Tom's Musings

Nothing is worse than waking up in the morning. Okay, you optimists will say that the ‘alternative’ is worse …not waking up. Then again, we really don’t know that, do we. None of us has ever been to the other side that we know of at least. Perhaps these gorgeous Valkyry females will sweep me up to where Odin’s Great Hall is located (from Viking mythology) and where great feasting and debauchery are the norms of each day. But just my luck, Odin would be a Trump supporter and would kick my ass out within 12 hours of arriving, or is that 12 minutes. No, my afterlife will surely be a toasty experience but at least I’ll be with most of my friends, or would be if I had any.

Then there is this Fitbit watch I bought on impulse on Amazon. Okay, me with a Fitbit (an exercise and health aid that also provides some useful info) is like an eskimo buying a top-of-the-line air conditioner. Stupid, right? But here is the thing. They popped up on the Amazon site when I went to see if my latest book had finally been uploaded for sale (it hadn’t). So I paused and started looking them over. I seldom buy crap except for books but occasionally I can be lured in to at least ogle technology, even when I know these devices are way beyond my skill level. But before I could move on, there was someone at the door delivering my brand new Fitbit watch. What?

Not quite but almost. I did order one at about 9:30 in the morning and it was delivered by Amazon a little after noon on the same damn day! I couldn’t believe it. Then I vaguely remember there was something in their pitch about ordering within the next 35 minutes and you would get it …. I stopped reading thinking it would be in a day or two. But they were talking about hours, not days!!!

I’m convinced no one else got theirs this promptly. I am convinced that there is a plot by those who hate couch potatoes. These evil people are everywhere. I have a neighbor couple. They seem nice and normal but they are forever trying to do me in by suggesting that I go hiking with them. Hiking!!!!!! I would rather be eaten alive by a horde of army ants. Well, probably not, but hiking is a close second.

Anyway, I now know that corporate America is also scheming against me, probably in cahoots with my neighbors. But I tried the thing out and, in a miracle beyond anything Rod serling (Twilight Zone) ever imagined, I was able to sync it to my phone and get it working. Amazingly, I liked it. It told me I had walked at least am 8th of a mile that day and once got my heart rate up to 40 beats a minute. I didn’t find all the features but one caught my attention. It was the exhortation to get off my ass and move a bit. I was less enchanted with the nickname the device gave me … lardass. But I must admit, this feature made me long for my late wife. She also performed the same useful service.

Ah, but the insanity continues. Now, I found a good friend who mentioned liking her old Fitbit but hers had a cracked cover and was old. After some discussion, I went back to the Amazon site and discovered I had overlooked the top-of-the-line model. At this moment, all attachment to reality abandoned me. Now, I just had to have this more expensive whizz-bang model. So, I gave her my brand new one and ordered a version used by world-class athletes, Olympic medalists, and other such types. Yup, when God was passing out brains, he must have missed me in the queue. It took Amazon, a whole day to get this one to me. They must think folk into exercise are like druggies, they need their fix immediately … no waiting. I could wait … really I could.

So, now I have this great achievenent in technology. Will I soon be buff and sexy and have the girls chasing after me? Wait, am I delusional? Even when I was skinny and in shape, with a full head of hair, the girls never chased after me. I always could make them laugh, but that was at me, not with me. However, I did find a few features of use. It was nice to know the time, the weather, the fact that my heart rate would double everytime I got up to walk all the way to the male throne room, and so forth. It even provided me with details on what I do best in life … sleep. It laid out when I went to bed and woke up, how much time in the interval was spent awake, in REM sleep, in light sleep, and in deep sleep. I suppose that’s useful but why escapes me at the moment.

But as I played with my toy a bit I kept coming across so many other features, some well beyond my understanding. I could work on my EDAs by covering the watch with my hand and keeping still for 2 minutes and perhaps listening to easy music provided on their Premium Service Plan, which is free for 6 months to reel you in. Of course, they offer a complete set of workout options to help you to your fitness and weight goals. I can assure you right now, they will remain untouched. I was tempted to write to Fitbit to inform them that their strenuous workout regimens were not needed. I had my helpful neighbor couple who were more than eager to kill me for free.

But here is the real problem. I’m not smart enough for this kind of phone. I don’t even come close. Every time I pause to play with it, I find features I never knew I had. Some I can understand and make work, other will remain an eternal mystery. Even when I get one to work, there is only a remote chance I will find it a 2nd time. I don’t know how I found it the first time.

When I found the alarm function I tried it out. Looked good until the alarm time came and then nothing happened but the slightest vibration. Somewhere, in a location never to be uncovered is the secret to actually hearing the alarm go off. But now I can’t even find the initial function. I got a Ph.D. and spent most of my life in academia. You would think I could manage a freaking watch. But no!!!! All that education, and I learned nothing useful. I bet 12 year olds who are flunking grammar school can work my watch.

So, as a distraction from my watch miseries, I glance through my phone to catch up of the news. Now, that’s sure to raise my spirits. Ah, by the way, does anyone have extra strong rope that might carry my weight? The other ropes I tried all broke.

No matter, I’ll make do. I see that there were three mass murders in Texas alone over the weekend with 18 dead and many wounded. Of course, Republican offiicials responded with alacrity and penetrating wisdom. Governor Abbott immediately began tweeting about the border crisis and blaming that on Biden. A new Christian Nationalist far-right member of Congress from the Lone-Star State suggested God had some kind of ultimate responsibility but we could put armed guards at all malls and many other public places. Yes, more guns, always more guns. The Republican obsession with guns will turn us into an armed camp seldom seen in any advanced nation since the Nazi’s controlled most of Europe and the Soviets suppressed freedom in Eastern Block countries after the Nazis were defeated. What a future to anticipate!

Then I see that Ron Desantis is pushing a Bill that would exclude Chinese from purchasing land in the Sunshine State. Now, the target group for this wise piece of legislation own some 380,000 acres at present while a comparable group of Canadians own about 12.5 million. But let’s go after the people that look different. It is the Chinese Exlusion act of the late 19th century all over again. Perhaps camps are next for our wanna-be autocrat from Florida. Are the camps used to lock up Japanese-Americans during WWII still available?

The road to authoritarianism and horror starts with dividing us from them. Then you keep the base fearful and riled up as the steps toward Fascism are taken one by one.

Time to stop. I just looked at my spiffy watch which is telling me I’m just about to stroke out. I would for sure if she next told me to get off my lard ass and start moving, which she usually does at this time (when I write my daily, inspired thoughts). Until tomorrow, I will be calm unless I listen to her and start exercising. If that happens, all bets are off and I might be lying prone on a local street as my nighbors walk around me on their daily hikes. Okay, I’m sure they will double-bag me and out me out for trash pick-up.

BTW … I also have a diferent watch that summons medical help if something goes wrong, like I collaspe while hiking. But I kept dropping the damn thing or doing something that got me these calls asking ‘the nature of my emergency.’ Then I would have to explain that there is no emergency other than the fact that I’m just a complete idiot. This is true, but no need to prove that to the world. I stopped using the damn thing.

I wonder how long will the Fitbit device last :-).

I have been witness to a modern day tragedy, one that has taken place since the beginning of my professional career in Wisconsin. When I arrived in Madison in 1971, first to work for State government before moving to the University in 1975, the State’s reputation for clean, competent, and progressive government was unparalleled. The State’s bureaucracy was shielded from political meddling by citizens boards who oversaw most key agencies. A strong civil service system prevented any form of patronage or nepotism from diluting what was a highly competent and dedicated workforce from functioning in the public interest. As I ran into officials from other states and from Washington, I heard the same refrain again and again. Wisconson was the state they looked to as the proverbial ‘city on the hill’ where the highest ideals of public service had been realized.

That was true from my perspective. I enjoyed my time as a civil servant during which we introduced, among other things, groundbreaking innovations in the automated management of human service and welfare systems, or at least begun that process. I once asked a colleague at the time why this was so. Just what made Wisconsin special. She thought this might be attributed to the strong Germanic and Scandinavian cultural persectives that dominated the state. A tradition of public service and service to the entire community formed the underlying zeitgeist of how government was seen and what was expected from it. Milwaukee had long been run by socialist mayors until a mere decade before my arrival and they had a reputation for competency and scrupulous honesty.

And then there was the famous ‘Wisconsin Idea,’ where the boundaries of the University were the boundaries of the State. Put simply, the intellectual resources of the University of Wisconsin would be brought to bear to improve the governance of the people and in the service of all the people. The groundwork for the full expression of the Wisconsin Idea can be traced back to Robert M. Lafollette and Charles Van Hise. They were members of Wisconsin’s class of 1879. Lafollette, a liberal Republican when there were such animals, was better known as ‘Fighting Bob’ and went on to become a nationally known political figure and champion of progressive reforms. Van Hise served as University President from 1903 to 1918, a period when the Wisconsin Idea flourished and matured. This concept gained such currency that Teddy Roosevelt, as he accepted the Presidential nomination in 1912, observed that “the University of Wisconsin has been more influential than any other agency in making what it has become, a laboratory for wise social and industrial experiments in the betterment of conditions.”

One of the major reformers from this period was John R. Commons who joined the faculty in 1904. Lafollette immediately recruited him to work on a strenghtened civil service law, one that would shift state government from a patronage based civil service to one founded on expertise and merit. He went on to strengthen the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Library (later Bureau). This improved the technical capabilities of the lawmakers, and diminished an odious tradition whereby special interests drafted state laws since that capacity did not exist within the legislature up to that point. Corporate lawyers were eager to help out, as you might imagine, but that quite obviously was a transparent conflict of interests.

Commons, late in his career, observed “I know see that all of my devices and recommendations for legislation in the state or nation have turned on this assumption of a nonpartisan administration by specially qualified appointees.” The first era of the Wisconsin Idea did more than enhance the apparatus of state government. University experts worked with the legistature to intriduce develop and enact a number of progressive ideas such as a progressive income tax, workers compensation, and so much more. If there was a birthplace for the nation’s ‘progressive era,’ it was in the Badger State.

The second strong era of the Wisconsin Idea occurred during the the Great Depression of the 1930s. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in response to the horrific suffering brought on by a global economic collapse, established the Committee on Economic Security to develop a strategic response to the unfolding tragedy. Not surprisingly, the President looked to the University Wisconsin for ideas and experts. He tapped Ed Witte, one of John Common’s students, to head this critical committee. Witte, in turn, brought along Arthur Altmeyer, Harold Groves, and the young Wilbur Cohen to Washington in addition to several social insurance ideas they had been thinking about. This ‘brain trust’ was largely responsible for enacting the Social Security Act in a mere six months. This act fundamentally altered the character of national governance in the U.S. by drastically increasing the role the federal government would play in supporting vulnerable Americans.

A third Wisconsin idea era occurred in the 1960s. Robert Lampman, an economist from U.W. was serving on JFK’s Council of Economic Advisors. He (and Burt Weisibrod, another U.W. economist) wrote a seminal chapter in the annual economic report to the President which argued that economic growth alone would not lift all boats out of want. There were structural pockets of poverty in the ecomomy that would need direct intervention. His ideas were picked up by JFK’s successor and became the basis for the 1965 declaration of a War On Poverty by Lyndon Johnson. When the federal government realized they needed academic help in this new war, they immediately looked to Wisconsin for intellectual firepower. The Institute for Research on Poverty was established in 1966 with Bob Lampman as the first Acting Director. Almost six decades later, the Institute is still going strong.

When I moved from State governemt to the University in 1975, I was able to facilitate a working relationship between the State and the Academy that worked well for many years. I don’t have time to recount all the benefits of such a parnership but they encompassed such areas as Child Support, a State Earned Income tax, the integration of welfare with labor market and human service systems, innovations in child welfare and child care, and so much more.

Buy alas, Camelot never lasts forever. Even during those halcyon days, when the quality of State government in Wisconsin was the envy of all, some cracks appeared. In the late 1970s, changes were made to the structure of state government that introduced more politics. The State’s chief executive was given more power to appoint top bureaucrats. I paid particular attention to this shift largely because my spouse was on the Committee that recommended such a shift. She and I argued at the time (politely). She maintained that the Chief Executive needed more control of the bureaucracy to govern effectively. I responded that such a change would turn Wisconsin into just another state paralyzed by political disputes and managed by suspect lackeys in too many (though not all) cases. A decade later she finally swallowed her pride and admitted that I had been right. [NOTE: That might have been the only time that happened in our five decades together.]

While the slide toward a politicized state government accelerated under Republican Tommy Thompson, there is little doubt that the last decade has seen the most precipitous collapse of what made Wisconsin special (though Democratice Governor Tony Evers has at least slowed down Republican mischief). In 2015, during his short run for the Presidency, Republican Governor Scott Walker cut the University’s budget, packed the school’s Board of Regents with hard-right conservatives, gutted tenure protections, and went after the ‘Wisconsin Idea.’ Republican politicians talked as if the school should be a glorified vocational or tech school where the prime mission was “connecting students and workers withthe skills needed in today’s workforce.” They disprespected all notions of a broad-based educational experience or helping students to become critical thinkers. Walker even tried to excise language in the University’s mission referring to the Wsiconsin idea but the blowback was immediate and fierce.

Not unexpectedly, U.W. began a reputational and actual slide even as the school’s administrators spent millions on faculty retention packages. Top faculty always have options and the best of the best began fleeing to more accepting pastures. While you can always fill faculty slots, you cannot easily get the stars that will bering in resources. Not surprisingly, U.W. slid down research funding rankings. I recall that, at one point, the school had been 2nd overall in federal research dollars, right after Johns Hopkins . In National Science Foundation funding, the school fell from 10th place in 2010 to 16th in 2021 while overall research and evelopment spending (from all sources) declined form the 3rd position nationally in 2010 and to 8th in 2021. U.W.s reputational ranking most recently was placed at 49th among all universities. It had been in the 30s as I recall before the attacks began, a very high spot for a public university.

But the most grievous area of Wisconsin’s decline has been in the core of any mature democracy … the right to vote. After Republicans took over full control of state government in 2010, they accelerated their attacks on democracy. Beyond further gerrymandering voting districts, they worked hard at voter suppression by making the voting process more difficult, especially in urban areas where monorities lived. Among other things, they tightened residency requirements, shortened the time frames for early voting or the use of absentee ballots, enacted tougher voter I.D regulations, and disallowed ballot drop boxes. The proffered reason for all this was voting security but that is nonsense. In 48 general primary and special elections between 2012 and 2022, only 192 election fraud cases were brought before the courts. That represented some 0.0006% of all votes cast. And most of these were not intentional (e.g., a felon casting a vote becsuse they did not know they were ineligible).

Voter suppression and gerrymandering are desperate attempts by conservatives to retain control as they see their power slipping away. Consider the following. The University of Wisconsin is an economic engine, especially in Dane County where it is located. The research conducted at the University has spun off many hi-tech firms and businesses. One example is Epic Systems. If your doctor is entering your information on a computer anywhere in the country (or maybe the world), he is likley using an Epic Medical Information System. They started with about 3 employees about three or four decades ago and now have well over 12,000 well-paid workers (the last I looked) and are growing like mad.

You would think Republicans would love all this and support the University as an economic engine that spawns such economic growth as well as bringing in hundreds of millions in research monies (not to forget the forign students who come to study at a World Class University). I shudder to think what the local economy would look like if Republicans succeed in destroying what is left of a world class instituion. But here is the problem for the ‘right.’ These new and mostly younger hi-tech and well educated workers tend to vote Democratic. That cannot be tolerated and no price is too bigh to pay.

In the last election this Spring, Dane county sent more voters to the polls than did the State’s population center Milwaukee and some 82 percent of them went for the liberal candidate for the States highest court … who won by a surprising margin over a hard-right MAGA type. And, as all these hi-tech companies continue to grow, so does the population of Dane County. On the other hand, as rural areas stagnate or decline in population, Republicans see the State sliding from purple to blue. They would do anything, including sacrificing a world class university and and slowing the state’s economic growth while destroying a functioning democracy, simply to stop that decline in their fortunes. After all, they represent the interests, not of all the people of Wisconsin, but of the favored few who are wealthy enough to buy what they want.

Fighting Bob LaFollette must be turning in his grace. But it is not too late to turn Wisconsin around, though righting the ship is far from a done deal! Stay tuned.

Charles III has been crowned as Britain’s monarch. I have not watched a moment of the ceremony nor any of the attendant hoopla. If I wished to torment myself, I would go hiking or something equally ridiculous. However, the occasion of this event raises an issue I’ve periodically noodled … how should we treat our ‘leaders.’ Just how should we judge them and, more importantly, select them.

I was a child when the last coronation took place. I have this faint recollection of watching some repeat of that ceremony on a grainy black and white small TV as my father cynically made a couple of snide comments. He was 100% Irish and our tribe were supposed to hate the Brits. While there is ample justification for such animosity, Anglophobia, like virtually all the other prejudices, never took root in my heart. (Correction: I despise Republicans). Besides, Elizabeth was young, attractive, and appealing. Phillip, her consort, was handsome and dashing. The ceremony, as I recall, was nothing like we had here.

However, monarchical dynasties have one glaring flaw. They are populated by real people. Few, if any other families, have public relations efforts to rival the Windsors. At the same time, few families (except maybe for the Kardasians) have as much attention paid to their every move. No group can withstand such a complete immersion in the public eye without being tarnished. That is axiomatic.

Harry and Meghan have provided more than enough ammunition to the dynasty detractors and scandal demanders. If it were not them, someone or something else would offer up salacious gossip and innuendo to a public demanding the dirt essential to taking down the elite and the privileged.

Now, I have no real opinion on the Royals. Mostly, I am noodling the emotional attachment we place upon our so called leaders.’‘ There remain several democratic monarchies in the world where the king or queen retain little political authority but serve as a symbolic head of state. In other regimes, a President is elected for a set period of time though real power lies with a body of elected officials who select a Prime Minister from among the majority party. In that case, the ‘President’ often is involved in forming a governing coalition especially if multiple parties compete for power.

Only in America does the President, or ‘head of state,’ exert so much executive power and authority, except in those countries where your garden variety autocrat remains (like Putin). Though the Constitution tried to balance and distribute authority between the executive, a bi-cameral legislature, and the judiciary, power has evolved up to the Chief Executive over time. Our first President tried mightily to strip the office of monarchical overtones but distributed power has always felt inefficient or confusing. People, especially in times of difficulty, want strong leadership and clear accountability.

In a pure sense, our Chief Executive is supposed to be merely an executive, someone who manages the ship of state. They are not necessarily supposed to don a higher mantle of authority nor wield dictatorial powers. I’m sure the Founding Father’s would be appalled by what the office has become today.

Over time, ironically, kings have become weaker (or disappeared) especially after WWI. The British Monarchy remains because it accepted a gradual loss of authority with appropriate while the U.S. struggles against those who would take the final steps toward replacing a limited executive with an outright autocratic.

We often want to invest those at the top with way more than formal authority. I watched a marvelous movie last night (Darkest Hour). It was about the days after the Nazis turned west and invaded France, British PM Chamberlain was dumped, and Winston Churchill installed in his place. In short, when most even in his own party wanted to sue for peace with Hitler as British armed forces were huddled at Dunkirk, he held firm and rallied the nation. He was larger than life. Imagine history if England had not held out.

We also like to look back at strong or charismatic men in our past … FDR’s fireside chats during the depression and JFK’s charm and charisma during the height of the Cold War. We want to replace them with contemporary equivalents. In effect, while we have a Chief Executive, we still look toward the occupant of that chair for something more than mere administrative skill. We want to be inspired, to have someone in office who elevates and motivates us. We also want someone who seems to care about us.

When I first shook Bill Clinton’s hand, he seemed to be looking into me as if I mattered, which I didn’t of course. All the stories about him were true, he was magnetic. Hillary never had the same skill at ‘connecting’ and paid a bitter price.

But do we need a substitute king as our President. In the old days, the Monarch was an expression of the country and the people. Today, we should be beyond such infantile needs. As a people nominally governing ourselves, should not we focus on competence over charisma? No corporate CEO prtforms all the task essential to the business nor does he or she often sell the companies products with their personality. Their main task is to make strategic decisions and, more importantly, select good people to do the real work. If they can present well to the larger world, fine. But is it essential?

Here’s the bottom line. We want leaders to be competent, to be approachable, and to be inspirational. Now that’s a good trick. If I had to pick, and we always do, I would go with competence. Trump is inspirational to his base, but it is hard to imagine a more incompetent and dysfunctional executive.

So many have told me in recent years that they just didn’t like Hillary. Some did not vote for her for this reason. I would always think ‘you didn’t like her.’ So freaking what! You were not going to marry her for crying out loud.

In choosing a leader, selecting someone with values you respect is critical. But you don’t have to agree on everything. Another of my favorite mantras is ‘if you want the perfect candidate, you will have to run for the office yourself.’ No one will be perfect in your eyes. That is a given! But, for God’s sake, don’t support someone merely because they bring out your worst instincts or hate the same people you do. Republican candidates today campaign on the basis of pure bile … which can stir up the greatest froth among the following herd. But that is NOT governing.

Where am I going with all this? This morning I read that Biden’s low ratings give Republicans a shot in 2024. Many question his mental acuity. I will repeat. He doesn’t have to be perfect. I am confident in his overall values and that he will pick good people. That alone will put him way beyond any Republican candidate.

As with Charles, I am not a Biden devotee. But I wish both leaders well.

This meme doesn’t just mean Christianity. You can add Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Sikkhism, Judaism, or Islam to the mix. At the core of each is a fundamental teaching so universal that it is called the ‘Golden Rule’ or the ‘Law of Reciprocity.’

Before I get too spiritual, how about a temporal note. On the economic front, we added 253,000 jobs last month. The overall unemployment rate fell to 3.4% while for Black’s it was an historic low of 4.7% while Hispanics had a rate of 4.4%. The rate for adult women was 3.1 %

Such historic numbers don’t happen by accident. The slow and steady Biden has passed the Infrastructure Act, the Chips and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act among other initiatives designed to invest in workers. This is counter to the traditional Republican approach of giving the wealthy more money and hoping for the best. The outcome of that tactic is totally predictable. The rich get obscenely rich and the rest of us mere mortals struggle.

This is a form of reciprocity in a way. People vote for representatives they believe, or hope, will respond by considering their interests or at least don’t ignore them. Now, anyone who has done policy realizes that not all interests can be satisfied simultaneously. There are always winners and losers. However, good governance seeks a balance on this scale. When a narrow group, like the Uber wealthy under Republicans, are always preferred, that faith in governance is broken. The moral and fiscal rule of reciprocity is shattered.

On a more spiritual level, the ‘golden rule,’ or ‘law of reciprocity’ is so simple. All major religions enjoin us to treat others as we would like to be treated. Christ’s message (as passed down since we don’t know what he really said) was even stronger on these matters. He told us in many ways to reach out explicitly to those unlike ourselves. We must love those who look, behave, and believe differently than us. This is the one and only true commandment.

I don’t know what was in the minds of those who set down the early spiritual precepts, roughly in the 8th and 9th centuries for Islam, the 2nd and 3rd centuries for Christianity, and much earlier for Judaism. But their thoughts and sentiments are remarkably similar. It is as if they all had the same insight … we are all in this together and we damn well better get along.

Too bad many of the followers of each tradition lost their ways. They became obsessed with enforcing conformity and failed to listen or seek the prime mandate of their belief system. That mandate is remarkably simple, yet the most difficult of all to follow:

Love yourself and love others as you would yourself!

This departs from Republican orthodoxy. Love only yourself and to hell with everyone else! Think about this tomorrow.

NOTE: I’m doing this in my phone. Hopefully, it us readable.

A NOTE: I am gaining a bit of traction with these blogs. Over the past few days I’ve been visited by folk from the U.S. (obviously) but also the U.K., Spain, Canada, Germany, Norway, Italy, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, the Dominican Republic, N. Madedonia, Romania, Mexico, India, and the Ukraine. Hopefully, the Ukrainian visitor is not a Russian soldier invading that brave country but there you have it. I also have no idea whether they like what they read or not. Since my grasp of reality is tenuous at best, I’ll assume the best. [A quick positive note on that: Putin’s mercenaries, the Wagner Group, may be abandoning him.] Busy day today so only time for a rather quick thought.

Could anyone look at what remains of the Republican Party and not conclude that it has become a full-blown cult bent on establishing an autocracy or what would be called a dictatorship in polite society?

Apparently, Arizona’s Kari Lake is Trump’s front runner for the VP slot on his 2024 ticket. By way of reminder, she is the extreme MAGA enthusiast who, upon narrowly losing her race for the U.S. Senate, did the full-blown Trump rant of crying fraud and refusing to accept the results. Nothing like a complete loss of contact with reality to cement one’s credentials for high office.

I bring her up after reading that she has suggested the GOP dismiss all primaries and other traditional protocols for selecting their nominee and simply rally around their glorious leader … The Donald. The details of democracy are just so inconvenient when you wish to coronate a Supreme Leader, or establish yourself as his successor. Trump, for his part, has already said he will not debate any other nominees. He simply presumes he is the presumptive Fuhrer. After all, he won in 2020, and bigly (if you accept his delusions). Many of his rabid followers still believe he is running the country from Mar-A-lago with the fake media putting out lies about this Biden guy.

It was clear that The Donald always thirsted to subvert the checks and balances established by our Constitution and, in their place, assert total control. During his first time around the Ferris Wheel, he bristled at those who reminded him of the consraints he faced, firing many who would obey the law as opposed to his personal whims. He would have his Cabinet members heap personal praise on him at their rare gatherings as if he were a Middle-Eastern potentate and not a civilian chief executive. He yearned for a military parade marching down Penssylvania Avenue with he, the Supreme Leader, high above in the viewing stand, just as Communist Autocracy did for decades in Moscow on May Day. Didn’t he praise Putin and the other dictators around the globe while spurning NATO and our peer democracies?

He won’t be constrained if he were to get the brass ring a second time. He already has suggested a test for all Government employees and the firing of those who fail. Let me be clear on this. Such a review would be little more than a loyalty oath to Trump as the Supreme Leader. He would replace all Constitutional restraints, or try his damndest.

Would the reasonable members of his party hold him back, force some minimal acceptance of the rule of law on their leader? I would not hold my breath. While a few in the GOP have not gone over to the dark side and may retain reservations about their nominal head, most have evidenced little reluctance to support the pillars of democracy. They have crammed through Supreme Court Justices, employed transparent voter suppression tactics, enacted gerrymandered voting boundaries in local elections, and issued campaign ads that would have impressed Joseph Goebbels for their dishonesty and blatant misinformation. Power is all and they are in the game.

But he cannot win, right? Surely, a man that lost by 3 million votes (in the overall vote) in 2016 and 7 million the second time around, would be beaten soundly in 2024. No rational person could see a path by which Trump and Lake might weave their way through the electoral college, especially if he is in jail or house arrest for one or more of his felonies. After all, while Biden is doing a good job, even if he is old and not very exciting. Then again, Americans are childish enough to feel they must like their President. Really? We are not marrying the freaking person for crying out loud.

What worries me is something else, the stuff of nightmares. Even a boring Biden-Harris ticket should win IF …. there is not some catastrophe. What if Americans experience some form of existential threat? Remember, Hitler was yesterday’s news, a has been and never was, until the great depression brought Germany’s economy crashing down in the early 30s and unsettling civil strife between left and right coursed through their streets.

I am not one to give into flights of conspirital fancy (at least not before Trump came along) but here is something to think about. The one thing that might boost Trump’s chances in 2024 would be some kind of existential crisis. War might be one but people tend to rally around the current leader in that circumstance. A climactic disaster? No, that might be the same as war and besides, you can’t dial up one of those on demand. But what about an economic calamity of 1930’s proportions. That swept Hitler into poawer and the Republicans out of power for a generation while the political landscape in the U.S. was rewritten for another two generations.

But you cannot dial up one of those on demand either, or can you? The debt limit debate is nearing a crisis point. If we default, and apparently we have less than a month left before we run out of fiscal tricks, we face disaster. When America cannot pay its bills, you not only have an economic fallout of unimaginable proportions but you would shake the foundation of our trust in government. We assume our government will honor its debts. If it does not, if it betrays that trust, all bets are off and the very basis of even our currency is moot. It is not as if we back up our greenbacks with gold or precious metals. We back it up with a moral and, until now, inviolate guarantee … the backing of our national government.

Not even Republicans are so venal and evil that they would break the country, and destroy its credibility, just for a grab at power, right? Don’t be so sure. After all, they shut the government down in 1995, 1996, 2013, 2018, and 2019 for temporaty periods just to get their way. But they always backed off when, to their shock, the public missed government services even though the essential ones continued. These were not even ‘default’ shutdowns but merely inconveniences due to unpassed budget bills.

Default is magnitudes more important and consequential. Democrats cooperated with Republicans in raising the debt limit three times during Trump’s reign even though the spiking deficits were all about his efforts to shift trillions of dollars to the wealthy through egregious tax breaks. Dems would not endanger the country, or the globe, merely because of some selfish policies by their opponents. They care about the country and governing.

You might assume Republicans, at the end of the day, also would act responsibly. I so wish I could believe that. But letting the the U.S, default rayther than raise the debt ceiling would give them the crisis that might push Trump over the top in 2024. Desperate voters are not rational voters. Nor do they connect the dots well and blame the right people for their problems. And, if the GOP can get power just one more time, they just might unravel what remains of our experiment in ‘government of the people, for the people, and by the people.’ We might not get our democracy back for a very long time, if ever.

On that bright note, I’ll sign off for today, and likely for this weekend! But, like your favorite horror flic villain, I’ll be back.

I may have to dial it back over the next few days as I am otherwise rather occupied. After all, it’s not as if I’m paid for sharing my wit and wisdom though I do get compensated way more than they are worth. So, more bad jokes today. And these are a bit sexist but if we don’t laugh at ourselves, who will. And nothing, I mean nothing, is more hilarious than men and women trying to get along.

…………………….

FBI Assassin: The FBI had an opening for for a top level assassin. After the candidates had completed all the testing and interviews, they were given one final hurdle to complete.

To the first candidate, “Your wife is in the next room. Take this gun, go in their, and shoot her.”

The candidate looked appalled. “I simply can’t do that. She’s my wife.”

The FBI screener said. “Well, then you are not the man for the job. Take your wife and go home.”

They said the same to the second candidate. He looked shocked, but took the gun and went into the room. After a minute of two, he came out. “I tried but, in the end, I just couldn’t do it.”

“Sorry then, you and your spouse may leave now.”

The third candidate was a woman. She was told her husband was in the room and given the same instruction. She went in. Seconds later there were several shots followed by loud banging, crashing, and sounds of a desperate struggle.

Alarmed, the FBI screener opened the door and there she stood, wiping the sweat from her brow. “That damn gun was loaded with blanks so I had to kill him with the chair.”

[courtesy of Sue Wilson]

……………………………….

A Lesson: A Sunday school teacher wondered if her young students were confused about the nature of Jesus. So, she asked them where they thought Jesus lived.

“In heaven,” little Jimmy said.

The teacher smiled.

“In my heart,” said little Tommy, always the suck-up.

The teacher smiled even more broadly.

Then she turned to little Mary who said, “In the bathroom.”

“The bathroom?” The teacher was surprised. “Why the bathroom?”

Because my dad, when he gets up every morning, goes to our bathroom and starts banging on the door while shouting, “Jesus Christ, are you still in there?”

…………………………

The Weight Issue: One day, Tom was having a brew with his good buddy. “So, last night, I threw my arm over my wife while we were in bed and the task felt easier than usual. So, I asked, ‘love, have you lost a bit of weight?”’

“Aaaw, honey, that’s so sweet of you, but I don’t think so,” she said. “In fact, to be honest, I may have added a couple more pounds this week. What prompted your statement.”

“Oh, now it all makes better sense,” I said aloud what should have remained unstated. “I see that you have sunk deeper into the mattress.”

His buddy shook his head in disbelief at how utterly stupid his mate was. “So, I assume you’ll be needing a place to stay for a few days.”

It is a matter of great interest to me how false perceptions emerge and solidify as they become an accepted consensus, at least among some. Really, how did the Republican Party become the stewards of economic stability and growth when they have been behind every economic disaster since Coolidge and Hoover drove us into the abyss in 1929.

If you examine the record over the last few decades, Democratic leadership is associated with job growth, wage increases, and overall positive economic activity, including gains in the equity markets. Since World War II, the stock market increased the most in the administrations of Barak Obama (plus 148%) and Bill Clinton (plus 227%). Correspondingly, the market fell in only two administrations during this period, both Republican. They fell by 16 percent during Nixon’s tenure and by 22 percent under Bush Junior’s watch.

Nevertheless, Joe six-pack today thinks the Dems are death to their financial future, their job security, and their cherished values. That was not the thinking in my world growing up. I heard the adults in the 1950s chat about the two parties, claiming that Republicans always ruined the economy while Democrats tended to get us into war. Such easy categorizations had an implicit rationale back then. World War I, II, and Korea all started under the Democrats, while the global depression started under the Republicans, who were clueless about what to do when it did begin. Of course, this was Massachusetts which was never considered a mainstream place in any political sense.

Even in good old Wisconsin, there were large swaths of western and northwestern counties, largely rural in character, that were strongly Democratic when I first moved to the state in the early 1970s. The farmers and small business people living there yet recalled the time when New Deal programs helped them weather the bad economic times, kept the family farms from going under and the towns from declining into ghostly apparitions.

Over time, and certainly aided by the growing drumbeats of right-wing propoganda, their gratitude was replaced with growing suspicions and raw fears. The Democrats, they were told again and again, were helping those people who were not like them … lazy minorities living in dangerous urban areas. The elites were poisoning the minds of their children in Universities like UW Madison, clearly a bastion of socialist and Communist thinking. They were permitting alien forces to invade our nation and crime to run wild as those liberals and other ‘woke’ types coddled the evil doers while failing to protect their kind. There was no end to the perfidies to be laid at the laps of the State’s Dems. Today, the rural arts of the state are Republican while the Dems are found huddling in the larger urban centers.

Crime is a good example. Nothing like the irrational fear of rampant rape and pillage to scare people into looking for a strong savior, a Trump or Desantis type. An ongoing survey taps the perception of whether crime in the respondent’s area is growing better or worse. Before Trump emerged on the national scene, Republicans were more pessimistic but the gap was not large. By the time Donald was ousted from ofiice, the gap was some 30 percentage points with 42 percent of Dems saying worse and 72 percent of Republicans saying the same. This was the case even though more from the GOP camp lived in these rural, fairly crime free areas. Trump, and his propoganda outlets, hammered away at the theme that the world in Democratic-controlled areas was falling apart in civil disorder.

One reason behind this ‘the sky is falling’ consensus among Republicans is apparent … the relentless push by the conservative propoganda machine that liberals were permitting evil to run amok. I need not say the obvious, this fear tactic is straight out of the traditional Fascist playbook. Fox news anchors and their guests spotlighted crime some 80 percent more frequently than their MSNBC peers. And they did not emphasisze the good job law enformement was doing.

What was the truth? Well, like all social issues, it is complicated. Reported violent crimes were down in 2022, after Biden took office. However, you would not know this from the continued drumbeat from conservative sources which doubled-down on their pushing of tired shibboleths that crime was rampant wherever and whenever Dems ruled. In fact, homicides were at 8.2 per 100,000 people at the end of the Trump administration. To put that in perspective the rate was 10 per 100,000 when Clinton took office and fell to 6 when he left. The rate was about 5 at the end of Obama’s rule. While many things might contribute to such trends, the rates were highest at the end of each Republican administration. The Dems apparently did a decent job on their watches.

Think about the right-wing prescriptions for violent crimes. They want to put more guns on the streets. They pass ‘stand your ground’ laws where you can shoot down someone whom you believe threatens you. The cowtowns in the old west had much stronger gun laws, often restricting them within city limits. Today’s Republicans want everyone armed and dangerous. And so, when some folk in Texas asked a neighbor to quiet down (he was shooting off a loud gun from his porch), his response was to kill five people including a child. One witness said the assassin claimed ‘that he was on his own property so he could do what he wanted.’ Never forget that gun-related deaths on a proportional basis are much higher in red states as opposed to blue states. Guns do not save lives. Commons sense laws do.

As I have said in the past, the American foundational myth is that of the lone individual immersed in a Darwinian struggle for survival and triumph. When stripped of all rhetoric, the American dream is a few fortunate individuals rising to the top while most struggle to stay afloat. As the nation’s wealth and income inequality worsen to levels not seen since the great 1929 crash, so do the ties and bonds that keep us together. It is hard to sustain a sense of togetherness when unfairness abounds and the consequences of failure so obvious and final. It is difficult to remain sanguin or optimistic when a few reap all the rewards, often because of a rigged system that give huge advantages to those well connected, likely those with the correct skin color and enjoying fortuitous backgrounds. My oft repeated mantra is that if you want the ‘American Dream’ you best emigrate to one of several Scandinavian countries that top the list for happy citizens.

When that preferential system favoring the established elite is threatened, fear arises which is followed by uglier possibilities. WASPS once had a comfortable control of the levers of power. Now, that hegemony is seen to be slipping away. Caucasions represented some 76 percent of the nation’s population in 1990. They are down to 58 percent now and will lose their majority status by 2045. This has led to uncomfortable outcomes like the creation of an ‘American First’ caucus in Congress that is dedicated to the preservation of ‘Anglo-Saxon traditions.’ In the past, this would have been labeled a Klu Klux Klan rally. It has led to Trump and Desantis and other autocratic types who wage ‘culture wars’ to keep their followers stoked in a blind fury and thus less able or willing to identify the real sources of their discomfort.

The undisputed ruling group has never been comfortable with the potential loss of power. Their fear leads to hate, which leads to violence. Thus we have the January 6th attack on the Capitol. However, the storm troopers breaking down doors and clubbing police officers were not the white elite but the less educated who could easily be manipulated by blatant forms of propoganda, the ‘Proud Boys’ and their ilk. The easily led are the ones now going to prison, not the ones who fed them lies and pushed them on their way up the Capitol steps. The MAGA hats they wore, and the slogans they shouted, could have been heard by Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Mussolini’s Black Shirts in a prior era. It was the same slogans, the same fears, the same hate, the same violent solutions.

This widespread fears among adults seeps into the consciousness of the young. We have seen depression and anxiety among teens ramp up dramatically over the past decade in particular. Some of their worries are my worries, like climate change and the loss of careers to advanced computers (though I’m too old to wrorry much about either of these). But mostly they look with foreboding toward their futures. That is so different from my youth where, though raised in a family of very limited means, I saw abundant opportunities in front of me.

I strongly think that the young feel the loss of connectedness. The Republican God of ‘each person for himself’ is a lonely and frightening place to be. The Darwinian fight to keep going as the opportortunities for success recede wears on you over time. It affords each of us little succor or hope, which is why the happiest countries are those where government and people care about each other.

Our pervasive despair among the young is first seen by their teachers who, in turn, are battling despair and hopelessness. According to a recent survey, only 12 percent of American teachers are happy in their vocations and some 55 percent are considering bailing out. They are not paid nearly enough to take on the challenges they face or reverse the anxieties of those in their charge.

Is the fat lady singing? By the way, the lady in question presumably belts out a great song at the end of some opera. Since operas are not in English, a numbnuts like me can only figure out when the agony is about to end is when she comes on the stage to sing.

So, once again, I turn my one ear that works to listen for her. I do hear something. I hear that some 75 percent of those supporting Trump yet believe he won the 2020 election despite all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I hear that in a ranking of countries on a democracy-autocracy scale created by the CIA, some political scientists have recently downgraded America to the status on an ‘anocracy.’ This would put us somewhere between a mature democracy and an autocracy. This status typically is associated with a heightened risk of social unrest and even civil war. Then I stop listening.

I shake my head and thank my stars that my time here is limited. But some singing still reaches me despite my efforts to shut it all out. Only time will tell if it is her that I hear.

First, a personal note. The surgeon found three small polyps (is there a plural for polyps?) in my colon yesterday, all easily removed. She told me after that, given my age, this might well be my last one since something else, like my atrocious eating habits, will do me in first. I was actually a bit sad at the news, not about passing on but about no more colonoscopies. After all, the young surgeon could pass for my grand-daughter and was very cute. I was surprised, though, when she asked me for a date after the procedure. Then, again, she did see my best side … LOL. But what hit me was an untapped business opportunity, the ‘colonoscopy diet.’ If I had one of these every week, I’d lose all that extra weight I have … and with no freaking exercise.

Okay, there is a lot of more serious stuff to worry about out there, or so it seems. Economists keep warning of an impending economic collapse even though nothing has happened yet. Donald Trump, who seemed to be on the ropes not that long ago, has surged back into the GOP lead after his legal woes increased, and America’s gun carnage seems to be worsening as talk of widespread civil strife increases. Of course, there remains the international wild card in Putin, a Trump-like figure who might easily ignite a scorched earth policy as his autocratic rule is threatened by an ill-fated incursion into the Ukraine. But our real worries are internal.

Let’s take the economy. Various pundits have been predicting a recessions or even a 1930’s – type depression for a year now. Some experts point out that some 12 economic indicators point to a crash of some magnitude. Most recently, it has been pointed out that the M2 money supply has shrunk by 4.1 percent since last year. This is a tectonic change, not seen since the great crash of almost a century ago. Though I have no idea how we lose money in the aggregate, this sounds ominous. Yet, the markets have rebounded since the beginning of the year and Armageddon keeps getting put off. So, are the doomesday predicitons real? Should we listen to see if ‘the fat lady is really singing.’

Who knows what to believe these days. What is real and what not. The thing is, we have been inundated by clearly ‘fake news’ since the Gingrich Revolution of the early 1990s. It existed before that of course but not on the scale we now face. I’m not talking about misinformation from Russian bots enclosed in military basements in St. Petersburgh Russia who swayed the 2016 election toward their favored candidate Donald Trump. No, I’m talking about our home grown propoganda machine that would have made the Russian Communist print outlet Pravda appear to be a beacon of truth. Those old style Commies could have learned a lesson or two from the today’s Republican Party in the art of sophisticated misdirection and outright lying.

George Washington once said that “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the powers of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to their unjust dominion.” Either he was very prescient and able to see two centuries into the future or he was talking about Thomas Jefferson who, disagreeing with the oh-so popular Washington’s beliefs in a strong national government, waged a quiet campaign agasinst him and then an overt and salacious campaign against his Federalist successor John Adams. Newspapers, in those days, often were aligned with specific candidates and philosophies. But somewhere in the 19th century, they adopted a more independent posture and pretended to print the truth, leaving opinion to their editorial pages. Amazingly, some of them did just that.

Something happened about three decades ago that restarted the age of propoganda and outright fabrications with a renewed vengeance. A good starting point would be when Newt Gingrich and some 300 Republican members of Congress stood on the Capitol steps on September, 1994 and announced their ‘Contract with America,’ or what some of us called the ‘Contract ON America.’ Though only a few minor promises in their expansive reworking of the country ever saw the light of day, it was ‘the show’ that mattered. That summer, I went back to the U. of Wisconsin after a year’s leave in D.C. to work on Clinton’s welfare legislation. I recall a top Republican operative on the Hill telling me one day about the new language they were required to use. The inheritance tax was always to be called the death tax, or you were fined by the party (the Republican and not the Communist party). Capture the language and you capture the heart. More to the point, the show was about to become big time.

In 1960, there were only two radio stations that had a talk-show format. In 1995, there were 1,130 such stations across the nation with 70 percent of them explicitly conservative in perspective. The march to the right was jump-started in 1988 when Rush Limbaugh went from a local show to a national frenzy reaching some 20 million faithful listeners at one point. Soon several heavyweights entered the scene. The conservative muckraking outlet called the Drudge Report started in 1995, Fox News began its rise to prominence in 1996, and Newsmax in 1998. Succcess breeds imitation and others joined a crowded field of far-right outlets.

The Evangelical Church collaborated with the Republican National Committee (RNC) to form the Christian Coalition, led by Ralph Reed with much support from evangelicals such as Jerry Falwell. That group organized a smear campaign based on total fabrications about Democratic candidates across America. The lies worked and the Republicans secured the House of Representatives for the first time in four decades. With such success, the web of deceipt went into high gear. Limbaugh, the first superstar was followed by Hannity, Beck, O’Reilly, Carlson, Coulter, and too many others to mention. There was much money to be made in feeding the public BS and plenty of greedy types lining up at the trough.

One of House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s first moves was to eliminate the Office of Technological Assessment (OTA). This office, created by a former Republican President (Nixon, no less) before the party had gone off the rails saved only $20 million at the time even though it was touted as a cost saving measure. More importantly, it provided Congress with objective information and thus was seen as dangerous to the apparatchiks of the GOP. In a moment of transparent projection, Gingrich hilariously accused President Clinton of “treating truth as a transaction.” Are any Republicans self-aware or don’t they care?

Today, I have time for one example of how wild lies infest the public consciousness. In July, 1993, White House Counsel Vince Foster, a close Arkansas friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, committed suicide by shooting himself through the head in a national park near to Washington. In a suicide note, he wrote about heinous Republican attacks on him as part of their ridiculous Whitewater scandal campaign. He was too decent of a man for such scurrilous attacks, became depressed, and ended it all. Vince pretty much blamed Republicans for this. So, how did the new Party of Gingrich respond?

First, a Gingrich acolyte, Dan Burton somehow took a simulated shooting of a melon as proof that Foster was murdered and did not die of a self-inflicted wound. They were soon off and running, aided by Limbaugh and the growing far-right propoganda machine as well as millions poured into this campaign by billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife who created the infamous ‘Arkansas campaign’ to dig up dirt on the Clintons whether valid or not. That grew into some four distinct investigations, one of them being by Ken Starr, the lead investigator in charge of House campaign to impeach Clinton. They spent millions trying to prove such silly fabrications that the Clinton’s killed their friend because he knew too much about their scandalous behaviors, that they rolled him up in a carpet and dumped him where he was found, and that this was just the tip of the iceberg. They did all this for years despite the fact that every single responsible official said over and over that all the evidence supported suicide, every last bit.

Guess what, at the end of the day (or propoganda campaign), none of these ‘investigations’ found any proof of the suicide lie … not a single thing. Yet, only 35 percent of the public by this time believed that Vince Foster killed himself, though fewer blamed the Clintons. Buoyed by their early success, the purveyors of falsehoods eventually had the Clinton death toll up to 60 and then 90 victims, eventually leading Hillary to complain about the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ that attacked them without end, without mercy, and without any real justification.

That was at least a generation ago. Does it matter now? Well, Hillary Clinton went into the 2016 presidential campaign hindered by a great amount of distrust after a quarter century of continuous attacks. She lost to a man who, by any measure, was totally unsuited for the office. In the Covid pandemic, the right-wing propoganda machine convinced many Americans that vaccines would kill or cripple them, that Dr. Fauci was the enemy, and that most prevention measures were a Democratic plot to ruin the economy and weaken Trump. As a result, the death rate from Covid in those counties with the highest support for Trump was 5 to 6 times higher than in the top Democratic counties. Their lies were killing their own kind, but why would they care? And now we have the famous‘Big Lie’ campaign, much like the Vince Foster matter or the Benghazi campaign during the Obama years where multiple investigations also came up with absolutley nothing. So much time and effort spent on election fraud to sate the malignant narcissism of one demented wanna-be autocrat.

Oh, I remember watching Walter Cronkite on the evening news in the 1960s. Surely not everyone agreed with him. However, he gave us reasonably objective news in a non-hyperbolic style. We pretty much were operating out of the same playbook. Now we have at least two oppositional worlds where the members of each hate one another. Not a good sign for the future … the divided house and all. Let me end with a quote from John Adams (1814): “Remember, a Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

I should use the my one ear that still works to see if the ‘fat lady’ is yet singing.

Here’s the thing. I’m prepping for my colonoscopy later today. Yes, more information than you wanted, I know. Nevertheless, it is difficult to balance a laptop and be creative while sitting on the male throne. So, I will entertain you with a few bad jokes.

……………………………….

Three Nuns. Three nuns were talking. The first said, “I was cleaning Father’s room the other day and do you know what I found? A bunch of pornographic magazines.”

“What did you do?” The other nuns asked. “Well, of course I threw them in the trash.”

The second nun piped up, “Well, I can top that. I was in Father’s room putting away the laundrey and found a bunch of condoms.”

“Oh my,” the other two nuns gasped. “Did you throw them in the trash as well.”

“I thought about that. Then I decided it would teach him a lesson and poked small holes in all of them.”

At that, the third nun fainted.

………………………………

Wonder Pill. a man goes to the doctor with twitching fingers and a bad stutter. He finally manges to say, “doc, I have a probem with sexual performance, can you help me?”

“Oh, that’s not a problem anymore,” says the doc. “They just came out with this wonder pill that does the trick. You take the pills and your problems are history.” The doc then gives the man a prescription and sends him on his way.

A couple of weeks later, the doc runs into his patient on the street.

“Doctor, doctor,” yells the man excitedly, “I’ve got to thank you. This drug is a miracle. I’ve had sex 22 times in the past 10 days!”

“That’s great,” the doc responds, “and what does your wife think about it.”

“Wife? Oh, I haven’t made it home yet.”

……………………………..

Milk Bath. A blond heard that baths in milk would make her even more beautiful. So, she called a local dairy farm and left an order for 25 gallons of milk.

When the dairy farmer read her note, he felt there must be a mistake. She probably meant 2.5 gallons and someone wrote it down wrong. So, he called her to clarify things.

When the blond answered, he said “I got your order for 25 gallons but surely you meant 2.5 gallons.”

“No,” the blond corrected him, “I want at least 25 gallons. I’m going to fill my bath tub with millk and take a bath in it. That way I can stay young and beatiful.”

“Okay,” the farmer then asked, “do you care if it is pasteurized?”

“No, not really,” the blond replied. “I just need it up to my boobs. I can splash some on my eyes if needed.”

………………………………..

Yes, I am ashamed and will go stand in my corner.

Just a heads up, I may not stay with a daily blog which, as you can imagine, is a lot of work. I told several neighbors who asked about this daily grind. I lied and told them I have an addiction to writing. True, I do enjoy the writing process but the real reason is that it gives me an excuse to avoid cleaning the house or going out to get some exercise.

Alas, I can’t avoid those things forever.

Back in my old days, when I shared my versions of truth, justice, and the American way on Facebook to thousands of adoring followers, I would occasionally use my alter ego (Father Tom or Pastor Jim). It would take too long to explain why the different names but the allusion to a religious vocation is simple enough. On that day, usually a Sunday, I would be writing about ethical or spiritual or even religious matters. Guess what, that is what I am doing today.

Now, you may ask what right a depraved lech and morally bankrupt leftist like me has in expounding of such divine topics. My claim to expertise in these matters is decidedly weak but, in my mind al least, has some redeeming merit. I took my Catholic religion seriously growing up. This might have been a bit strange since my parents were more interested in having a good time than attending church which would have been more attractive to them had they served wine to the parishioners during Mass instead of wasting it on the Priest as part of the religious ceremony. No matter, for some reason now inexplicable, I was a good boy, an unforgivable transgression for which I made up later in life, or tried to at least.

Exploring why I developed a heightened sense of purpose as a young man is way beyond the scope of this blog though I would suggest my memoir (A Clueless Rebel) which explores my coming of age with great wit and occasional wisdom. Still, even as I drifted toward entering the Seminary, I would sit in my religious instruction at my Catholic boys high school and argue with the teacher in my head about Church doctrine. Even then, my innate rational side struggled with this strong desire to perfect some kind of ‘moral compass.’ What the hell is that, you ask? After all is said and done, a moral compass is the sense of right and wrong we carry about inside of us. It is the core from which our behaviors presumably arise.

Despite my prevailing doubts at the time, I entered the Maryknoll Seminary in 1962 (I spelled it wrong in a recent blog which people were kind enough to point out, though I now have your names in my book). That experiment lasted only a year and a half, during which time I labored toward at least one partial epiphany. It turned out I wanted to do good in the world even as I strayed further and further away from any sense that the Catholic Priesthood was the vehicle for doing so. My confusion as a boy graduating from High School was that, in my world, there were few avenues for expressing this internal sense of obligation or what I would come to label my moral compass. I would soon find that there were many such vehicles.

It took me a little longer to get to the core of my confusion. I was drawn to the essence of Christ’s teachings while finding the institutional trappings of formal religious institutions off-putting, if not ridiculous. Okay, I’ll admit that the reverance shown the clergy back then, and these mysterious powers assigned to Priests by the faithful (e.g., turning the Host used in the Mass into the body of Christ), was a further draw but not of sufficient power. Again, I always had my doubts. And back then, there were few public scandals respecting the clergy and I never saw any pedophelia or even heard a whisper about such or the other sins now associated with men of the cloth. Amazing how much we ignored, or refused to see, at the time.

Still, as I shed my affinity for the institutional trappings of religion including the exclusionary premises contained within each of these, and the silly rigidity of specific doctrines (really, how many fights can you have over the nature of the Trinity?), one thing remained to me. I found Christ’s core teachings, as I had embraced them as a kid, both instructive and compelling. Even today, I watch those who pretend to love Christ so much, and who invoke His name so frequently, behave in ways totally contradictory to the New Law he brought to his Jewish audiences at the time. His go-to message was, above all, that love and acceptance were all that counted. You didn’t have to sacrifice a goat, or pay attention to all the freaking rules the Rabbis and Pharisees of the time enforced. Reach out to everyone, no matter who or what they were, and do your best by them.

In the 1960s, I would watch these good Christian folk screaming at a 6 year old black girl who merely wanted to get a decent education. I would wonder what was in the hearts of such people whose venom and hate demanded that this girl be surrounded by Federal Marshals just to get into a freaking public school. What did the screaming mob hear in their Sunday services? It was nothing like the lessons I had absorbed, that was for sure. And soon I stumbled upon perhaps my most critical epiphany of those years … being a member of a formal church said nothing, nothing at all, about the character of your ‘moral compass.’

Well, when I escaped my cultural coccoon while attending Clark University, a secular local institutions known among Catholics in the area as a den of ‘Atheists and Communists,’ my mind exploded with new thoughts and ideas. THANK GOD! As I perused a broader array of thought, not necessarily for classes, and talked with my peers (few were now Catholic), I could put things into a more comprehensive perspective. Essentially, all major traditions, when you cut out all the collatoral nonsense, focused on a singular message (see below):

There you have it. You might call it the ‘golden rule’ or simple ‘common sense’ or a ‘biological imperative’ that motivated some of us to cooperate and collaborate, not hate and kill one another. These more positive tactics were better strategies for the survival of the species. In how many of Christ’s parables did the protagonist reach out to others, whether strangers or friends, sinners or saints, similar in appearance or very different in color or creed, and call them brother (or sister). Yet, how many who were indoctrinated in narrow and exclusionary creeds somehow managed to create contrary belief systems and behave in totally opposite manners. Of course, I do see individuals whose organized belief systems make then better people. It is just that I see no correlation bewteen belonging to a specific tradition and the quality of their internal moral compass, or at least not in their behaviors.

Perhaps some 15 years ago, my late wife wanted to connect with a church, mostly for the rites which she thought might be comforting. I agreed to the Unitarian-Universalist church in Tarpon Springs, Florida (where we Wintered) because the town in which it was located had great Greek food for the after-church stuffing of my mouth. But this sect proved to be fine. The minister was a graduate from Harvard Divinity School who, in my eyaes, came out of central casting. He was an avuncular presence, wise and thoughtful, who even made me think … not an easy task. More importantly, the Congregation accepted all, drew from all traditions, and focused on social justice and doing good for others. You could be devout or an atheist, it mattered not to them. Just be good and do good. Period.

My spiritual journey, while I never assigned a label to my destination, probably led me to Humanism. It focuses on mankind, rationality, and hope (see above meme). It is not where we are now that counts but where we are headed, unless we screw things up. This reminds me of the one Catholic religious figure that had the most profound impact on me as a young man. He was Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. He was a Jesuit Priest, more philosopher than anything else, who spent his life in China (before the Communists took over) doing archeology while studying the past. This led him to articulate an evolutionary perspective that was immersed in spiritual meaning. His attachment to the theory of evolution had him constantly battling with Rome. In any case, he laid out exciting possibilities for the future of the species … perhaps even a God in the making perspective.

Now, I read him a long time ago, in high school, so what I recall may be touched with what I want to recall, not what he wrote. And his speculations may well not pass muster with today’s scientific community. But I loved my recall of his message. (Besides, I once experienced a very, very rare success in seducing a female when she learned I was a Chardin devotee. Who knew?)

Chardin convinced me that it is not where we are now but where we might be going. And all of us are on this journey together. So, let us walk down this path toward destinations we can barely envision as global brothers and sisters. To me, that is the most compelling moral code of all. Perhaps it is the only way we will get there, or anywhere that counts.