Jharrin4's Blog

Shortly after Robert Maynard Hutchins became the President of the University of Chicago in 1929, at the ripe ol’ age of 30, he started to implement his ideas of what a university should be. Well, of course a university needed to be about education. In general, that’s students, classrooms, professors, lectures, labs and learning of course.

Hutchins was  a man with some pretty daring proposals that were implemented, not without initial resistance, and by the time he left his post as President, he had made a most indelible impression at the school. Most notably, he retooled the undergraduate program to follow a Great Books, Socratic dialogue pedagogical system. He eliminated fraternities and religious organizations from campus life. Most dramatically, President Hutchins eliminated the school’s football program. How was that dramatic, you say, since who follows the U of C football program anyway?  They’re a Division III school, barely a level of competition above a club sport, with a 2017 schedule that included some school named Macalester. They also faced off against St. Norbert. Uh, so, right. Who the hell follows U of C football other than those involved with its program, their family and friends, and maybe some of the general student body that isn’t too busy studying at their school, one of the most academically respected universities in the country?

Oh yeah? Well, Hutchins didn’t ditch a club sport at U of C. To understand what he did by ridding the school of its varsity football program, in today’s college football universe, it would be tantamount to whoever is today President at Notre Dame doing the same, at once causing the Fighting Irish Nation to freak, faint and then awake to spew vitriol and dissent, pitchforks and torches taken up, administrations buildings occupied, hostages taken, all the while Touchdown Jesus, as seen on the south panel of the school’s library that faces the football stadium, weeping tears for the such a cruel and callously inhumane act . Knute Rockne and Ara Parseghian would be spinning in their graves so furiously tremors would be felt for a 50 miles radius from campus in South Bend, Indiana. I wouldn’t doubt that frogs might start falling from the sky. I mean, Notre Dame is known for one thing and one friggin thing only: its football program!

Okay. Maybe it has a decent chemistry program too. Whatever.

Getting back to Hutchins and his decision to ashcan the U of C football program back in the 10930s, you need to learn a little history to appreciate how serious was the man about a university being about enriching the minds of its students, rather than testing their mettle on the gridiron. At the time, the varsity football team was a member of no less than the Big Ten football conference. You know, the one with Ohio State and Michigan, among other schools. In fact, not only were the U of C Maroons a member of a major football conference, they were pretty darn successful, winning two national titles (!) and 10 Big Ten championships. One of its players, Jay Berwanger, was the first recipient of the coveted Heisman Trophy as best player in all of college football.

That’s the football program for which Robert Maynard Hutchins felt had no practical place at the U of C. Why did he feel this way? Well, the man was quite insane, of course, owing to his reason for scrapping the scrappy team coached by Amos Alonzo Stagg (Stagg’s name still resonates at the school, the still standing football stadium bearing his name, a structure that also just happened to be the site of the first controlled nuclear reaction). Hutchins view of the attention the football team (and its successes) was that it was counterproductive to what the college should be known for, that being the aforementioned academic programs. I told you he was crazy! What? Academic successes are more important than any athletic trophy? Football was nothing more than a distraction in Hutchin’s eyes.

Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so academics was more pleasing to his eye than those gleaming throphy cases with their shiny objects encased for posterity,  and the press praising them as the most pleasing aspect of what the University of Chicago stood for. All snark aside, I really admire the man from afar, historically. Not that I don’t watch college football now and then. The admiration is a function of not just how improbable any such similar scenario would be a la the Notre Dame example above, but of what has become the tail wagging the academic dog dynamic of the many so-called “factory” schools of today. Factory for sure, as in football factory or basketball factory. The leading examples of such schools would be, well, in football, first and foremost, Notre Dame, Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan, Oklahoma, U of Southern California, Louisiana State University, Clemson, Florida State. Seriously, do any of those schools conjur up rigorous academic institutions?  In basketball it’s Kentucky, Duke, Kansas, UCLA, North Carolina, Villanova, Michigan State, Arizona State. These schools and their athletic programs bring in the big bucks if not attract the big brains to their classrooms. Money corrupts, for true, and to emphasize how some institutions of higher learning see things much differently than Mr.Hutchins did 80 years ago, the coaches at these factory schools make anywhere from 4-9 million dollars a year. Hmm. Wonder what the head of the chemistry department makes back at Notre Dame?

At these modern-day universities where their names connote young athletes who can run, pass, kick, catch, dribble, shoot, or slam dunk so well that in both professional basketball and football, their scouts start salivating over the next pituitary case towering over his teammates at a middle school in inner-city Chicago or some crazy-legged powerhouse tearing up the Astroturf at Denton High School in Texas.

Okay, I’m sure there are actual academic scholars at all those “factory schools” who will graduate with honors and (hopefully) find a good job that rewards their intellect if not their time in the 60 yard dash. But when they do get that prestigious gig as Vice President in Charge of Looking Out the Window, at Acme Widget, and the next fresh-faced intern is at their beck and call, the VP’s Honors certificate from Alabama or Michigan or Duke won’t compel any inquiries into the rigors of the school’s School of Business. The intern will likely want to know if Mr. or Ms.VP had any classes with that BMOC, or if he/she can score any tickets to the upcoming Big Game.

Hutchins=Great Books program. Multi-million $ coaches at those factories= Great playbooks.

By the way, next Monday’s college football championship (remember, the U of C won TWO of them back in the day!) has Alabama as 4 and a half-point favorite over Clemson. Bama’s coach is highest paid in college football. Hutchins wouldn’t understand how in the world that would make any sense. No, Hutchins wasn’t crazy. But something else sure seems to be…

Mountain Lions. Monarch Butterflies. Bison. Polar Bears. Allen’s Hummingbird. Whooping Cranes. The Borneo Elephant. Black Rhinoceros.  Bengal Tiger. Brown Bear. Polar Bear. Red Wolf. Cheetah. Crested Penguin. Albatross. Darwin’s Frog. Komodo Dragon. Butterfly Fish. African Wild Dog. Radiated Tortoise. Bactrian Camel. Monte Iberia Eleuth. Cross River Gorilla. Kiwi. Otter. Iguana. Jaguar. Mandril. Yak.

What do all these species have in common?

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

If you said, they’re all endangered, you are correct! Some of them critically so. Critical sounds bad, but it’s better than the Wooly Mammoth or the Dodo, which are extinct.

Is this the natural order of things, (a.k.a. natural selection) this shaking out of what species endure or die off, or uh, you know, is this situation aided and abetted by another species? A hostile one?

Bueller? Anyone? If you said the human species, you are again correct. And if you pointed the finger at Homo sapiens, then you must believe in science, because the extinction or declining populations of those noted above and many, many more species are studied and monitored  scientifically. Facts. Empirical observation. Testing of hypothesis. Rigirously so.  Organizations such as the Nature Conservancy, Audubon, and National Wildlife Federation and National Reources Defense Council are documenting the cause/effects of man-made climate change, poaching, and habitat destruction by commercial encroachment, all of which are not the natural order. 

These science-oriented members of humankind are NOT the hostiles. They have a truth-seeking agenda and a magnanimously oriented intelligence that their fellow,  adversarial, Homo sapiens apparently do not share. Their studies and data and conclusions, point fingers at exactly those who clearly create the hostilities to the environment, creating man-made threats to all earth-dwelling species, and our planet itself, and therefore require consciousness-raising battles that are always an uphill effort 

There is some good news, at least, from these eco and wildlife hill climbers, as in the creation of over a million acres of conflict free habitat via the Adopt a Wildlife Acre program. However, the information I receive (having donated a modest sum to a few of these organizations, and thus getting their newsletters/updates) related to species decline and environmental causes all use the same phrase to describe the dynamic of fighting the (unnatural) forces at play here: an uphill battle.

Battle. Right. Against the deniers. Against the willfully ignorant. You know, from the White House to–in the most cynical of examples–the anti-environment Environmental Protection Agency. All part of what I call the new abnormal normal. Hey, shrinking polar ice caps, rising sea levels, greenhouse effect global warming, groping women’s private parts, foreign interference in the 2016 election are simply labeled as “fake news”.  For those of us who have rational minds, now woeful and weary of trying to understand how things have gotten this bad, we wonder when deliverance will come. Or IF it will come before it’s too late? Sure there have been a series of disappointing administrations the last few election cycles as far as their acting to benefit the general welfare of We, the People. But this?! This?! W.T.F?

We now live in the era of multi-national interests, with international treaties, trade policies, globalization. But it is a struggle to feel there is at least a presumed default level of common wisdom at work to guide our global common interests. All for one, one for all, right?….anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

At least in theory, that is.

Remember, as children, we were exposed to the fairy tale world? We were told stories. Stories that embraced seeming unreal beauty, good luck, happiness, even perfection. Well, that’s for the teeny little ones to ingest and believe in, still. For awhile. You know, about the time we stopped believing in the Tooth Fairy and the fat man in the red suit. Apparently, it would seem, not all little children were read fairy tales that stuck with them, providing a sense that while the years go by and by and life throws curve balls, bean balls, trials and travail at us, there is great value in knowing that individually and collectively such difficult episodes of life can be overcome. You know, the balm of the happy ending.  It might be an uphill battle but nonetheless that hill can and oh, yes, will be conquered and at its top there can be some approximation of unreal beauty, perfection, even happiness.

Then again, as children we encountered the antithesis of the fairy tale: Monster tales! Tension and relief. Tension and relief. Be careful. They’re out there.

So, I’m thinking the current ethos, far and wide, is skewed far more toward a Monster scenario than any hint of a fairy tale. Those newsletters I get from those battling against the dark forces? It seems to be one step forward, at least one, if not two steps back. Hey, let’s open up some of the protected natural wonders to fracking. Let’s gut the Clean Air and Water Act. How about we drill for oil in ANWR?

Recall the now extinct Wooly Mammoth. It would be larger than the Indian or African Forest Elephant (both endangered species) if it were still around. It would be monstrously large. But that wouldn’t make it a monster.

But they are out there…banal, cold-hearted killers. Monsters. 

Monsters under our beds. Monsters in our heads. Monsters from the Id. Monsters full of dread. No, they don’t look like Frankenstein’s monster, or the acid-blooded Aliens, or the romping, stomping, fire-breathing Godzilla. Those are “make believe” monsters. I’m talking about the real ones: The nuclear bomb is a monster. Man made, sitting dormant but waiting to be unleashed on humankind. The science-deniers. The willfully ignorant. The indifferent. The alien-ated. They’re all monsters writ large or small in the many “uphill battles” for our environment, for creatures large and small, for the “common good”.  Size aside, they are all man-made monsters emerged from the minds of once little children, who quite possibly have never been happy or good. But the biggest of them, those with official power? Watch out. They’re looming large.

These are the “fake” grown-ups. They are the perpetual playground bullies, not yet having been put in their place.  They, rather, have been put IN PLACE. Unwittingly? Stupidly? Monstrously. They’re out there all right. And in plain sight. I’d like to think that maybe in another generation or two, if our environment can hang tough with occasional victories of good people fighting those uphill battles, plus those now slowly seeing the need to act, a bit of a fairy-tale reality might come about. Maybe not pixie dust stuff, or Bambi or Tinkerbell; you know, when the Cookie Monster is as bad as it gets, and the flesh and blood ones are on the endangered species list, and with some of that fairy-tale luck will eventually become extinct. 

Arthropods. Hey, they help keep soil healthy. You know, soil, from which things grow. The Arthros include insects, mites, spiders and millipedes that dwell in soil, ranging in size from the microscopic to the fully visible to the naked eye. These creatures do a wide range of work, including shredding dead plant tissue, improving soil structure by burrowing, and controlling the number of other harmful soil organisms that may cause damage to crops. Creepy, crawly millipedes help the soil by breaking down dead material so it can be converted into organic matter by many of those other soil organisms. Their brethren in making soil healthy are single cell microscopic bacteria called protozoa, which are one-celled animals doing positive work, down and dirty work in soil, as well as the good ol’ earthworm. Earthworms are quite industrious invertebrates that shred plant residue, burrowing channels for roots and water to infiltrate and more! As thanks to the earthworm, they are often eaten by birds or impaled on a fisherman’s hook to lure fish to pounce on only to themselves be reeled in by said fisher-person, gutted and eaten.  As Woody Allen once noted, such a food-chain that sees one thing eating another makes the world essentially one huge restaurant.

Speaking of restaurants, including the one called your personal kitchen/dining digs, a great service to what can end up on our plates is performed by the also instinctual hard-working honey bees. Having watermelon, blackberry pie, lemonade, olives, cucumbers, peppers, broccoli,  guacamole, peanut butter and jelly, anything with onions, or anything with tomatoes? Great, then send a note of appreciation to your local honey bee hive, because you aren’t eating any of those foods if the honey bee wasn’t around.

Heard about the “colony collapse” regarding such bees? It’s real. And it’s really serious, as one study by Northwest Honeybee Habitat Restoration showed a loss of 44% by beekeeper’s colonies.  One significant contributing factor of their endangerment is neonicotinoid pesticides. Science shows there are a number of different outcomes to the bees after exposure as they do what comes natural to them as pollinators of fruits, vegetables and much more that we humans take for granted; but the pesticide causes bees to become confused and unable to navigate back to their hives. Unable to find their way home, they die. Even if the exposed bees are able to find their way home, covered in contaminated pollen, they then contaminate the entire colony.

So, let’s hear it for Ma Nature’s natural order of things!

And now let’s hiss and boo the human element that, even beyond the honey bee situation, may contribute to a la fin du monde. You know, the climate science that bodes ill for Mother Nature and our planet? And if not that outcome, which is on course and not helped by science-deniers, and  our current EPA basically defunding itself and possible palliatives if not a complete recovery from greenhouse gases, shrinking polar ice caps, depletion of the vital ozone layer, there’s our “doomsday”nuclear clock, that thanks to the blustering and dick-measuring between President Strangelove and Kim Jun Un of North Korea, has now been set at two-and-a-half minutes til midnight. If the clock strikes midnight, then Mutual Assured Destruction will bring a different but equally deadly contamination upon honey bees and the whole lot of life on our sweet, swinging sphere.

In either of these disturbing, but real possible outcomes, there will be no restaurants serving much of anything, eventually.

As Sir Isaac Newton once said: I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.

And consider this: Newton died in 1727.

Oh, it is SO refreshing to see the Democratic Party leadership take a strong stand in this, possibly our nation’s “darkest hour”.  Am I referring to their dogged defiance flung in faces of the feckless Republicans and their cruelly destructive tax plan, thereby thwarting any chance of it becoming law? Of course not. How could they? The Democrats have absolutely zero impact on national politics theses days–at least as far as their GOP adversaries goes. That’s because, well, the GOP has the numbers.  That is, a 240-194 edge in the House of Representatives and 52-46 lead in the Senate (there are 2 Independent Party senators). Those numbers mean the GOP, technically, doesn’t need a single vote from their friends across the aisle in order to have their legislative way. Never mind that the GOP is so divided as far as how heartless, venal and vile they want to be. I call the Republicans Murder, Inc. Why not, given their way people should either be wealthy enough to afford health care or just die. They want to gut Social Security, Medicare and many social safety net programs, turn that money over to the free market cutthroats, and fuck anyone who suffers and withers away. It a dog-eat-dog world, eh? The GOP mascot is an elephant (an insult to that species, which is very socially conscious and intelligent) although the Grim Reaper seems most suitable with this bunch  who are clearly saying yeah, people are gonna fucking die and in some cases the sooner the better and that’s what they get for not being wealthy enough to not let us kill them as quickly–and profitably–as possible.

But back to the Democrats and that “strong stand”. That’s Nancy Pelosi and her other wheezing political hacks demanding John Conyers resign NOW! for his apparent sexual offenses recently reported upon, a la Weinstein, Spacey, Rose, Keillor, Laurer and the lot. Sure, these men are scoundrels and pigs. But Pelosi being so  adamant about Conyers having to resign NOW! Hey, where was all this vigor, outrage and bile when President Pussy Grabber was busted (by himself saying he grabbed women by their…on camera!) during the 2016 campaign?  Where was she and her righteous brothers and sisters in the DNC when the GOP was continually preaching the proven to always fail dogma of “trickle down” economics in decades past (she’s been around a LONG time, this Pelosi). Where was this justice now! cry when the 2000 election was blatantly stolen by the GOP? Or the 2004 election, again stolen, or the phony “evidence” that rushed the U.S. into a senseless war in Iraq? Where was this sense of urgency earlier that wrong-doing must have consequences? Did Nancy immediately and relentlessly scream foul back then? 

If Conyers is a sexist pig, he needs to go, certainly. But then so does Pussy Grabber, by any moral (and criminal) measure. Hey Nancy. Anything to say about that? Of course not. Because Nancy is a tired old political hack. She’s trying to convince herself that she can still make a difference when an injustice comes to light. But those old bones that were once young and at least at one time had the potential to chase down much bigger targets than a haggard John Conyers are gone. Nancy has just enough loose teeth left to go snapping at the heels of another very old-timer, who is now low hanging, rotten fruit. Easy pickin’s, I’d say.

Pelosi the Pathetic! She and the rest of the DNC and 95% of her fellow flaccid, impotent, incompetent Dems should all be held to account themselves. Their “injustice”?: committing serial political malpractice. Party of the People, my ass. And committing malpractice for the better part of at least the last 36 years. If not for the corporate lap-dogs and turncoats that infest the Democratic Party, the GOP’s horror movie wouldn’t play as a continuing loop. We’ve seen this crummy film too many times. But now it’s even more sickening. It’s a snuff flick!

Pelosi and the Irrelevants. The Pussy Grabber and the Incorrigibles.

As Bill Shakespeare once said, a plague on both their houses!

Yesterday, in commenting on an opinion piece alluding to the “darkest hour” and our fake President by Richard Cohen in the Washington Post, I said the marquee of American was full of dim or burned-out bulbs, and wondering how much darker things could get. Well, looks like some nasty, possibly enduring dark is almost certainly about to descent upon 99+ % of the American public. I am specifically alluding to the draconian tax legislation proposed by the GOP.

Unlike the umpteenth attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which even with a GOP controlled congress has failed over and over again, this tax bill, without needing a single Democrat or Independent member of the Senate’s vote, is about to be approved. Made into LAW. And unless you are somehow insulated from such political matters (by apathy, exhaustion, being easily distracted by pop culture/social media or too busy with trying to find that bluebird of happiness) you have GOT to have heard just how horrible a tax bill the GOP has crafted. Hey, it’s what the Republicans do.

And what they are doing is shepherding a blatant transfer of wealth to–not simply that  1% most often noted as the benefactors of Republican economic ideology–but more like the top ONE-TENTH of that %! The Congressional Budget Office, as well as countless other economic experts (look em up) has spelled out the short and long-term damage that will be done to just about everybody but those with the vast majority of the wealth right now. Powerful multinational corporations and the obscenely rich will become all the more powerful and obscenely rich. I will get taxed more (sooner or later, as the bill is written with its slight-of-hand provisions that give with one hand while taking away even more with the other) and you will get taxed more. It is literally written. If you are sitting in a coffee shop, a restaurant, or at a supermarket, or at work, in a college classroom, on a commuter train, at a movie, or a play, walking down the boulevard, possibly pushing a toddler or two in a carrier, at a museum, waiting in line at a bank, browsing a bookstore, at a laundromat, a library, in church, in an elevator, a department store, at the post office, with your book club, at a concert, a car wash, at the airport, mall-walking, at the gym, or perched on a bar stool–wherever–look around and whoever you may see, from a total stranger, or barely an acquaintance, a friend, a close friend, maybe even your “intimate other,” THAT person, and that person’s family and friends, acquaintances, co-workers, neighbors and exponentially friends of their friends and their friend’s friends  and virtually every person you will randomly run into or see by routine will today and into the future, all will be economically strong-armed by this tax bill to help transfer more and more and more wealth to those who need it least. We all have a bullseye on our backs. And the GOP archer assassins have many arrows in their quivers.

It’s what the Republicans do.

Again, check out the CBO’s assessment plus those other experts who have weighed-in and condemned this piece of heartless, cold-blooded, amoral, avariciousness. This is the GOP: Murder, Inc.

We need a revolution, folks. Hello, out there. I said we need a…

Hello, folks. Are you on prescription drugs, trying to cope with reality? If so, good luck with that. Beware the opioids, of course. Maybe just some primo weed, eh? Or Wild Turkey 101.  MD 20/20? Sniffing glue? Or maybe you have religion. Possibly an organized, writ large system of faith or your own proprietary brand of belief in a higher power? As in see above, any of those noted options, possibly in a combo of indulgences. Hey, whatever gets you through the night.

You have your act together, sans any substances, or supplications to the imaginary Big Guy in the Sky? Good for you. This blog is my crutch, my form of relief from the fatal condition known as life. Oh, this and some abv beverages. And beyond, but not in need of rehab or anything like that. We all need stress relief. Anyone who claims to be stress free is a on something, for sure. Xanex (or the like). Or not awake. Not paying any attention. Or maybe dead. I’m confining this screed to life here in the good ol’ U.S.A. okay? You know, the country formed by our founding fathers. Good men they were, except for the slaves they “owned”.

I’m stressed. People! Especially the power brokers, but even random encounters with my fellow commoners. Opinions. Attitudes. Beliefs. Behavior. To truly express this everyday version of drip, drip, drip angst, I refer you to Charles Bukowski’s poem entitled The Shoelace. Bukowski told it like it was. Who’s telling it like it is today? There’s much to tell, most of it not pleasant. You know. Lots of men in the news. The buffoon in the White House. Congress again trying to give the wealthy yet another tax break by taking from the rest of us. Endless wars. Racism. Religious hypocrites (Roy Moore!). Scapegoating. Divisiveness. Plus the latest outrage, the daily busting of sexual assaulters (guys, c’mon) and the resulting ever-louder and angrier movement known as Me Too (good for you ladies!).  These revelations are becoming as routine as the mass shootings that plague this country. The subtext of most of the noted stress points invoked here clearly is: men behaving badly. Well, no one is perfect, regardless of gender, but there sure seems to be a much likelier chance of some male of the species causing everyone else concern, from that doofus in the White House to what I call Murder, Inc. a.k.a. the Republican party, to the scumbags who treat women like their personal playthings, to the street thugs jacking cars, or driving cars through retail shop doors and grabbing the goods, a sort of much more loud and violently expressed version of the five-finger discount,  or the deceptively “quiet” closeted psycho who, when it’s time to SNAP, with the help of the male-dominated National Rifle Association, is easily able to obtain an assault rifle and express his twisted disapproval and disappointment.

I’d like to think I’m not part of this seeming male-dominated source of stress, grief, shock, rage, tension and turmoil.  Okay, I’m generally in contempt of the public-at-large, that being because too many people, male and female, seem not to be able to think for themselves, and mistake prevarication and bullshit  for prime beefsteak. However, I am respectful toward the elderly, small children and animals. Well, most of the time.

There’s a Chinese proverb that goes: may you be born into interesting times

My lifetime? Interesting? Some of it. Although I can I can think of many other adjectives for all that I see or hear.

There’s something happening here

there’s a man with a gun over there

telling me I got to beware.

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound

everybody look what’s going down.

Hey, for what it’s worth…

As a person who has taught mass communication courses, and before that had to study the subject in grad school, I half-jokingly say to people I have a professional obligation to keep my ears and eyes open virtually every waking moment to get as clear idea of what passes for NEWS!

Well, okay. Not every waking moment. Hardly. I’m now a bit adrift in our 21st century, cyber laden access to myriad sources of, at best, “information” and at worst, utter inanities. News? Fact checked news? Finding such is akin to strenuously digging a well only to discover a few drops of potable water. 

While I may have to invoke the mass media to make some points in the classroom, honestly, this absolutely abnormal new “normal” media is offensive. In its quite evident subversive abnegation of journalistic integrity, the mainstream media now advances terms such as fake news and alternative facts with little to no blow-back to confront these assertions and their spooky Orwellian blood lines. Doublespeak, anyone? No, I can’t regularly any longer indulge this strange new media landscape, littered with pop trash, misinformation, and glaring biases. One must undertand that “news” isn’t just what is selectively spoken or written about. It’s also a matter of what, selectively, is NOT spoken or written about. Objectivity in reporting? Editorial honesty? Keep digging that well…

As a palliative,  I’m thinking of an ether I.V.

The media. Electronic or print, social platforms, and more, sometimes referred to as “the fourth estate,” once-upon a time simply know as our free press, kept an eagle eye out for that which might undermine our country’s democratic ideal: of, by, and for the people. The power of the press! Confronting abuses of power. Protecting free speech, practicing investigative journalism, finding iron-clad facts, striving to adhere to the famous quote by Finley Peter Dunne that the press should comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.

Not so much these days, in my humble (but informed) opinion. Whereas the press once flung facts in the face of one Richard Nixon, a la the Watergate scandal, having doggedly dug incriminating detail from the mouth of one deep throat, causing Nixon to resign from office, what example of the same fearless fourth estate is evident today? Rather than dig for facts, it legitimizes nonsense such as “alternative facts” and “fake news” by repeating their utterances from those for whom some affliction is long past due.

Don’t hold your breath waiting on that type of old-school, roll-up-the-sleeves-and-let’s-get-to-the-bottom-of-this story journalism. I’ve witnessed the “new normal” style of American non-fourth estate journalistic ethic starting, primarily, with the U.S. invasion of the Persian Gulf in 1990. In that instance, the press–both print and electronic–allowed the military to play editor on what it could or couldn’t report about the goings on during our rescue of Kuwait from Iraq. Why? The Pentagon remembers how in the 60s during the Vietnam conflict, showing the actual carnage and body bags fueled the anti-war forces that helped end that disastrous effort to halt the spread of the Communist boogeyman. Thus, in order to “justify” putting our troops in harm’s way to protect Kuwait’s oil, the press was told to get “imbedded” with the troops, subject to editorial control over its reporting or get lost. And the press said, hey, we’re on board! The entire Gulf I deployment was a classic propaganda campaign that demonized Saddam Hussein (Time magazine put Saddam’s mug on its cover and declared him global enemy # 1)  and the drumbeat for war was thus given a thumbs up by a compliant and supportive press. I was appalled. And alarmed. But then came Gulf II in 2003 and George W. Bush’s resumption of hostilities against Saddam, again with the press in non-snarling, lapdog mode, but only after it had been again compliant and complacent in the blatant theft of the White House in the 2000 presidential election that saw the Supreme Court order Florida to stop counting votes, followed by the Court’s virtual insertion of W into the White House. The press didn’t scream foul then and demand democracy be respected. For that matter, neither did Al Gore, who had his victory blatantly nullified. W used the castrated Fourth Estate to further propagandize and lie about the need to stop Iraq per the mantra either we fight them there, or we fight them here. Oh, really? Hey, if that oft-repeated assertion wasn’t going to be challenged for evidence of its accuracy, then it was a fait accompli, in my view. And how did that military strategy work out? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

But all of that is fetid water under the Bridge of Lies. What’s with our Fourth Estate these days? Hmm. Let’s see. Must be something. Oh, right! There was that 2016 election, you know the one in which much consternation and controversy has followed, with the–again–apparent loser (by 3 million popular votes, but saved by apparent Russian tinkering, voter suppression and a Democratic candidate unwittingly determined to repel voters) being declared the winner.

How is our new faux President doing? To some, just swell, to others not so good. He seems to be teflon coated from any critical thinking person, private sector, public sector or most disturbingly–and again–that Fourth Estate. How so? Recall his many signs of being one rotten human being: disparaging a “gold star” family; mocking the disabled; demonizing Muslims and Mexicans; declaring he could shoot dead someone in Manhattan and his supporters wouldn’t abandon him and, unquestionably, his one stunning pronouncement (via TMZ, caught on audio/video during his pre-candidacy incarnation as a reality TV show host) that he could grab attractive women by their pussies because he was such a celebrity. Hmm. I thought sexual assault was a crime. Wait, it is! Without question. Just ask Harvey Weinstein. Or Kevin Spacey. Or George H. W. Bush. Or Dustin Hoffman and Jell-O Man, Bill Cosby, all of whom the media have relentlessly been filling air time and column inches to confirm their alleged criminal activities. Ah, that snarling news hound shows its teeth!

Somehow, someway, however, Mr.President Pussy Grabber, (unlike all of the aforementioned named who did NOT openly BRAG about their alleged sexual assaulting ways while knowing an audio/video recording was now evidence of such admission of criminal activity) seems immune from getting bit by such bad press. Hell, he hasn’t been held to account by that Fourth Estate for any of his vile characteristics. The mainstream media apparently loves this loathsome lout. But while other celebrities are being hounded by the intrepid investigative snoop dogs–aha! gotcha!–the one person who openly gave those same hounds the most scandalous, meaty case of all to pursue is apparently beyond reproach. Why? What? There’s no there there? What happened to all the women who–like with Weinstein and Cosby et al–corroborated such Mr.Apprentice self-disclosed attacks? They were just joshing? They didn’t really exist? Were they ever looked for? They were made an offer they couldn’t refuse?

Comfort the afflicted? Depends. It’s a selective process, okay? Afflict the comfortable? Selective… Fake news?Oxymoron anyone? Fake journalism. Yeah, right. I vote yes on that. For real. Recall the Mark Twain quote: If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.

Paging Bernstein and Woodward, 2017 editions…

Okay, time to publish here. Hope I afflicted a comfortably numb mind or two. If not, well at least I’m trying!

To paraphrase someone else who once asked: exactly where is that office within which I can resign from the human race?

No, this search has nothing directly to do with the polluted political landscape here in the land of alternative facts, fake news, and the swamp of sewage that passes for leadership in our national government, a stench that penetrates my senses and sends me seeking fresh air, somewhere, anywhere, to take some deep breaths, and possibly cleanse the mind/body palate. A little? Where’s that flowery meadow? Direct me to that placid lake, where I connect with, as the mojo goes, “meditation and water are forever wedded”. However, the stink is not only a domestic by-product of political dysfunction. It is also imported from around the world. And this is nothing new. Actually, it seems to be writ large as the history of the world a la  James Joyce’s Ulysses: history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. 

It’s not that I want to bury my head in the sand, nor simply throw up my hands and surrender to my personal angst and antipathy toward my fellow humankind. No, I cannot “resign” from the human race but I am having a difficult time resigning myself to accepting the ever-more evident modern, daily dose of news that documents the descent of decency.

What confronted me today, and reminded me that it can be a challenge to avoid confronting more grim reality? Well, I dared to visit the SPORTS PAGE of a national publication. Just a glance at some developments amongst the competitive goings-on, a recap of a World Series game, or the scores of the local teams, be it now basketball, football, hockey or even soccer. Soccer? Isn’t that the sport that “sports” the infamous soccer “hooligans”? I do believe so. However, a sidebar story grabbed my glazzies via its headline,  Italian soccer to feature Anne Frank’s Diary. What in the wide, wide world of…

I read the short piece that revealed that some fans of the futbal team from Lazio, Italy decided it was suitable to appropriate the image of Anne Frank, the incredibly impressive young girl whose diary, penned while hiding from the Nazis in the Netherlands from 1942 to 1944, is a revered posthumously published work known throughout the world. To what end did the Lazio fans use Frank’s image, ironically one in which she has a sweet smile on her face? It certainly wasn’t an homage to this tragic historical figure. It was used to express anti-Semitic hatred, the shirts and stickers of Frank’s smiling face being edited to show her wearing the jersey of Lazio”s soccer rival Roma. This loathsome display of mindless hate by a pact of Lazio fans was littered all about Stadio Olimpico during a recent match.

In response to this repulsive desecration of one of the millions of Jews who perished during the Holocaust, Lazio President Claudio Lotito said it plans to intensify efforts to combat racism and anti-Semitism within its fan base, including organizing an annual trip to Auschwitz concentration camp with hundreds of young fans. Good for him. Also, the Italian soccer federation staged readings from passages of Anne Frank’s diary before soccer matches in Italy this past week.

How did that go? Did I use the term humankind earlier? Some fans in Lazio and Bologna sang fascists songs and made fascist salutes during the readings. Sickening.

As if Anne Frank didn’t meet a cruel enough fate, in a life that didn’t quite make it to her 16th birthday, she again is victimized–as too with all of the victims of one of the darkest moments in recorded human history. Her diary, written under unimaginable circumstances wherein she and her family hid in hope that somehow, some way, they would evade capture–and almost certain death. They were betrayed, and sent to their deaths in one of the camps.

No, there is no such office to “resign” from being a member of the human race, and history’s nightmares need be remembered in hopes of not repeating itself. We humans clearly, are not perfect. But the imperfections of some go exponentially beyond any hint of a default setting of being decent human beings.

Peace, love and understanding, anyone? I’m of that generation. And while I’d like to think I am a decent human being, it becomes more and more enervating to process these atrocities based on racial, ethnic or religious differences.

It would do everyone well to embrace John Donne’s perspective on life: Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to seek for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Amen.

Yesterday, I wrote a letter to Elizabeth Warren urging her and her fellow “progressives” to unite and form a new national party.  Of course she/they won’t dare do anything so bold as to create a 3rd party. But I was compelled to send that request/plea in response to her request/plea sent to me. While all I want is a national party that truly represents we the people, and that certainly isn’t either the GOP or the DNC, what Ms.Warren wanted from me was–what else? Money. The solicitation came in the mail, with her mechanically reproduced signature on the mass mailing seeking financial support to Stop Trump! Such a sense of urgency invoked in the reading of the mailing, telling me nothing I don’t already know about how massively dangerous is Trump and the GOP in general. Yeah, it’s really messed up Liz. But why should I send you any dough? I didn’t create this nightmare of national political dysfunction. You did! Along with the DNC.

You might be thinking, what is this guy talking about? Senator Warren helped create this new abnormal normal? She is always railing against the GOP. True, and I gave her credit for that in the letter. However, my umbrage was focused on how it was so crystal clear that Hillary Clinton was increasingly losing favor as the campaigns went on, and that white-haired, 74-year-old, Bernie Sanders was gaining on her in the Democratic primary elections, in spite of having no starting campaign war chest, virtually no mainstream media coverage, and running as a Socialist! By the time it was apparent that Mr.T was going to get the GOP nomination, and the polls were showing Hillary slip-sliding, while Bernie raised 228 million dollars in individual donations, garnered 13 million primary votes and won 23 of those contests against Ms.Clinton, I kept waiting for the DNC to realize their horse was fading in the stretch, while Sanders was charging from behind like a stallion. He was the real populist. The other one, the guy who now occupies the White House, was a bullshit artist who appealed to a virtually all-white crowd of suckers.

Hillary may have generated a few million more votes than Mr.T, but it is now, and was then, plain to see a disastrous campaign being perpetuated by DNC leadership with blinders on, destined to alienate many potential supporters. And it was the electoral college numbers that reflected her managing to lose just enough support to…well. The DNC’s supposed thoroughbred, strutting about before Mr.Sanders decided to enter into the supposed foregone conclusion of a primary race, on election night became the flop-sweat loser that many (myself included) sensed somehow, someway, was a plausible outcome.

The DNC managed to fight off Sanders bid–along with the help of the tag team of the slanderous sisters Wasserman-Schultz and Brazile. and misguided staunch Clinton supporters wearing those same illogical blinders. For the DNC’s arrogance and stupidity, we (those of us who saw Mr.T as the buffoon/con man for what he always was, and Clinton as the disaster waiting to happen) now have not just a seeming mentally unstable, politically ignorant and ever-more dangerous Twitter maniac in the White House, but the DNC and Hillary performed so poorly nationally on the “down ticket” races that the Republicans control everything as far as the branches of government goes.

So, back to Ms.Warren’s Stop Trump! plea for some of my money. Sorry, but now the American public (those as noted above per seeing reality for what is was) are supposed to finance this resist/fightback! strategy? We, the people, have save the day for those who failed at a most crucial time in our history? I asserted in my letter to the Senator that she is part of a now severely weakened, incompetent and for all politically practical purposes, irrelevant Democratic Party. Seriously, how can the Democrats so frequently lose to sinister, vile, anti-democratic, corporate lackeys that infest the GOP? How can the Buffoon connect with 61 million Americans? Shouldn’t, by logic and reason, Ms.Clinton have landslided her opponent? Trump, the xenophobe; the racist; the Islamaphobe; the mysogynist, the empty suited cretin marinated in a muck of self-absorbed demagoguery. And, mind one and all, the polls taken along the primary trail consistently showed Mr.Sanders and his “enough is enough” mantra very likely beating the Buffoon in the general election. Blinders.

One fake populist, one real populist. The public clearly was sick of politics-as-usual, but the Democrats shoved a corporatized, smug political elitist with a stale campaign style and little imagination down too many people’s throats. The Buffoon’s fans swallowed his shrill swill, and who knows if they realize now how dumb that was? Can they taste the bitter, rotten fruit they picked? But damned if they would vote for Clinton, eh? Ok. Stupid is as really, really stupid does. But how many of them, when ultimately left with a choice of even a cartoonish “outsider” and a robotic political hack, went rogue, says something about Ms.Clinton’s persona more than any strain of misogyny and the usual voter suppression the DNC knew was already in place (and hey, remind me. What did the Obama administration do to call out the GOP on their usual dirry tricks? Oh, now I remember. Nothing of consequence)

Indeed, there’s plenty of blame to be placed on our Dumb Electorate, but this is what happens when the so-called party of the people goes corporate and smugly thinks that their one-time swell of followers have nowhere else to go. Think again, DNC.  Plenty of those old or new left-leaning potential voters, not wanting another dynastic family face heading the Democratic ticket, and after Sanders was inevitably beaten back, went to the Right in spite, while others went somewhere but not to the voting booth.

Me, I’m a 3rd party voter. Call it a protest vote. But not always. I sent money to the Warren campaign twice when she ran for the senate in Massachusetts several years ago. I do think she is a damn good senator. But why did she not attempt even a token plea for the Party to jettison Clinton and back Bernie, who was actually attracting voters, not alienating them? Even she put the blinders on. That why I’m not sending anyone any money who is a Democrat ever again.

I grew up in the time of the first Mayor Daley of Chicago. He was a machine politician, sure. However, he had the right mojo when it came to elections: don’t make no waves, and don’t back no losers.

Resist! Indivisible! Stop Trump! Good luck with that. Send money! Help!

No thanks, I am for the making of waves, but I am not for the backing of losers who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Ask Oprah for some greenbacks. Or Mr.Buffet.  Or Gates Or George Soros. Certainly they can afford to throw away some of their money. I sure can’t.