I can't keep up with all the news, and you fellas don't expect me to. So here's just a few items worth noting. But first, the legit weather report from the Washington Post, off my Google newsfeed:
And because they know all about you, they could tailor your Social Security check as they please - or withhold it for "undersirable" behavior. Does your retired, saintly grandmother, so upset about the price of eggs, know about this? What about disabled, gun-loving Cousin Clem in his red cap? Whenever the news finally trickles down to them and their pocketbooks, I hope they choke on it.
Senator Adam Schiff tells it plainly: "this is a corrupt scheme to turn this country into one-man rule, and enrich Donald Trump and his wealthy friends like Elon Musk."
And now, not content with scooping up Canada, Greenland, and Panama - a costly invasion is not necessary; economic terror is enough to bring them all into submission - the Very Stable Genius wants to take over Gaza and rebuild it as "the Riviera of the Middle East" - after expelling the 2 million people who live there:
And here's a headline from Canada, which just got played like a hockey puck over tariffs, where all those nice, polite, friendly folks are trying to figure out the game plan:
Now you can watch the video if you like; studly Andy Chang has some very good charts and facts to show about the big picture, but he misses the really big picture. So your Head Trucker is going to cut to the chase here.
iT'S NOT ABOUT DRUGS. IT'S NOT ABOUT TRADE BALANCES. IT'S ALL ABOUT TOTAL DOMINATION BY GLORIOUS LEADER: EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALWAYS.
Why am I the only one who sees this?
Canada, stop trying to find a logical reason for the tariffs; there is none. If it's not one issue, the Orange One will make up another.
People, it's all right out of Hitler's playbook: Border problems. Fake outrage about neighboring countries. Scare tactics. A police state. Removal of civil servants and political opponents. Demonizing one section or another of the citizenry. A constant barrage of lies from state mouthpieces. Scrubbing away facts from books and schools. Keeping other states in perpetual fear of what might happen next. Lebensraum - i. e., fake justification for seizing foreign territory. Redrawing the map, renaming things. Deportations. Concentration camps. And there is more yet to come! It's only just begun . . .
And fellas, cut the crap about "Oh my, we still have 1400+ days to go before his term ends." HIS TERM WILL NEVER FUCKING END. If good ol' Joe Biden had to be prised out of the Oval Office with a crowbar, do you really think Tyrant Trump will just quietly walk away from the power and glory?
Seriously, people?? HE'LL NEVER LEAVE. HE WANTS TO BE KING OF THE WHOLE WORLD.
There now, I've said it. You have been warned. What to do about it, I don't know. You'll have to figure that out for yourself.
Yesterday's video sermon from Father David, a retired Episcopal priest in Hawaii. This is a brilliant meditation on rituals, mythology, life, death, and resurrection. Well worth a listen if you care about spiritual things.
I apologize with a heavy heart for what is being done to you by America's self-proclaimed dictator. Not in my name!
As I type these lines, I weep - actually, I am sobbing - to see what is happening to my country, and soon to happen, I expect, to many other nations. My father fought against the Nazi tyranny in World War II, when America and the Allied nations fought a titanic struggle to rid the world of that evil. The democracies in that day were the sane middle way between communism and fascism; but where is the via media today?
In my old-fashioned mind, America despite all its flaws and sometimes egregious mistakes is still the torchbearer for liberty, justice, democracy, and human decency. Why else do all the world's refugees want to come here, or to Canada or one of the other Western democracies? Nobody's breaking down the gates to get into Putin's Russia or the other dictatorships, are they?
Say what you will about our politics and politicians, the fact is undeniable that America in many ways, many times, and many places has led, fed, and healed the world: a magnificent record of good deeds to counterbalance the bad. But now it seems the long golden afternoon of postwar peace and America's benign dominance of the free world has come to an end. It may be that a long dark night will follow. I hope not.
There is no need for me to repeat the news reports out of Washington, but I will say this: You do not deserve to be mistreated, bullied, or perhaps bludgeoned into submission to the tyrant's whims. Nor do most of us American people. Please remember that half of us voted against the dictator. But now all of us must live with the terrible consequences.
Of course, you all must do what you have to do to protect yourselves. But there is no good reason for our peoples to hate one other after many long years of peace and friendship, north and south. One day, the sun will rise again, the clouds will part, and the upward path of civilization will begin anew - sooner rather than later, I pray. Whether this old man will live to see it, who knows.
But do not be deceived; the only thing a bully respects is strength, and a punch in the nose. Appeasement only feeds the appetite for conquest. And no doubt there will be quislings in your own countries, ready and willing to sell you into slavery. Do not submit without a fight for your freedom and dignity, though the price be steep. God bless you, friends and neighbors, and God help us all.
This song fits my mood today - more the vibe than the vague lyrics - perhaps it will speak to you, too.
In the history of the world, if we stand together and oppose right-wing efforts to divide us up by our race, by our religion, our sexual orientation, or where we were born -- if we stand together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish.
Bottom line, let us go forward and fight for a government and an economy that works for all, not just a few.
We simply do not have the luxury of moaning and groaning. We have got to stand up and fight back.
We can do it. Let's go forward together.
Your Head Trucker is not a socialist; but I'd damn sure rather see Bernie remake our country than Jackass Genius & the Wrecking Crew. I agree with everything Bernie says here. God bless him.
P. S. -- While I'm on the subject, I think it's obscene that 3 men have nore wealth than half the population of the United States. NOBODY SHOULD BE THAT RICH OR THAT POWERFUL. There's a limit to everything earthly, including capitalism.
Whoa. Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the 35th president, excoriated her cousin Bobby Kennedy, Jr., in a letter to U. S. Senators today, warning them that he is unqualified and morally unfit to be appointed Health and Human Secretary, as nominated by Tyrant Trump. I remember Caroline when she was a toddler in the White House; she has never spoken out on political appointees or family members like this.
If this doesn't stop the Senate Republicans from confirming him, they will all richly deserve whatever consequences may fall on their heads down the road.
Once in a great while, I go searching through the internet for old friends and lovers. More often than not, the search leads nowhere; too much time and distance have covered all tracks. But a couple of days ago, just on a sudden whim, I tried one more time. And I found Pat, my best friend in high school and church, more than half a century ago. Or rather, I found his obituary.
Pat was my first love, though we were not lovers in the physical sense, I'm sad to say. It would have been a glad and joyful thing - but damnation and denial got in the way.
He died in 2020, leaving four children and eleven grandchildren. I had wondered over the years if he was still alive, where he was, and how he was doing. The last I heard of him, in the late 70s, he was working on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico - a high-paying but highly dangerous job.
The picture below, from his obituary site, was probably taken 20 or 30 years ago; he looks hearty, healthy, and prosperous there. The obit says he was much loved by his family and friends, and I suppose he had a pretty happy life. I'm very glad to know that.
Dapper, dashing Pat in the prime of life, long after I knew him. I've never had a picture of him until now, only memories.
We became friends in church when I was 16 and he was 17. It so happened that we both had parents in the same distant city, so it was only logical that on school holidays and other times, we would drive up together. I had a brand-new Chevy Malibu 350 V8, cherry red with a black vinyl top. Pat had no car; didn't want the responsibility, he said. So we had many long rides together and got to know each other very well.
We were an odd couple. Pat dropped out of school to work in construction; I finished high school and started junior college. We were about the same height, six foot in boots, but Pat had a sculpted, muscular body with washboard abs and a permanent tan from working outdoors year-round. I was a bookworm. He was blond, I was brunet. He was the life of the party, I was the quiet type. But opposites attract, don't they?
Early on, he asked me, "How did you get to be so smart?" I answered, "I don't know, it just happened. How did you get to be so strong?" He replied, "I don't know, it just happened." Despite the differences, we somehow gravitated together, and enjoyed each other's company greatly. Pat was the big brother I never had: a role model, someone to be a guy with. He filled a great need.
I'm happier than the morning sun,
Ever since the day you came inside my life . . .
We were both known for being snappy dressers; in those days, men young and old wore suits to church every week, so we both had a nice collection of suits, ties, and shirts in all colors. And some expensive colognes. We liked the same movies and Top 40 music - I remember rolling through the night as we sang along to the radio:
Bye, bye, Miss American Pie,
Drove my Chevy to the levee,
but the levee was dry . . .
Pat liked to lip-synch to records, holding a Coke bottle or a curtain rod like a microphone and doing a rock-star performance. The Nilsson song at the top of this article was one of our favorites, and he "sang" it and other songs to me many times. A sweet memory.
No, I can't foget this evening,
Or your face as you were leaving
When I had you there but then I let you go . . .
After high school when I got my own place, a tiny cottage, Pat moved in with me, and life was good, out from under the parental roofs. We wore nothing but our tighty whities at home, which was common practice among men and boys in the hot, humid South, before a/c. We wrassled on the rug a lot, too; it always ended with him sitting on my chest, pinned beneath his superior strength. (I didn't mind a bit.)
At night, we slept in the same bed - this too, was common among friends on sleepovers, and no one thought a thing about it in those days. But we were very good church boys, quite chaste, I assure you. We never did anything wrong, never kissed or even saw each other naked. What a pity.
I worked some part-time jobs and had my mom's gas card. Pat was making big money as a construction worker - $2.50 an hour! He gave me 20 bucks a week for groceries (=$120 today), so we hungry guys ate a lot of steak dinners. Pat had to get up at 4 a.m. to be on the job site by 6. On some impulse I didn't want to analyze, I started getting up at 4 a.m. too, just to make his lunch the way he liked it - sandwiches, chips, cookies, etc. And when he would come home with the seams of his work pants busted out - he had big, muscular thighs - I would sew up the rips by hand with needle and thread.
It all seems so obvious now what roles we were acting out. But we were blind to the Ozzie and Harriet routine - or at least I was. It just seemed to me I was doing nice things for my best friend - wouldn't anyone? Isn't that Christian love in action?
Though we both felt the attraction, no doubt about it, we never acted on it and couldn't talk about it. It could not be otherwise in our strict little sect - the wrath of God and all that, you know - but in a mysterious way without conscious intent, we had sussed each other out. I think most of my close friends in those days were other closet cases like me, drawn together by a subtle instinct, the magnetism that dare not speak its name. Or perhaps we simply recognized a kindred soul.
Russ in New Orleans, 1974. What would a guy like Pat want with a guy like me?
Amid the routines of church, school, and work, we led a placid life punctuated with fun and laughter. We ate out or went to dinner parties and get-togethers with friends. Sometimes a bunch of us would go tubing on the river. Other times, Pat and I went to movies or took turns cooking at home. What was left unspoken swirled beneath the surface, and there was no way to share our deepest, truest feelings for each other. We never talked about love or sex - just pretended we were regular guys. Which was fine until the day the music died. And it was I who blew up the record player.
To be very brief about very personal things, one day he stopped sleeping with me for no apparent reason, and bunked on the couch instead. I confronted him about it; he gave a lame excuse; I felt rejected. It was my first time out of the chute; I didn't understand the ways of love, the ebb and the flow. Probably he was just trying to keep us both from mortal sin. But there is a very fine line between love and hate - my hurt turned into irrational fury, and I threw him out of my house. We never spoke or saw each other again.
It was not until years later, after I came out, that I realized I had been a real asshole. And then I was deeply ashamed of the shitty way I treated him. But I never got to say I'm sorry: a lingering regret. Unfinished business.
Yet now that I have seen his face for the first time in fifty years, I think perhaps, wherever he is, he understands and forgives.
Friends and lovers have come and gone, but I've never forgotten you, Pat. There's a corner of my heart that belongs to you still. Thank you for loving me and being my true friend. God rest your soul in His eternal love. Amen.
Well, the first week of Trumpocracy has gone just about as we expected. For anyone who may have slept through it, handsome Ezra Kline, a brilliant journalist, decodes the message of Trump's inauguration:
But this is only the beginning of sorrows. Four refugees from foreign dictatorships tell how we can expect the tyranny to grow, step by step:
Thanks to my truckbuddy Frank for passing along this poignant news about Matthew Shepard's interment in the Washington National Cathedral. I don't know why I never heard of this before.
I debated whether to post any hot men today, in view of the appalling events in our nation. But M.P. said, Go ahead and post something to give people's minds a rest from the horror in Washington. So here's a little something that celebrates our American heritage. I hope it helps.
P.S. - I think at last I've found out what that A.I. stuff is good for: making cheap movies.
Officer Daniel Hodges of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, who was severely beaten and nearly crushed to death by J6 rioters four years ago, gives his reaction to Tyrant Trump's pardoning his assailants:
Here's the footage of Hodges being attacked and crushed in a doorway, very hard to watch:
Officer Hodges, by the way, is back on the job guarding the Capitol and fulfilling his sworn duty to the American public, even after all he's been through. What a man.
Listen to these Republican snakes and slugs brushing off questions about the pardons. And Susan Collins is, of course, concerned.
Rep. Eric Swallwell (D-Calif.) says, "Trump does not back the blue, he backs the coup." (Turn up the volume.)
Tyrant Trump has vehemently denounced Mariann Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, who in her sermon yesterday at the National Catheral very meekly asked him to rule with mercy. As one journalist put it, "she delivered her sermon so gently – meek and mild, you might even say – that she came across like an unusually brave dormouse." Now the MAGA cult is viciously attacking her. CNN reports:
God bless the good Bishop for having the courage to speak so quietly and yet so very boldly, as a Christian before a lion. She is an example for us all.
In the wake of Trump's pardon of more than 1500 J6 rioters, Anderson Cooper spoke tonight with Michael Fanone, the D.C. police officer who was savagely beaten and nearly killed during the attack on the Capitol.
"This is what we have become as a nation," Fanone said. "We are self-centered, we are violent, and we are indifferent to the suffering of our neighbors."
I'm sorry I have lived this long, to see the filthy degradation of my country. And the long, dark night has only just begun.
What grace is meant to do is to help good people, not to escape their sufferings, but to bear them with a stout heart, with the fortitude that comes through faith.
Alan Jackson, one of the grand old men of country music, sings the one hymn that it seems every American knows and loves, believers and unbelievers alike. It seems particularly fitting today.
For the record, a frigid blast has settled over the land. The wind chill here was 14 when I got up this morning. It will turn even colder overnight. Florida's doing all right, though. Figures.
All in the Family was a sensation when it premiered in January, 1971. Unlike all previous American sitcoms, it dealt with serious topics, including politics, war, sex, and race, and was rudely funny, too, setting the tone for many other 70's sitcoms to follow - and for the decade as a whole. The look and feel of modern life changed noticeably around 1970, as elements of the counter-culture became the dominant culture. I remember it well.
It was never my favorite show, but was good for some laughs at the expense of blue-collar conservative Archie Bunker, a buffoon character who was continually skewered for his out-of-date attitudes by his smart-mouthed, oh-so-liberal son-in-law, Mike Stivic - who, however, was not too proud to live off Archie's hard work and generosity while attending college. (Hypocrisy comes in many guises.)
I haven't seen the show in many years, bur recently YouTube offered up this never-aired pilot episode from 1969. Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton play the parents, but Mike and his wife Gloria are played by two other actors, and it's interesting to see the show performed without Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers. It's also much more risque than the broadcast show was, at least initially. See what you think.
Notice that the "liberal" talking points Mike brings up are identical with the talking points of today, almost as if they've been, um . . . scripted. And as if no progress whatsoever has been made since the 1960s. Odd, isn't it? And yet I vividly recall the segregated South of my childhood - separate schools, libraries, hospitals, movie theaters, restaurants, bars, hotels, and gas station bathrooms. (And no homo, either - anywhere.) The truth is, in many ways the world has changed beyond recognition from the 1960s. So help me out here, fellas - what is a word that means deliberate denial of reality?
I read once where Bill Clinton said, "There are two kinds of people: either you think that what happened in the 1960s was great, or you don't." I remember the 1960s rather differently from the majority view, having grown up in a small Southern city (not a small town), which never had any civil rights protests; all that stuff was on TV, not where I lived. There were two colleges there, but I only ever heard of one protest, probably after the Kent State tragedy, when the local paper reported a "die-in" on the college green. The Vietnam War was just not a topic of conversation among us high-school kids, nor as far as I can recall, among the adults. There were military bases in the area, but antiwar protests were, as I said, far-away stuff you saw on TV.
The placid tenor of the 1950s lingered long in the South - politeness, not politics, was the rule in everyday life. Apart from the newspaper headlines and the evening news on TV, the 1960s were a time of sunshine and blue skies, little homework and light household chores for a schoolboy, and should have been much happier for me - but sadly, my parents divorced in the middle of the decade, with all the tears and conflicts you might expect to follow. My mom and I moved to a big city, and for the rest of the decade I was lucky to get to ride some of the fine old streamliners before Amtrak took over, as I shuttled back and forth between parents, about a thousand miles round trip.
It was on one of those long train rides that I applied my mind to solving the conundrum of what the big kids were doing - why all those protests, screaming and shouting? What was that all about? Of course I knew from TV, newspapers, magazines, that Civil Rights and Vietnam were the push-button issues, but I didn't really "get" the whys and wherefores. All I saw were a bunch of college kids acting like babies, throwing tantrums and causing lots of trouble. (It wasn't until many years later, when I read an oral history of the war, stories told by soldiers and nurses who were in it, that I finally "got" what the shouting was all about. And yes, it was a sickening horror that was justly protested, though to little avail, it seems.)
After staring out the window of the train for many miles as I cogitated, it finally came to me: they don't want to grow up. They don't want to act like adults, but just stay kids. That seemed to be a sufficient answer, so I quit puzzling over it. Now you may smile, gentle reader, at this simplistic thought - but there is in fact an element of truth in it.
The college kids of the affluent 1960s (the noisy minority, that is, living in the NY-LA axis) did not, in fact, want to become adults in the sense that their parents were, settling down to routine jobs, living quietly in suburbia, doing the ordinary grown-up things in conventional ways - wearing suits and ties, makeup and high heels, joining the PTA and the VFW. In fact, many of them seemed to despise all that their parents stood for - if you try, you can easily google up journalistic references in the period to the "parent-hating generation" of that era, no doubt penned by reporters and columnists who were sick to death of Mike-Stivic style lectures from their offspring at home. (Oddly enough, those same despised parents were later idolized as "the greatest generation," but that's another story.)
I never had that attitude. This only child loved his parents dearly, and they loved me; they just couldn't live peaceably together under the same roof. A great tragedy; an enduring grief. My family was disintegrating; I tried in my childish ways to be a peacemaker, not a prosecutor. So I never thought much of the counter-culture. I was trying to hold things together, to grow up into a mature, capable adult and keep the train on the rails - not blow up the tracks, as many of my peers (in TV land, anyway) seemed to think was a very cool idea.
It's all water under the bridge now, and what's done is done. I am not blaming anyone, just reporting what the view was from my corner of the world in the morning of my life. Your mileage may vary, and that's just fine. It is darkly ironic, however, to see that the groovy guys and gals, the fair-haired children of flower power who led the way to the Age of Aquarius, are now the despised, gray-haired, clueless "boomers" to today's young hipsters. (What goes around, comes around.) And yet I well recall the cool kids in the 60s raging against "the world our parents made."
Well now, here we are at the end of the world Mike Stivic and his generation made, or so it seems. What is there to say about that? The curtain is rising on a new era, and we helpless spectators can only grip our seats and await with bated breath the entrance of the rough beast. Be it good, bad, or ugly, this old man is near the end of his journey, anyway. I'm just glad I have no descendants to worry about.
We had a big, beautiful snowfall all day Thursday here, about 4 inches, that covered everything and brought the DFW Metroplex to a screeching halt. The temps got up to 50 on Saturday, but there's still some snow on the ground, though the streets are dry.
Don't have any pics to show you guys, because M.P.'s teleophone is still on the blink. So just for fun, I dug up this old video I posted on February 11, 2010 - 15 years ago. Wow, where does the time go?
Interesting to see and hear myself after so many years. Like looking at someone else, almost.
A funeral service was held at Washington National Cathedral this morning for former President Jimmy Carter, attended by President and Mrs. Biden as well as all living ex-presdients. The eulogies given for Mr. Carter were a striking lesson in how to live a good man's life, for anyone who had an ear to hear.
Good-looking Jason Carter, chairman of the Carter Center in Atlanta, spoke with fondness and deep appreciation for his grandfather:
Former Atlanta mayor and United Nations ambassador Andrew Young warmly praised the former president's work for civil rights:
President Biden spoke of the shining exanple of Mr. Carter's character, in and out of the Oval Office:
No one could witness this scene and listen to the tributes paid to Mr. Carter without being deeply impressed and clearly shown what a true patriot is. No one but a fool or a criminal.
+++++
P. S. -- It's cold AF down here in Texas, and we've been covered with snow since early morning:
Fortunately, we got our necessities stockpiled before Jack Frost arrived, so we're styaing in and staying warm.
In keeping with her duty as Vice President, Kamala Harris today presided over the certification of the electoral votes for President, thus ensuring the peaceful transition of power that has been a hallmark of our republic since 1789 -- with just one exception, four years ago today.
Why that exception did not result in a swift and decisive prosecution for the guilty parties is more than your Head Trucker can understand.
Future historians will marvel at how quietly we handed our democracy over to destruction, in faithful obedience to the Constitution and the laws. God help us all.
Senator Bernie Sanders decries the oligarchic takeover of America. BTW, "oligarchy" simply means rule by the [rich] few, which is very different from democracy, or rule by the people.
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.
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