Two years of change and upheaval, and where are we now?
At this time in 2020, I was planning to write a post expressing my views on the state of the modern world in general and of American society in particular. But I procrastinated - and then Covid struck and turned the world upside down; next it was the George Floyd riots and the backlash; then the conventions, the campaigns, and the election with its long-drawn-out conclusion; and then the horrific failed coup on January 6th last year; then what seemed a new dawn of hope with the Biden inauguration, but which now seems merely a candle in a hurricane; and so on, and so forth. Meanwhile, the frothing fanatics at both ends of the political spectrum are busily rewriting or erasing history, and scrambling to herd the future into a predetermined course that brooks no dissent whatsoever: quite a melancholy prospect, any way you look at it.
Well, I still think and stew about setting down my thoughts, which have been sharpened by the events of the last two years - but for some reason I just can't bring myself to do so. I will tell you that the theme, in a broad way, of my contemplated essay was the ancient one of man's inhumanity to man, which in most cases results from the folly, pride, and cruelty that lurk in the animal depths of our human nature and often threaten to extinguish the spark of divinity that raises us from the mire of unreason.
It was so when Pharaoh enslaved the sons and daughters of Jacob; it was so when the liberated Hebrew children made the honeyed valleys of the Promised Land run red with blood; for it is but one small step from being oppressed to being an oppressor, and this ghastly paradox is one of the enduring threads woven into all human history. I could give many more examples, from all times and climes, but verbum sat sapienti.
I will tell you that the conclusion of my essay, having presented examples from my own experience, was that neither liberals nor conservatives have a monopoly on truth or wisdom or even human kindness: at various times and in various places, I have been very roughly handled and badly mistreated by hateful people from both sides, for no good reason. And so I was going to end by saying, "a plague on both your houses."
I thought it, but did not write it. Yet lo and behold, a plague did descend on both houses - but alas! instead of quenching the flames of conflict, it only fanned them higher. Well, we must make do with the world as it is, and if we cannot change the flow of the turbulent tide, we may at least able to ride it out by prudence and prayer. The modern world is not at all to my liking in many ways; but nobody wants to hear my criticisms, which cut across all the ideological divisions that torment the nation today. And I'm not sure that our vaunted freedom of speech is free of risk in these contentious times. As the Preacher wisely sayeth:
Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself ?
Be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish: why shouldest thou die before thy time?
As I have said before on this blog, I represent a party of one, whose platform may be neatly summed up by the Golden Rule, the Golden Mean, and the Oxford comma; but nevertheless, to get needed change, or protect the status quo, it is necessary to align one's self with the powers that are in being, imperfect though they be.
Some of you may find it mildly amusing, as I did this morning, to take this little "political typology" quiz (thought-provoking, though not strictly scientific) from the Pew Research Center, to find out where you really fit in today's political spectrum. It takes less than five minutes; my own results are below the jump. I wonder if the results will surprise you.
According to Pew, I am a Democratic Mainstay (why can't they just say say "Mainstream Democrat"?), though I should admit that some of my answers were widely different from those of my fellow DM's.
After his funeral in Houston today, George Floyd was carried
to his final resting place in a horse-drawn hearse.
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As I said in Sunday's post, I can't keep up with all the news that's going on right now, but I will continue to post from time to time, under the above heading, my thoughts about where we are as a nation and where I think we ought to go, and how.
And let me say, for the benefit of any new readers, something that I suppose has been apparent to my longtime truckbuddies: I represent a party of one, and this blog is my personal forum in which I express my own independent thoughts, not all of them necessarily in tune with the zeitgeist of the modern world. My party's platform includes the Golden Rule, the Golden Mean, and the Baptismal Covenant, as well as a plank in favor of the Oxford comma, and another one denouncing the use of gift as a verb.
Being fairly well versed in the English language, I say what I mean and I mean what I say: it's my privilege as a free, though flawed, man in a free, though flawed, country. I don't want to argue with anyone. If you don't agree with me, just move on and find someone else you do agree with: that's your privilege. There are millions of other voices in the world, and mine, small and obscure, has no influence over the course of events, one way or the other. Which may be all for the best; at least it passes the time for me here in retirement.
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"Defund the Police" Needs a Rebrand: It certainly does, for all sorts of obvious reasons. As Kevin Drum says:
We can write thousands of pieces telling people that “defund” doesn’t really mean defund, but honestly, you can hardly blame people for nevertheless thinking that defund means defund. That is, cut police budgets to zero and get rid of them entirely.
There’s not a Democratic politician alive who thinks we should do this, and keeping the phrase in use is just an invitation for unnecessary conflict between politicos and their base. Maybe it’s too late, but can’t we come up with something better? Rebuild the Police? Reform the Police? Demilitarize the Police? There’s got to be something.
Notice how Senator Kamala Harris, a former state prosecutor, struggles to explain what the phrase really means - "not that we get rid of the police, of course not" - which is baffling to any intelligent listener who believes that words have meaning:
Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis was booed out of a protest march on Saturday after he refused to accede to the demand to "defund the police." He was quite right to decline, in my opinion. Here he explains his stand:
Now I certainly agree with Sen. Harris that increased funding for public schools, healthcare, job creation and training is necessary to make better communities: you get what you pay for. Although I do have to wonder why, more than fifty years after LBJ called for the building of a "Great Society" in America - and the countless billions of dollars that have been spent on those very issues - why is our society not great? Why are black communities still impoverished, with all the unhappy outcomes that go with poverty? Why have fifty years of massive federal aid to cities and minorities had no better effect on its intended beneficiaries than what we see today in this country - the richest and most powerful in the world?
Please understand that I do not know the answers - I am simply asking the questions. Questions that are long overdue a proper answer free of bias, one way or the other.
Some uninformed people in this great country think that it was established as an exclusively Christian nation and intended to be such forever. The facts are otherwise, but even if that were true, they should not boast about it, but weep. Jesus did say, "The poor are always with you." But this hardly justifies complacency about the fact; I think it likely that He was quoting, in part, Deuteronomy 15:11, where God commands the Israelites:
For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land.
And of course, Jesus himself told the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, enjoining those who love God to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, care for the sick, and comfort the prisoners; in other words, to do whatever was needed to alleviate poverty and misery. In the Sermon on the Mount, He blessed the poor, saying the Kingdom of Heaven belonged to them.
Now, you need not believe in God or Christ or the Bible to grasp the exalted moral imperative here, which is expressed in different words in all other religions worthy of the name: love your neighbor as yourself. Believer or non-believer, conservative or liberal, rich or just getting by - if we are not barbarians, we must as individuals and as as a nation do what needs to be done to help and heal and lift up the poor among us - poor in body, mind, or spirit - and that is what will truly Make America Great Again.
A word to my readers: I have waited, and I have seen. Merely seven weeks or fifty days into the nightmare, the pieces of the puzzle are falling together in plain view. It has become evident to your Head Trucker that the goal of the Trump regime is nothing less than to destroy the democratic, constitutional system of government of the United States and make this country a mere satellite of Russian tyrant Putin. And I believe a great many Republicans in Congress are traitors who are in on the secret, and very happy to cooperate in the ruination of the country. And who knows how many invisible, unelected associates of the Trump cabal are also busily working his wicked will, which is Putin's too, both here and abroad?
(It also occurred to me overnight - you know, we baby boomers have lived our whole lives in apprehension of the next world war - which we imagined would begin and end with a hail of nukes - but suppose it's not like that, in this virtual-reality age? Suppose World War III is happening right now, and its goal is not to leave our country a glowing, empty desert, but merely a crippled, divided, subservient tributary of a ghastly New Order run by the Russian dictator? Suppose nobody noticed that that was the Big Plan all along, both here and in Europe, until it was too late? I'm certainly not a conspiracy theorist normally - but this thought came to me with a chilling sense of perhaps so.)
Well, time will tell. I do not say these things lightly. I can't prove any of it, of course - that will be up to patriots in the government and in the media, and God only knows how all this can be stopped, and when, or whether blood must be spilt or not - but I tell you what, boys: even in the dark, you don't have to see a cow patty to know it's there.
Please note, therefore, that in future this blog will refer to Donald Trump as the Liar-in-Chief, or alternatively as the Puppet-in-Chief, and will not denigrate the office of President with his name.
The Trump regime seemed to kick into high gear this week with the rolling-out of Trumpcare and travel ban 2.0, firing of the senior state department staff, firing of 46 U. S. attorneys, and on and on and on. I can't review all of that, but here's some highlights, for the record:
1. I was very glad to see that the media did not let up all week on Trump's outrageous "wiretapp" slander against President Obama. Early in the week, senators called for investigation into the Liar-in-Chief's lies about former President Obama. And on Thursday, FBI Director James Comey - he who notoriously swayed the election results last October - met with senior Congressional leaders behind closed doors on Thursday, presumably to discuss the matter. House and Senate leaders were tight-lipped after the meeting, but according to Politico, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi hinted at what she could not say:
“Theoretically, do I think that a director of the FBI who knows for a fact that something is mythology but misleading to the American people and he should set the record straight?” Pelosi said, responding to a question at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast forum. “Yes, I do think he should say that publicly.” Pelosi treaded gingerly around the topic of Russia's alleged connections to Trump’s associates, emphasizing that she couldn’t disclose information she’d learned in classified briefings. “Maybe in a short period of time much more will be in the public domain,” she said.
2. The Puppet-in-Chief's full plan came into clearer view this week: build a useless border wall as a sop to the ignorant masses who voted for him, not to mention an equally pointless travel ban against a few Muslim countries, while at the same time crippling the Department of State, the Coast Guard, and the Transportation Security Administration: in other words, leaving us with no effective diplomacy, and our sea and air borders undefended. Putin must be jizzing all over himself at the thought.
3. Trump's clueless lackeys are kept in the dark too, and have had a hell of a time trying to defend the Liar-in-Chief's big mouth this week, but press secretary Sean Spicer was able to laugh about it:
4. Ominously, it seems that the CIA has unaccountably lost its arsenal of of cyber weapons - again, leaving the country more or less defenseless:
5. Representative Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) has created a page on his official website dedicated to "connecting the Trump-Russia dots," which is highly informative and a must-read. Here are two of the helpful charts you can find there:
I've laid out here why Russia is not our friend, how, despite these facts, President Trump and his associates have cozied up to Russia, and how Russia is attacking the core of our democracy—our elections. It's clear that for the future of our country and the integrity of our democracy, we cannot let these attacks go un-answered.
That is why today I call for every American to stand up for our American ideals, and let your voice be heard that America, and President Trump’s Administration, must be free of Russian influence. We need to start by understanding exactly how deep the relationships go, how far the attacks have penetrated, and how we let this go un-noticed for so long. The potential personal, political, and financial ties between Russia and Trump officials, both on the campaign and in the administration, could be immense and threaten our independence, and thus, they must be investigated and brought to light.
6. The press have frequently told us in the last few months that "the Russians hacked the election," but just what exactly does that mean? Could you explain it to your Aunt Lizzy? Just for the record and for your information, here are the two much-discussed reports on that subject issued by the Director of National Intelligence, who at the time was Lt. General James R. Clapper (USAF, ret.):
7. Former President Dubya has been making the rounds of the chatty-news shows recently, plugging his new book of paintings of wounded vets and basking in a generally warm reception all around. But as Gary Younge notes in The Nation, a lesser evil is still an evil:
Bush’s moment of redemption came when he was asked how he felt about Donald Trump’s attacks on the media. “I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy,” he replied. “That we need an independent media to hold people like me to account. I mean, power can be very addictive, and it can be corrosive, and it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power, whether it be here or elsewhere.”
Bush’s comments, and the rush by some liberals to embrace him, illustrate two key trends. The first is the degree to which, in the desperation to mount the broadest possible coalition against Trump, some are prepared to neglect the principles guiding that opposition and, given their form, may yet prove to be unreliable allies.
Bush was never held to account for his own abuses of power. The mainstream media may have found their voice against Trump, but they were virtually mute or, even worse, implicated in peddling lies for the run-up to the Iraq War. This was fake news of some consequence: Hundreds of thousands died, a country was devastated, a region destabilized, innocents tortured, a generation of terrorists spawned. Meanwhile, The New York Times held a story about Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping until after the 2004 election, in part because the editors thought it would be unfair to run it too close to the vote. . . .
Put bluntly, the distinction between Bush and Trump is partly one of etiquette. Bush paid lip service to rights and norms before crushing them underfoot. Trump is more brazen in his language and more candid in his intent. Bush in no small part is how we got where we are today; to line up behind him against Trump is to pit the cause against the symptom without any suggestion of a cure.
This is not to claim that they are equivalent. The absence on Bush’s part of open race-baiting and Islamophobia makes a difference. Trump has emboldened bigots to speak out and act out on their hatred in a way that the more coded dog whistles of the Republican Party establishment did not. The Bush administration actively misled and bullied the media (remember how it hounded CBS’s Dan Rather and Mary Mapes for telling the truth about Bush’s draft-dodging?), but at least it didn’t boast about it.
Which brings us to the second trend. The same day that Bush came out to talk about his art and defend a free press, former Conservative prime minister John Major called Brexit a “historic mistake” and bemoaned the “unreal and over-optimistic” hopes that Prime Minister Theresa May had raised for Britain after exiting the European Union. That same week, François Fillon, the scandal-plagued center-right candidate in France, struggled to stay in the presidential race, while Marine Le Pen of the hard-right National Front is almost assured of a place in the runoff election. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, the governing center-right party is in a tight race with the bombastic populist Geert Wilders, who has referred to Muslims as “goat-fuckers.” And in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel finds herself squeezed between an insurgent anti-immigration party, Alternative for Germany, and a revived Social Democratic Party.
In short, Bush’s intervention is illustrative of a moment in which mainstream conservatism is struggling to establish its credentials in the face of a hard-right onslaught. Some, like Merkel, are battling to distinguish themselves from their demagogic rivals, while others, like May or the Republicans in Congress, have preferred to join the stampede for fear that they will otherwise be crushed by it.
From Afghanistant, here's one sad reminder of the wickedness, stupidity, and futility of W's swashbuckling nation-building that destroyed much more than it saved:
"We are losing our youths every day in this war," said Mohammad Gul, a retired police officer whose son Jalal died with Qadir. "Our government leaders have their families abroad and they are safe in expensive villas. America is doing nothing to stop this war. How long do we have to die? Why are they killing us? Who is there to answer our question?"
And just for the record, the views expressed in this blog are those of your Head Trucker only, and nobody else's, except where quoted. I am not a paid "librul" activist, and nobody tells me what to write. This old cuss represents no one but his ornery self - like the sainted E. B. White, I am a member of a party of one, in the good old American fashion, and I don't care who knows it.
If you like what I write, feel free to click one of the four response boxes below. If you don't like it, you can go to hell or Halifax as you please, it makes me no difference.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
and welcome to the Blue Truck, a blog for mature gay men with news and views on gay rights, history, art, humor, and whatever comes to mind. Plus a few hot men. The truck's all washed and gassed up, so hop in buddy, let's go.
CAUTION: For mature gay men only beyond this point. Some posts and links may not be suitable for children or the unco guid. You have been warned.
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My Story
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Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?
It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.
If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.
