The Life in My Years

47 – America’s Nightmare: The Sorry State of the Union

Paul

March 6, 2025

March 4, 2025.
Aspiring Fuehrer Donald J. Trump gave a State of the Union Speech before the usual gaggle; members of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, a bunch of bemedaled generals and anyone in the world who had nothing better to do. Nothing better to do sounds rather apathetic, but the fact of the matter is that after Trump’s 100 minute harangue, nothing better would have been better.

In general, the State of the Union speech has become an anachronism, a holdover from the olden days that goes back to the early twentieth century. It’s kabuki that’s as yesterday as the telegraph and the Model T.

There’s the traditional grand entrance where members of Congress crowd towards the president, supplicating for the honor to shake the regal hand or touch his sleeve or to be recognized by name by whichever fearless leader is in charge at the time (one would think that Jesus himself was entering the building). During the address, members of the President’s party wait for the perfect pauses so that they can rise as one with thundering applause and huzzahs while the other side sits in smug, seated on their hands, silence.

Beginning with Ronald Reagan, the speech now includes props. Props in the form of people who are supposed to add some sort of real life context to the message. The human prop seated in the gallery stands and waves, while the President relates the human prop’s heartrending story of triumph or tragedy. At the end of the President’s tale, men are shouting praises and women are dabbing their eyes.

At the end of the speech, the President’s party proclaims the speech to be Churchillian, while the other party calls it a collection of hogwash, and the pundits analyze it to death while revealing the misrepresentations, and the outright lies. Afterwards, the opposing party chooses someone to give a televised response.

Historically the State of the Union has been a President’s annual message to Congress and the nation, that is meant to communicate the current condition of the country, and the President’s proposals for the coming year. Until 1912, the State of the Union was not an oratory but a written report submitted to Congress. Given the partisan theater that the State of the Union has become, perhaps the whole thing should revert to a written report.

47 – America’s Nightmare: The Mobbed UP White House

Paul

9 comments

March 4, 2025

Jason Barone: “I’m starting to feel a little intimidated.”
Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri (Tony Soprano’s brutal henchman): “As well you should my friend. A man who teaches skiing for a living, ought to look after his physical condition. Wouldn’t you say? His knees. You wouldn’t be in this situation had you listened to Tony in the first place.”
A scene from The Sopranos

Unless you live in the State of Indiana, you can be excused if you don’t recognize the name, Victoria Spartz. Victoria Spartz is the Republican U.S. representative for Indiana’s 5th congressional district.

Congresswoman Spartz was of a mind to bravely vote a “hard no” (her words) against House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (and Trump’s) budget reconciliation bill. I say bravely because for a Republican to try to swim upstream against the river Trump is to risk drowning in scorn and threats. CNN’s Manu Raju asked Spartz whether she would give in to pressure from her GOP colleagues. Spartz replied, “You don’t know me well enough.… You should know better than that by now. We cannot be weak, and we have to do the right thing for the people.”

That was until Donald Trump got Victoria Spartz on the phone.

Spartz was in the Republican cloakroom when she took the call. Her colleagues heard Trump screaming and berating Sparks, calling her a “fake Republican” and reminding her that he was the president.

As Spartz left the cloakroom, Speaker Johnson put a hand on her shoulder and said, “You know what you have to do.” There were no reports about whether or not Johnson was holding a lead pipe when he approached Spartz, or whether Johnson was accompanied by a guy named Silvio, wearing a tacky white gym suit, sporting slicked back hair and a menacing scowl.

Spartz flipped. Apparently doing “the right thing for the people,” took a back seat to the idea of getting politically “knee capped.” In the end, Spartz said, “I trust his (Trump’s) word.” Yeah, how many betrayed associates and stiffed contractors have uttered those words? “I trust his word.” Victoria Spartz is a liar, or a coward, or an imbecile.

Trump’s word. As reliable as Monopoly money. Given the fact that she’s facing the threat of the President of the United States, I’d like to give Spartz a pass, but no. At some point someone has got to stand up to Trump. Okay, you get primaried, you lose your congressional job, you’re out of work – find another job. Your own constituents who work for the government are being summarily fired in unheard of numbers, while being told, in insulting, ‘you didn’t do your job,’ terms, to go work someplace else and you, Ms. Spartz, are afraid of being primaried. Shame on you. You, as a congresswoman, have unlimited job prospects as opposed to those recently fired constituents who are staring into the void.

47 – America’s Nightmare: The Current Life in My Years

Paul

26 comments

February 26, 2025

What’s happened to The Life in My Years? It used to be a semi-biographical blog about travel, nostalgia, and history. There were posts about San Francisco as it was back before the techies and short sighted politicians ruined it; you know Summer of Love, the good old days. It used to include posts dedicated to photography; flowers, food, people, places, architecture and landscape. There was even a post with a guacamole recipe. Politics was just a sideshow.

Now it’s straight up politics. What happened to The Life in My Years?

Donald Trump happened – again. And with a vengeance – literally with a vengeance. The Donald Trump Administration and all of the ramifications; the fallout, the cruelty and that fact that we are witnessing and living through the disintegration of America’s democracy and the repudiation of everything good that America ever stood for. This is what’s become of The Life in My Years.

This is the new and present life.

I get up in the morning, usually around five, and then I ask myself if I want to watch the news, or Morning Joe, or Sports Center. If I opt for the latter I know that I’m just forestalling the anxiety – and sometimes that’s the best choice. The two former options mean that I’m probably going to start off the day on the wrong foot.

Do I listen to a podcast during my walk with the dog or do I just go with the sound of the bayfront?

There are days when I vow not to watch news or even get news second hand. My wife Cora is a news junkie and sometimes the conversation goes like this:
Cora: “That Trump, he’s just an evil person. Did you hear …”
Me: “Nope, I don’t wanna hear it.”
Cora: “But … “
Me: “No, no and no. Not today.”

47 – America’s Nightmare: Dispatches From The Ruins of Democracy

Paul

10 comments

February 19, 2025

“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.

“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.

47 – America’s Nightmare: They Hate Us

Paul

15 comments

February 14, 2025

At the end of this short post is a link to another short blog written by Jane Fritz, an American expat, now a Canadian citizen. Her piece and the op-ed included in her piece describe what I feared would happen with the election of Donald Trump

The “king” on his throne boasted of “a golden age.” “The golden age of America begins right now,” said the newly minted “king.”

Let’s pause to reflect on some recent ages in American history.

Post-World War II: America had helped to save the world from tyranny. Lady Liberty had beaten back the villain and was helping to rebuild Europe. America could do no wrong. Granted America had plenty of problems of its own but by and large it was as close to a future president’s vision of a “shining city,” as it could achieve.

Vietnam and the 1960’s and 1970’s: The luster had worn off. America, in its paranoia of Communism, meddled in the affairs of sovereign nations around the world, while waging an unpopular war in Southeast Asia. I remember those days. I remember the massive demonstrations, complete with burning flags and effigies, amassed in front of U.S. embassies. It was iffy for Americans to travel to certain areas of the world. “They hate us,” we used to say.

September 11, 2001: It took some time to put a shine back on a tarnished image. America had regained some respect around the world, but she was still not the most popular kid on the block. And then on that horrific morning of September 11, 2001, America learned that it had friends aplenty. Friends that offered aid and comfort. During the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack, thirty-eight planes carrying over 6,000 passengers were allowed to land in various airports around Canada. Americans were given shelter and comfort. It was called Operation Yellow Ribbon.

A short time later, many of our friends and allies offered more than safe harbor. They offered their lives, their national treasures and their reputations, taking part in two endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (in the latter they even humored President George W. Bush’s bogus claim of WMD).

And now through the irresponsible actions and belligerent rhetoric of its “king,” who was chosen by a small minority of the electorate, and is backed by a feckless party of forelock tuggers and bootlickers, America has embarked on a course bullying and isolationism. Despite what the “king” proclaims, America is more vulnerable than it has been in decades, maybe in its entire history. America’s “king” has appointed a cabinet of worthless and unqualified sycophants, particularly in the areas of defense and national security. Another 9/11 is easily within the realm of possibility and if and when that new assault occurs it is also within the realm of possibility that our former friends will tell us to ‘go kick rocks.’

Once again, we can sadly say, “They hate us.” Some in MAGA wear that as a badge of honor. America as the Western anti-hero, the world’s Clint Eastwood portraying, The Outlaw Josey Wales. There’s no honor or heroism in being hated.

My wife and I have been travelling during our retirement years. We’d planned a trip to Vietnam but we’ve scrapped those plans. We cancelled partially because of money concerns, but also because we’re mortified over America’s disgrace.

Because once again, “They hate us.”

I’m angry. But more so, I’m saddened. Americans who travel abroad, either for business or for pleasure, will carry the stain of its monstrous “king.”

I suppose that at some point, America will regain some measure of respect and win back some of its friends. Just as in any relationship, trust has to be earned back. It will take decades. It will take hard work. And it will take a large – a gargantuan – dose or humility. And truth be told, the trust and friendship may never return.

Should we have expected anything different from a “king” who has, throughtout his lifetime, mistreated his friends?

From the bottom of my heart – I am sorry, world.

Something I think Americans really need to read

47 – America’s Nightmare: Crickets and Blue Sheep

Paul

14 comments

January 31, 2025

“You play to win the game. Hello. You play to win the game.” ~ Herm Edwards, American football coach.

Coach Edwards’ point is well taken. That being said, in order to win you have to play and in order to play you have to take the field. And as I look about me I feel pangs of loneliness on the political playing field.

On January 20th, 2025, Donald Trump pardoned approximately 1500 insurrectionist felons who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. With their felony charges expunged they left the jailhouse, and went out and promptly rearmed themselves. It took only one week for one of the perps to be shot and killed by a police officer for resisting arrest. Another is wanted for the crime of soliciting a minor in 2016 (Apparently nobody in the administration bothered to check outstanding warrants before letting him out,). Some of the released prisoners are vowing retribution on judges, witnesses and prosecutors. The President of the United States, in no uncertain terms, told right wing nationalists and militias that insurrection is good – law enforcement is bad.

A full week passed. Crickets.

One week and a day after the pardons, Senate Democrats introduced a resolution condemning the pardons. Leader Chuck Schumer took to the floor of the Senate and harrumphed about the pardons. One insurrectionist ran afoul of the law and got killed before the Democratic Senate Leader droned at the podium.

One – week – and – a – day.

What took so long? Were Democrats taken by surprise that Trump did the outrageous thing that he literally promised he would do? Did they think that Russ Vought, his OMB Director, was playing golf for the last four years instead of doing his research and crafting the executive orders that Trump promised to unleash on day one? One of those orders being to pardon the people he called political prisoners and patriots? The very traitors who sang a perverted national anthem that was played at Trump rallies. I certainly expected it. Maybe it was the Democratic leadership that was playing golf.

It appears that Democrats have done what they’ve come to be known for, and that is to clutch their pearls and painstakingly craft a document that they are certain won’t offend a single solitary soul.

One – week – and – a – day.

“Hello. You play to win the game.”

Long before the tardy resolution had been released, the entire world had moved on to any number of the other outrages being perpetrated by the administration.

Immediately after the pardons, my own Congressman, John Garamendi, put out a press release expressing his displeasure over the pardons. Outraged he was – outraged. I’m confident that most Democratic members of Congress put out similar huffy press releases.

I’m confident – but not at all satisfied.

Because?

Because more people pay more attention to press releases from Lebron James than they do their local congressman and literally almost nobody turns on the television to watch a senator drone and harrumph on the floor of the Senate.

“Hello. You play to win the game.”

Two Democratic members of Congress have been outspoken and they’re the two usual suspects, Jasmine Crockett, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who was notably passed over to be Democratic leader of the House Oversight Committee in favor of the perennial old white guy, Gerry Connolly who was described by a colleague as being a “young 74.”).

47 – America’s Nightmare: “Please, I Have Kids”

Paul

12 comments

January 27, 2025

“Please, I have kids.”

It’s the desperate plea from someone staring at the finality of death at the hands of his fellow human being. It was the plea from a man being beaten by a mob that dragged him down a flight of concrete steps, sprayed him in the face with chemicals, beat him with metal pipes, and tased him repeatedly in the back of the neck. The man heard one of his attackers scream, “Kill him with his own gun.”

“Please I have kids,” is what apparently saved the man’s life as some members of the mob that was bent on beating him to death discovered some shred of mercy and dragged the man away from the attackers, and back to his comrades.

During the attack, the man suffered burns, a concussion, traumatic brain injury and a heart attack and his career in law enforcement was cut short due to the extent of his injuries.

The man is former Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, who rushed to the capitol to assist Capitol Police when he heard of the January 6, 2021 riot. It was his day off. He didn’t even have to step into the fray. But duty – and fate – called.

Fanone would later testify before the January 6th Committee and at the trials for his attackers. In the years since, Fanone and his family have been the targets of harassment and threats. This week came maybe the ultimate, but likely not the final indignity as the 47th President issued a blanket pardon for the January 6th insurrectionists. Not just the ones who entered the Capitol and strolled around, but for dirtbags like Albuquerque Head, who dragged Fanone down the concrete steps, and Daniel Rodriguez who repeatedly tased Fanone.

Trump had said that he would pardon on a case by case basis, but that was, of course, a lie (surprise), as he later claimed that it would be too cumbersome to go through all of the cases. In defense of the blanket pardon Trump told Sean Hannity, “Some of those people with the police – true – but they were very minor incidents, OK, you know, they get built up by that couple of fake guys that are on CNN all the time. They were very minor incidents and it was time.” (One of those “fake guys” who Trump referred to was Fanone).

Today, Michael Fanone is working to find protective custody, while all of other officers who did their duty feel betrayed. And threatened.

And all the dirtbags, no longer felons, are going out and buying guns.

European Days: Auschwitz And Man’s Inuhumanity

Paul

15 comments

January 25, 2025

Warning: Graphic and disturbing content.

Nick Fuentes posed the word problem on a podcast in 2019. “If I take one hour to cook a batch of cookies and Cookie Monster has fifteen ovens working 24 hours a day for five years, how long does it take Cookie Monster to make six million batches of cookies?” Wearing a supercilious smirk on his face, Fuentes went on with his riddle for a little over two minutes.

It may have been a math problem for sixth graders, but it was not. It was in fact Fuentes’ weak attempt at humor in trying to discredit the fact that the Nazis exterminated six million Jews during World War II. Not surprising. Fuentes is certifiably odious; a self proclaimed incel, unapologetically white supremacist, and a Hitler and Putin fanboy.

We couldn’t understand, there was a chimney and the place was lit up when we got to Auschwitz when it was dark. ‘What is this chimney burning?’ Night and day, and flame is coming out. And the camp is absolutely lit up.” Barbara Stimler, Holocaust survivor describes arriving at Auschwitz.

The bus ride to travel the 66 kilometers from Krakow’s central bus station to Oświęcim, Poland, population 34,000, takes about 90 minutes. Why visit Oświęcim? Most people, at least those who don’t reside in Poland, wouldn’t recognize Oświęcim by its Polish name. More people, wherever they’re from, know the city by its German name – Auschwitz.

Must be a helluva thing when someone asks you where you live and your answer is, “Auschwitz.”

Helluva thing.

Why didn’t they just didn’t rename the town? Did they think that the world would forget? And while on its face that sounds like an absurd question consider this:
One in ten Americans never even heard of the word “holocaust.”
A 2020 survey found that among Millennials and Gen Z, 48 percent of respondents couldn’t name one single World War II concentration camp or ghetto (This is why when I talk to people about my trip to Krakow and bring up Auschwitz, I feel I have to qualify it with, “You know – the concentration camp?”).
People like Nick Fuentes have a large following of zealots.

Cora and I are squeezed into the second row of the bus, seated behind two Italian women who are deep into gossip. My rudimentary Italian only picks up a few naughty bits but whatever I can pick up keeps me occupied on a mostly bland bus ride.

We’re on the 8:40, out of Krakow, one that we just barely made. Squeaked on despite having left our hotel in Stare Miasto (old town) at eight. What was supposed to only take 20 minutes took 35. Turned out we took the correct tram but in the wrong direction and had to double back, and then we got off at what we thought was the wrong stop. As things worked out, the stop where we got off was closer to the station than the stop that Google had suggested.

We’re on our way to take a tour of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and museum. I don’t know what to expect. All I know is that the tour lasts three and a half hours and that there’s plenty of security screening to get in. I have my camera with me but I’ve been asking myself since we planned the trip to Poland if I want to take photos.

Is it even proper to take photos?

47 – America’s Nightmare: Inauguration Day. A Tsunami of Deceit in a Desert of Morality

Paul

4 comments

January 23, 2025

January 23, 2025
January 20th was Inauguration Day. I’d been dreading that day since weeks before the November election when I’d resigned myself to the blunt reality that Donald Trump would be reelected (It was while we were in Vienna that I turned to my wife and said, “Trump’s going to win”).

By the end of Inauguration Day I was spent. Despite having kept the promise I’d made to myself to avoid Donald Trump’s inauguration, a trickle of news had leaked into my day. They say that one can drown in an inch of water and by day’s end I was left suffocated by the ooze of Trump.

The snippets that had leaked out ran the gamut from the ridiculous and eye rolling (renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and Mount Denali back to McKinley) to the brazenly scandalous (pardoning of the January 6th traitors and insurrectionists), to the cruel and unconstitutional (the ending of birthright citizenship). That none of it was unexpected, didn’t blunt the ensuing outrage. But shock and awe was the incoming administration’s strategy from the start.

Late that afternoon, I was sitting on the front porch, reading and listening to music, enjoying the last hours of sun. When Stevie Wonder’s classic, A Place in the Sun came on I was nearly reduced to tears. Is there anymore, as the song says, “hope for everyone?”

47 – America’s Nightmare: The Looming Storm

Paul

12 comments

January 20, 2025

January 20, 2025
It’s early here in San Francisco on Martin Luther King Jr. Day – four in the morning, seven on the east coast. Today is the day that the United States celebrates the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King.

Today is also Inauguration Day, when, at Noon Eastern Time, the new President of the United States will be sworn in.

The irony couldn’t be more stark, and the visions of America so conflicting. The only saving fortuity, the only deliverance from a darker blasphemy, is that due to dangerously cold weather conditions in Washington D.C., the swearing in ceremony has been moved indoors from the National Mall where, in August of 1963, Dr. King delivered his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech before a crowd of more than 250,000 (King’s speech was delivered on the opposite end of the Mall from where the inaugural speech would be made).

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