess what we have to ask ourselves is, who do we want to be and do we want to do what it takes to implement it? Because if we do, well, it's gonna hurt. It's hurting already. Just in the right claiming we're hurting them and that being so very abusive and selfish, it hurts.

In the end we could have what we have always been labeled as being:

The greatest country in the history of the world.

The question is...is that really who we want to be?

Because according to Donald J Trump and supporters, they simply don't. But then, simple minds and all....

Political Ignorance in a Trump Universe

The ignorance in this last 2016 presidential election on the side of Hillary Clinton supporters is superseded only by that of Donald Trump supporters. It is reminiscent in form of the quote by Winston Churchill.

'Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…'
Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947

I'll get to Pres. Trump's address to both houses of Congress, in a moment.

For many Clinton supporters who have been around a while, they saw this as her time to become president as after all she had put up with, succeeded through, and done they felt she deserved it. And they deserved it to have a woman president. It was time for a woman president. We are long past that time. It needs to happen. Just not apparently with Hillary. Sad for her, but true nonetheless after to failed runs for that office.

However Mr. Trump should never have been a candidate. That is clearly obvious now even as it was for most people during the campaign.

In hindsight we can now see what I had thought all along during the campaign. That yes, Hillary had paid her dues to become president, all through husband Bill Clinton's rise, campaign, two term presidency and all throughout his romantic antics. Also through her work in Congress and as Secretary of State under the opponent, Barack Obama, whom she had lost to not once but in the end, twice.

However as we now examine our actions and how things turned out, we can see more clearly that as some contended during the campaign, Bernie Sanders could very well have won over Donald Trump. I had said and wished that Hillary would have subordinated herself to become Bernie's Vice President on the ticket to his Presidency.

I still think that would have been a world changing event.

Not a Trump style world changing event, but a positive, useful and constructive one. With Hillary as VP, someone who had been through all she had internationally to the point of Secretary of State, what a block buster team that could have been. Perhaps she could then have run at a future date as President. Perhaps it was simply never to be.

In looking now at the world and the state of American politics, it seems clear that we should all have put aside our beliefs and desires, and gone with a Bernie/Hillary ticket and not a Clinton/Bernie ticket, and certainly not as it turned out, a Clinton ticket up against some nutcase like now Pres. Trump. I said that before many times but no one would listen, that surely she would sadly never take second to a Bernie Sanders.

Very sadly as we now see.

We don't realize the advancements we've made. Some say the IQ has dropped. But I think more importantly what we're seeing is a better educated citizen, smarter people, who aren't yet smart enough. And Republicans always want to cut education. Makes you wonder. And I won't even go into things like cognitive dissonance here.

Read: 7 Things Our Founders Believed about Public Education

These people are smart enough to know there is someone behind the curtain, but then think it's the Illuminati (which always surprises them when you tell them that), or some ridiculous entity, or that this is as deep as it goes and no others are involved, or no other process, entity or entropy is involved.

What I've seen, mostly to be honest on the conservative side (liberals have another issue altogether), is that they are smart enough to see they need to break things down somewhat in order to see what there is and where the problem is.

While a wise person knows when you stop doing that and you have the answer. OR, that you cannot achieve a viable answer from any known information at the time.

Still some will push over the edge into what many call insanity, but is simply drawing conclusions with too little information, or never drawing a conclusion other than the one they have already drawn and which all too frequently turns out to be totally incorrect, once all the information is finally known.

Which almost always does eventually show up.

And so we find those who we offer the solutions to for things and yet they refuse to accept it, in thinking they are that smart as to be able to literally divine the answer from not enough correct information. When frequently it is answers they need and not just one. And so it goes, on and on.

And so too, to most critical thinking people they appear stupid.

But they are not stupid. They are simply not intelligent (or educated) enough. Basically and to put it simply, they know just enough to get themselves and others into real trouble and to look foolish.

Therein lay the Republican party.

One of my favorite people for many years has been Christopher Hitchens who sadly died of cancer in December of 2011. In considering what he thought about Hillary, he would have preferred to have seen her not even run for president. But she did not run in a vacuum. She was against Trump.

I have to believe that he would have seen her as President a far better thing for the world than a Trump administration as we have now and as we're seeing is highly dysfunctional and frequently clueless, self serving, and at times outright dangerous.

Charlie Rose on February 24, 2017 had a segment of his show about Chris asking his wife and friends how he would see things today if he were still alive. There is also an article by Newsweek titled, "What would Christoper Hitchens Write?" (1/2/16)

What Chris might have said may all well be true. However he didn't see her having to run for president against not a Barack Obama, a figure who cut a graceful Fred Astaire profile in form and mind, but a Donald Trump figure who cuts more of an Alfred Hitchcock profile though with little of the grace and intellect and none of the style.

Pres. Trump has  a flabbiness of mind exceeded only by his inflated ego, overt narcissism, greed and questionable mental health. He is not insane as some claim but is a capitalist and narcissist and I'm sure other terms of dysfunction we will be seeing and hearing of in the near future. If he makes it that far.

Chris called out Todd Purdum's view of Hillary Clinton and her husband. Yes, there are many things to be said about all that. Which brings us then back to Pres. Donald Trump. There is little need to lay out the issues we are now seeing with him as President of the United States of America. He is a travesty pure and simple and if you cannot yet see that, you simply don't want to. There is no comparison between the two. One is a work horse, one is Donald Trump. One may have an agenda that would have been poignantly put into place, one is scattered and a novice or worse at executing his skewed and admittedly deconstructive agenda.

Even with all the things we know about Hillary, we would still today be far better off with her than a Donald Trump as president. Both Hillary and Trump have as politicians do, deluded their supporters. Trump simply had a far easier job of it with his. As could be seen in many fact checks during the election campaign up to today, Hillary showed far more truth in her statements than Trump ever did or again, even as he does today.

I won't even go into the Republican, Conservative, and Russian slander against Hillary going back to the 1990s. A grass roots hatred of a candidate that deserved that hatred far less than did her opponent in Trump in deserving his praise by those who have found they need to translate in their heads, what he is saying, because he is frequently not saying anything coherent. And reading into what the president says is a highly, extremely dangerous thing to do, and to have to do.

Frankly, Trump supporters were far more easily duped to the point that we now have him as POTUS. Something that will plague not only America, but the entire world, not to mention benefit Russia and perhaps China, for a very long time after he leaves the world stage.

To be fair to Trump supporters, they voted for him not out of intelligence and information, but out of anger and frustration at our government. It has indeed been entrenched for decades now in a style of government that desperately needed change and repair. Much of  that repair being needed for Republicans working hard to damage the government.

Thinking to elect a disruptor, someone to shake up the government and not just another status quo candidate, Trump is most definitely now disrupting things.

However he has consistently and blatantly lied to us, damaged our government's standing with our citizens and even more so with other countries around the entire planet. Good things will come of his presidency, of that I have no doubt. But in the same way as a broken leg is stronger at the break than it was before it was broken. However that also weakens the areas on either side of that break.

Things like government and in such a big and powerful country as the US, needs care not damage to fix things. Of that few gave much consideration out of their frustration at being promised change for so long and seldom seeing it. Or simply not seeing it as fast as change happens on reality TV shows.

I get that. We all do. But a child throwing a tantrum in a shopping mall merely evokes a parent to do whatever they can do stop the tantrum. Not necessarily at all doing what really needs to be done.

Yes, a good parent will do what is needed, and not just what is required to assuage the child. Trump however is not a good parent. Pointing to his children raised by wives and not him, is not proof of anything other than to show that he knows how to marry multiple women and have them raise his kids. Not to mention, those children do have problems as we're now seeing. First off, they're all capitalists. And too rich to really see clearly what most Americans are living through.

When Republicans say "affordable" healthcare, or what American's can afford, or for them to pay reasonable healthcare costs, they have no clue that is a code word for too expensive. My healthcare now that I'm retired is one third of my income. One Third. That's just to have healthcare coverage and not even considering out of pocket expenses.

As for Ivanka, I personally have issues with anyone who chooses on their own to convert to any religion, let alone one like Judaism which is convoluted and rather silly like so many religions. Especially those desert religions of the Middle East which evolved out of a one time need and have evolved into a religion of the obfuscations of reality.

But then, that's what religions do. Make the fears of living more palatable. Offer up hope. When reality should do that if we would just let it. But that really isn't the point either. The point is, Trump is now president. Two words that should never have ever come into the public consciousness: President Trump.

Just how politically ignorant can we be to have allowed such a thing to take place?

Obviously. Pretty damn ignorant. But mostly just frustration.

I have never been so embarrassed to be an American as I was the day Trump was elected. I was pretty embarrassed by the Nixon debacle in the early 1970s as a kid in High School. I was embarrassed by Gore losing to Bush in 2000 and that debacle. I was more embarrassed with the false war in Iraq and then George W Bush being unbelievably re-elected in 2004 at which time I simply gave up on the American people for a time until Obama was elected.

But nothing trumps America electing a Donald Trump as president.

Nothing.

Speaking of political ignorance, Pres. Trump's speech last night on February 28, 2017. He spoke through his teleprompters, made it mostly through the speech with only a single break where he almost turned into The Donald again, but caught himself and returned to reading Steven Miller's curious speech.

photo from CNN

The ONE thing I'd have liked to see last night from a President who says he wants to bring people together... A nod at Republican's for their eight years of obstructionism, now that they ARE in power, for them also to work with Democrats. To have put that ALL on Democrats was ludicrous.

I wouldn't have half minded the several other negative nods at Democrats about that then.

But when it was mostly Republicans refusing to work for America through eight years, it screamed for equal time to both parties last night to do something constructive together, especially for the Republicans and even more so.

Mr. Trump's creating the Voice agency to point out immigrant illegal activities brought a hush of fear over the Congress for a moment, then a few Republicans clapped. It is not as he said to support victims but to further his contentions about immigrant abuse of Americans. A sad commentary on the Trump administration.

Highlights of Pres. Trump's speech if you missed it (go here for a more professional account):

-Various fluff, chaff and misdirections
-Magical promises.
-He's great!
-Republicans rock!
-Immigrants are dangerous! To the point of their creating Voice agency to publish list of crimes by immigrants. The President claimed that murders were being kept quiet by 'special interests']
-Democrats suck because they are partisan and they need to work with Republicans. Republicans apparently are doing just great on that point!
-ACA ("Obamacare") is giving people cancer or something and needs to be exorcised from American consciousness for the great plan Republicans are going to put in place, if only Democrats and the American people would get out of their way and let them implement whatever it is they may come up with if they can only think up something and by the way, NO ONE KNEW that healthcare reform was so hard.
-Display a woman who was in a wheelchair and an inspiration.
-Display the wife of the Navy SEAL the president sent into harm's way with too little planning and who died on the mission, leading to an emotionally rousing and very long standing ovation.
-Other stuff.

It's going to be a very, very long four years....