Personal – Page 15 – Walking Contradiction

My Electoral Dread

With the mid-term elections coming up in a few weeks here in the US, many of us are hoping for the “blue wave” that will help to counteract the extreme direction that the Trump regime has pulled this country. But having observed how things have been operating for the past two years, I can’t help but feel a sense of dread about what will happen.

One thing that has plagued politicians is being involved in a scandal. But in the Trump era, there are new scandals every day, sometimes so many at once that it’s hard to keep up. And I think that’s the plan: overwhelm people so that no single scandal gets any attention.

So this dread I feel is that on Election Day, there won’t be a few irregularities about the vote; there will be thousands and thousands. There will be so many that it won’t be possible to investigate them all. We will have no certainty about the results. There will be cries of fraud, but instead of taking them seriously, they will be met with the standard “you lost; get over it”. And as a result, the political arena will become more extreme than ever before.

I have never hoped that I am wrong as strongly as I do now.

Close to Home

OK, it’s not the best angle, but here is a picture of me being baptized:

baptism — My aunt Joan holding me as I was baptized

This is by itself unremarkable (except maybe for those who didn’t know that I was born into a Catholic family), but yesterday I learned something about the priest: Augustine Giella. It turns out that he was one of the priests named in the recent Pennsylvania Grand Jury report on child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. According to this article:

New Jersey court records indicate Giella confessed to fondling one of the girls and taking photos of her unclothed. Giella was facing sexual assault, child endangerment and child pornography charges in Ocean County, New Jersey, when he died in 1993 at about age 72.

giella in court — Augustine Giella in court

I was raised Catholic, until about age 13 when I realized that all that supernatural stuff was so much nonsense. But until then, I was a good Catholic boy, and was actually an altar boy for several years. I remember Giella and a few of the other priests who had been at that church since I was little. This was years before the reality of child abuse and the coverup by the church, but back then we all thought that anyone who wanted to be a priest had to be weird. So no, I don’t have a personal sordid tale of abuse. I’m lucky in that regard. They never did anything to me worse than feeding me the bullshit they fed every other kid. It’s just a very odd feeling to realize that that the monsters I have been reading about now that the cover-up by the Catholic Church is being unraveled are no longer abstract “others”, but that one of them was part of my life, and that perhaps some of my classmates at the time could have also been among his victims.

Handling White Supremacists

This is a thought experiment, not an actual proposal, so hear me out. Let’s take one state (Alabama and Mississippi come to mind as front-runners), and make it white-only. There will be a national relocation service, and within a period of say, two years, all non-white, non-Christian (can’t have Muslims or Jews here!) people will have to relocate to anywhere else in the country they want. Similarly, all white supremacists, including KKK, Nazis, “alt-right”, etc., will have to relocate to this newly-whitened state. For convenience, let’s assume that Alabama is selected, and renamed Alabaster.

Once that is done, it will be illegal to espouse those views outside of the state of Alabaster, but it will be completely legal within. We can follow the Chinese example and create a Great Firewall around Alabaster, so that all social media posts made in this state cannot be seen outside, and posts from non-whites cannot be seen within. Inside Alabaster they will be free to fly Confederate and Nazi flags and erect all the statues to Confederate figures they want. Anyone caught promoting white supremecist messages in the rest of the country will be forced to relocate to Alabaster. And, of course, Fox News will only be able to be seen by residents of Alabaster (and it will be the only news station).

We could also make it more comfortable for these racists by eliminating some of the other things that bug them. Obamacare will not apply to residents of Alabaster, so they can enjoy being excluded for pre-existing conditions and the like. There will also be no federal taxes: income tax, social security, medicare – none. Of course, no federal funds will be given to Alabaster, so they’ll have to maintain their own roads, feed their own poor, care for their own elderly, all out of their own pockets. In other words, Tea Party heaven!

Having set the stage for this thought experiment, I’m wondering what the population of Alabaster would eventually be. In other words, how many people in the current USA would volunteer to move to such a white-only state? And for those who did, I wonder how happy they’d be, now that all of the things that they are currently so angry about have been removed from their lives. I would like to hear your thoughts on this.

Bag Claim Etiquette

This seems so simple that it should be obvious, but it apparently it’s not, so I guess I have to spell it out. When waiting at a baggage claim carousel, you should stand back a few feet until you see your bag. Not only does it make it easier for everyone to get a view of the bags, but it leaves room for unloading the bags. Don’t crowd the carousel like these people:

One guy has the right idea, but he can’t see the bags that are coming because the others are blocking his view.

On a recent flight I saw my bag coming around , and had to squeeze my way through the people crowding the carousel. When it came, I grabbed it and lifted it off in order to put it on the ground. In the process it struck one of the people crowding the area, and he gave me a dirty look. I gave him one right back. It’s simply rude not to give a fellow traveler enough room to retrieve their luggage, and when you see someone grabbing their bag, it’s up to you to get out of their way.

Trump Is Not The Enemy

Are you numb yet? To all of the outrageous, dishonest, and self-serving things that Donald Trump does? Or does your blood still boil every time his name is mentioned? I find myself in the latter camp, but I’m here to remind you of something very important: Trump Is Not The Enemy.

He is an enemy, of course, but by focusing on him, we miss the bigger picture. Thought experiment: imagine that tomorrow morning you wake up to see that Trump has tweeted his resignation. He’s gone. Not only that, but Bob Mueller also announces indictments of Trump Sr., Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump. They’re all going to prison for a long, long time. Would that mean that things will be all right again?

Hardly. The Republican party controls all 3 branches of government, and they have been more than happy to ride along with the Trump populist train in order to achieve their goals. They have confirmed nominees to cabinet posts who are not only unqualified, but who have expressed views that are 180° opposed to the office they occupy. They have tried to take away health care to millions of people, and are currently planning on redistributing even more of the income of the masses to the extremely wealthy. They have wantonly ignored the truth, and instead parroted Fox News talking points. If Trump were to disappear, we’d have President Mike Pence, who would gladly continue, if not accelerate, the decline of our country.

It is not Trump, but the Republican party that is the true enemy. The only way we can progress as a country is to remove them from power.

How do we do that? My suggestion is to tie everything that Trump does to Republicans. If Trump hints about nuking North Korea or killing gay people, don’t place the blame solely on him. Place it on the enablers. Place it on the Republicans. Hold them accountable.

There are several Republicans in Congress who have expressed privately that they feel that Trump is unstable, but instead of acting on that, they just let it continue. Hold them accountable.

There is an overwhelming track record of violating the emoluments clause, and personally profiting from government use of his properties, but the Republicans turn a blind eye to that. Hold them accountable.

If in the weeks to come, evidence of Trump’s collusion with Russia surfaces, or any of a number of other potentially impeachable offenses are revealed, the power to impeach is 100% in the hands of the Republican majority. If they don’t act as swiftly and as thoroughly as they did investigating Hillary Clinton for Benghazi, they are excusing those acts, and thus complicit. Make that the headline, and hold them accountable.

We need to constantly tie our outrage to the Republicans, and not just to Trump, if we ever hope to move this country back to a positive direction. We need to stop focusing on winning the White House, and focus instead on winning state legislatures so that we can undo the gerrymandering that has allowed them to control the House with a minority of votes. We need to be sure to target every single Republican who is up for re-election in 2018, and tie them inextricably to Donald Trump. Trump is going down in flames, and we need to bring all of his enablers down with him.