The Life in My Years

“But it might be argued that had more non-Nazi Germans read it (Hitler’s Mein Kampf) before 1933 and had the foreign statesmen of the world perused it carefully while there was still time, both Germany and the world might have been saved from catastrophe. For whatever accusations can be made against Adolf Hitler, no one can accuse him of not putting down in writing exactly the kind of Germany he intended to make if he ever came to power and the kind of world he meant to create by armed German conquest.” William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich.

Mr. Shirer’s words can be borrowed for the present.

But it might be argued that had more American voters read Project 2025 and listened to Donald Trump’s very words, and had Joe Biden perused the polls carefully while there was still time, both America and the world might have been saved from catastrophe. For whatever accusations can be made against him, no one can accuse Donald Trump and his associates of not putting down in writing, or in words, exactly the kind of America they intended to make if Trump ever came back to power.

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“The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.” – Montesquieu, Spirit of the laws, 1748

“I don’t like politics.
“Politics is depressing.”
“I avoid politics.”
“Talking about politics always leads to arguments and bad feelings.”
“No political talk in the house.”
“Politics is ruining Facebook.’

I see that last one a lot.

I’m pretty certain that I’ve been unfollowed by a few of the friends on my Facebook feed. I’m no fun, and I’m too depressing with all this political stuff. Yep – guilty as charged. Since that day, January 20th, most of what I’ve posted has been politics related.

What are those trite rejoinders? Oh yeah, “Too bad, so sad.” “Sorry, not sorry.”

It’s not as if I’m not showing up on lots of feeds. Put up a photo of my grandson playing basketball, or of a Sacher torte in Vienna, or a photo of a castle in Bavaria and the like-o-meter lights up like the DC skies on the Fourth of July.

A post about USAID food meant for starving kids, rotting on a dock because the administration has frozen distribution and –

crickets.

Too depresing.

The silence is deafening

and discouraging.

But guess what. It’s not really politics. Not anymore.

What is politics? Webster defines politics (in part) as:
a: the art or science of government
b: the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy
c: the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government

Hell we’re beyond those banalities. Right now it’s all about decency, fairness, morality, charity, empathy, propriety, humanity and a whole lot of other “ities.” Because all of those things are absent from the current administration.

And nobody seems to care.

Crickets.

So I have to assume that all of the people who are “above” politics don’t really care about the grotesqueries that the administration is perpetrating in our names. I assume that they are okay that:
The United States is no longer feeding the hungry.
The United States has stopped delivering medicine to the sick.
The Secretary of State worked out a deal that could send American prisoners to a penal colony in El Salvador.
Trans people have gone from being marginalized to being victims of a policy that is literally trying to erase them from society.

There’s nothing political about the list above. You are either a decent person with a functioning moral compass who decides to speak out, or your soul is a silent, empty, unprincipled desert.

Everyone is comfy-cosy about a cabinet composed entirely of ideological imbeciles, sycophants, and unqualified nincompoops who are not beholden to their duties to work for the good of the nation but rather are serving as unyielding loyalists to a vindictive president who is off his rocker? Everyone’s cool with a clown show running most of the agencies that affect daily life from everything we consume, to the air we breathe, to the stewardship of the national parks we visit, to education, medicine, research, and national, personal and financial security. And that’s just a start? I have to assume that everyone, save a select few, are good with the calamity.

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At some point more people will care – when they or those who are close to them start to feel the heat. When:
The local gardener or the nice kid who used to bus tables at a favorite restaurant are suddenly gone because they got swept up in an ICE raid. And they were doing work you wouldn’t touch. “Why should I pull weeds in my own garden when I can hire a Mexican to do it.” Off to Home Depot for a pair of gardening gloves and “damn my aching back.”

Maybe they themselves get stopped by the authorities and are asked to show their papers because they look, well, kinda brown and are speaking in Spanish. “But I’m a citizen.” “Prove it.” says the government man. “Let’s see your papers.” (I know a lot of people, myself included, who don’t have to worry about that because we’re, you know, white).

The nice, always helpful neighbor down the street is always puttering around in his yard now because he got fired from his job as an FBI agent because four years ago his boss’s, boss’s, boss picked him as the guy who had to look at a single file having to do with January 6th, and the new president wants those “disloyal” people kicked to the curb. Because they did their jobs.

Their kid’s school lunch program got cut by a billionaire who doesn’t really give a shit that some kids are hungry at midday.

Little Johnny has no appetite, can’t sleep at night and he has this horrible sounding cough and the Secretary of Health and Human Services is who? (The United States has recorded the highest number of cases of whooping cough fatalities since 2017 but worry not, RFK Jr is at the helm).

They can’t get their leaking roof fixed until mid-summer because the roofing guy’s labor all got sent packing.

No guac or Margarita’s at the Cinco de Mayo party this year because, you know, tariffs.

Their closest friend is distraught because his family is living in Kiev and the president is about to sell Ukraine down the Volga. Or maybe the closest friend’s family is living in Gaza and the president wants to send that family to Greece or Egypt or somewhere other than Gaza where they won’t be a nuisance, because the president wants that sweet beachfront property to build a resort on. Oh, and don’t bother suggesting that the refugees come here. The president isn’t accepting refugees from Gaza. He said so himself. They’re too – Muslim. And not white enough. And I guess they’ll steal “Black jobs.”

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So for me the silence and the apathy isn’t just discouraging – it’s disgusting.

That’s okay, just relax, we’ll do the heavy lifting for you. Until there’s nothing left to lift.

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The sad case of Mitch McConnell
There was old Mitch, the lone Republican dissenter in the vote to confirm an anti- vaccine, conspiracy theorist, a certified nut, to head up the Department of Health and Human Services. Old Mitch, headed for the old senator’s home, who absorbed the personal attacks against him and the racist attacks against his Chinese-American wife, by the very man who he endorsed to return to the presidency.

Old Mitch had polio when he was a child. Old Mitch voted against anti-vax kook Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who proposed the hollow, whacky theory that the polio vaccine cost more lives than it saved and that the vaccine did not wipe out the disease in the U.S.

Yeah, Old Mitch who had polio, had the audacity to vote against a vaccine denier. But the problem was, the vaccine denier was a Trump nominee. And so Trump did what Trump does. Turned on Old Mitch, saying of McConnell, “He’s not equipped, mentally. He wasn’t equipped 10 years ago, mentally, in my opinion. He let the Republican Party go to hell. If I didn’t come along, the Republican Party wouldn’t even exist right now. Mitch McConnell never really had it.” And when Trump was reminded that Old Mitch had polio, Trump’s response was to question McConnell’s childhood polio. That Trump; swell guy huh.

Old Mitch just now learning that Donald Trump is a vile, vindictive man who will turn against anyone who rubs him the wrong way. Or maybe he hasn’t learned. Ten years of chaos and one would think that old Mitch would have figured it out sooner.

Poor old Mitch. History will pillory him. Set Trump up with a Supreme Court justice that should’ve been Obama’s. Old Mitch was the guy who could’ve led the GOP away from the cliff. Two chances to use his leadership to move his party to convict when Trump was impeached (particularly the second time).

Poor Old Mitch. Probably dreamed of being included in the pantheon of Senators. Thought he might be a shoe-in to be included with Daniel Webster, Robert Taft, Robert LaFollette, Robert Wagner and Ted Kennedy. But Poor Old Mitch sold his soul to the devil and got snookered. History will remember McConnell as the man who lit the fuse that detonated the bomb that destroyed democracy.

Poor Old Mitch, out to pasture all by himself. The once powerful Senate Majority Leader, hated not only by the opposing party and independents, but by the very party that he made his life’s work,

Poor pathetic old Mitch.

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Weak Senators and Trump’s junk drawer
I recently wrote a letter to both of my Senators, Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff and took them to task for voting to confirm three of Trump’s cabinet nominees. I made the point that the nominees would pass anyway because the Republicans are either trying to stay off of the Trump radar or are trying to see how far up Trump’s ass they can get. So I suggested that if the nominee is going to pass, then just vote against. Send – a – message, that it’s not going to be business as usual.

I actually got a response from Schiff (or more likely a lackey or Chat GPT). The response came with a lesson about Article II and “advice and consent,” and the notion that the Senator found the nominees he voted to confirm to be qualified.

Well, Senator, or Mr. Lackey or Chat GPT, I know all about Article II. I’m also a realist who’s been following the circus like a groupie. Did the Senator not think that the nominees might perjure themselves? Has the Senator not yet discovered that unrepentant lying is a necessary job requirement to remain in good standing in Trump’s GOP? Kash Patel or Pam Bondi or little Marco commit perjury? If I found out that they’d ordered a mob hit on their grandmothers in order to win confirmation, I wouldn’t be shocked.

Little Marco’s Devil’s Island
And so, Senator Schiff voted for Marco Rubio. And how did “little” Marco repay the Senator’s trust? By working on a deal with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele for El Salvador to house (imprison) deportees from any nation as well as “violent U.S. nationals.”

“In an act of extraordinary friendship to our country … (El Salvador) has agreed to the most unprecedented and extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world,” Rubio announced. One can’t argue with “unprecedented and extraordinary.”

I have a few questions for either “little” Marco or Senator Schiff. Is “migratory,” the new euphemism for penal colony? Are judges going to go along with this notion? Will sentencing guidelines for American citizens be changed to include “life in a brutal hole in a foreign country?”

And before anyone pontificates, ‘don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time,’ maybe we should ponder what exactly will constitute a violent crime three years down the road. Will ‘subversive language against the state’ become part of the federal penal code that earns banishment to El Salvador?

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Eradication
I’ve been doing some pest control work on Facebook, finding MAGAs on my friends list and applying the digital version of RAID. Drinking from the Trumpian firehose has been challenging enough. Reading MAGA propaganda and rationalizations only increases the flow.

Take Bill Parker Jr. He appears frequently on a liberal friend’s feed so I see some of his comments from time to time. One particular post about Trump’s idea to annex Gaza in order to build a resort elicited a long thread of comments, most of them expressing outrage over the grifting scheme.

Mr. Parker, the lone dissenter, rationalized Trump’s scheme with a comment that characterized neatly the cruelty of the MAGA mindset. “Well, he’s a real estate developer,” Mr. Parker reasoned.

” He’s a real estate developer.” Oh, well, that’s a different story, changes things don’t you know. If you’re a real estate developer, it makes perfect sense to expel people from their homeland because the rich and the beautiful need a new sunny playground. Because Mr. Trump is a real estate developer he’s excused from the burdens of compassion, morality and the responsibility to rebuild the homes that we helped to level. You know, Eminent Domain, and Manifest Destiny. Let’s just throw in Lebensraum (living space), because if it worked for Hitler it can work for, you know, a real estate developer.

The MAGA population on my Facebook friends list has been pared down to family now. I have some relatives living in crimson Wyoming who have been taken in by the Trump grift. I’ve been advised by my wife to just block them. It’s a hard thing but as time and tragedy move along the removal of family is seeming more and more like a good idea.

Is the whole business of unfriending harsh? Too extreme? Especially when it comes to family? I’ve had no real problem with kicking to the curb, old high school classmates and people I’ve never formally met. I’m having trouble with the relatives but then again they’re leaving me little choice. As I said above, it isn’t a matter of politics anymore. It’s a matter of decency and morality. It’s a matter of shedding people who you find to have sacrificed whatever morality they had, or you believed they had. It’s a sad thing. I’d hoped that the monthlong chaos and purging and pettiness and vindictiveness and evildoing would have changed minds but a recent exchange proved that nothing has changed. If anything, the adoration for Trump has settled deeper into the place where the souls of my relatives once resided.

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What’s in a name?
Well, how about another assault on a free press? The White House banned a credentialed Associated Press reporter and photographer from Air Force One because the AP referred to the Gulf of Mexico as, well, the Gulf of Mexico, violating Trump’s vanity project of renaming that body of water to Gulf of America.

A MAGA commenter on Facebook opined that the renaming is not only appropriate but doesn’t cost a dime. Well, that’s true if you don’t count a few small changes:
Highway signs
NOAA and the U.S. Coast Guard and armed services would need to update ALL official nautical charts, GPS databases, and navigation buoys that reference the Gulf of Mexico.
Digital system updates for commercial shipping fleets, military vessels, and private boaters.
Federal Agencies (FEMA, DOT, EPA, NOAA, etc.) would need to update thousands of official reports, response plans, legislation, websites, and maps that reference the Gulf of Mexico
State and local governments would need to change names on legal documents, regulatory filings, and promotional materials.
Education changes:
Textbooks, atlases, and educational materials.
Standardized test questions and state assessments.

Are Elon and the DOGE bros sharpening their pencils and looking into these costs?
I’ll wait.

And as if renaming the Gulf of Mexico isn’t petty and stupid enough, Congressman Earl L. “Buddy” Carter of Georgia is vying for the bootlicker of the year award. I guess it’s in anticipation of Trump successfully annexing Greenland (see Lebensraum, above), that good ol’ “Buddy” introduced an actual bill in congress to rename Greenland, Red, White and Blueland. No, this is not a joke. It is HR 1161.

I wonder if Donald Trump knows there’s a state named New Mexico. Shhhh, don’t tell him.

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Rest in peace goodwill
I recently watched the last episode of the series, Masters of the Air, which tells the story of the 100th Bomb Group, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber unit in the Eighth Air Force, based in England during World War II. At the close of the episode the war is in its last days and the 100th has gone from dropping bombs to dropping relief. There was a famine in German occupied areas of the Netherlands and during the final ten days of the war, the United States Army Air Force dropped 4000 tons of food to help feed the Dutch. In this episode, the bomber crew has just made a low level drop of food and as they are about to pull up they notice a message cut into the colorful tulips on the ground. The message says. “Many thanks Yanks.” (I looked it up. Yes, this actually happened)

My wife and I cried because that’s all gone now. Eighty years of friendships have been expunged in one short month.

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Protest
Back to where this piece begins – apathy. I went to one of the President’s Day protests; this one in Sacramento, California. It was a large crowd estimated to be 1500. Not large enough for my tastes though. Where are you, my fellow Americans? What are you waiting for? The more the rot spreads and settles in, the more difficult it will be to get rid of. The rot is seeping into this venerable old house. Unchecked, rot will result in the collapse of the whole shining city.

“Because it’s been said that today, you’re part of the solution or you’re part of the problem. There is no more middle ground, because the problem is rampant, the problem is a problem of survival, of blood, of your heart beating, of the hearts of people continuing to beat.” ~ In October 1968 Eldridge Cleaver spoke at Stanford University in California and used this expression but disclaimed authorship

Photos below are those I took at Sacramento, California protests.