Election 101

The most beautiful play I ever saw in a baseball came at a Pony League contest. My eldest son was playing first base. There was a runner on first when the opposing batter smashed a hard grounder to third. The runner took off and a force was iffy, so the third baseman fired a bullet to my son, who gloved it just as the batter's foot hit the bag—safe. The other runner decided to go to third on the play. Instead of debating the call at first, my son didn't hesitate and immediately fired the ball back to third on a rope. The third baseman caught it and swept down to make the tag just as the runner's foot slid into the bag—safe. Both calls could have gone either way, a genuine bang-bang play. For us, the play resulted in no outs, yet the precision, the quickness and the determination of both fielders took my breath away. A lady whom I have never met but whom I consider a friend, the editor of Clever Magazine, answered my “Just a Splash” blog by reminding me that we have good reason to be optimistic. Election night was a blue wave. The Dems retook Congress. Devin Nunes is gone. Despite heavy campaigning against him by the President, John Tester remains. Even the great plays that came up short by less than a step, like Beto O'Roarke's strong showing against Ted Cruz in Texas, were inspiring. Over one hundred million Americans cast their ballots in a mid-term election, meaning that more Americans were fired up and involved than any of us could have hoped. Over 52% voted Democratic. Up and down state ballots, Democrats gained ground. Nationwide, the blue shift is on, and that means we are slowly coming together. The day after the election, Trump ousted his Attorney General and replaced him, apparently illegally and unconstitutionally, with a crony. This has caused thousands of protesters across the country, concerned that Trump's move is designed to stop the Mueller Probe, to take to the streets. Finally, with the votes still being counted in California, Arizona, Georgia and Florida, 101 women—from both parties—have been elected to the House of Representatives so far. Among them are the first two Native American women ever elected to Congress, one of whom doubles as the first openly gay woman ever elected. For me, living in the state that can boast the first woman ever elected to Congress, Jeannette Rankin, 102 years ago, a ray of sunny optimism seems something reasonable to enjoy. So, thank you Dianne—I am celebrating. It may only be Game One, but it's in the bag.

Just a Splash

It wasn't a tsunami. It wasn't a glorious revolution. It wasn't a referendum against Donald Trump. It wasn't a red tide. It wasn't a hold on the one-yard line. It wasn't a referendum for Donald Trump. America remains unsettled, undecided, unsure of herself, uncertain what path to take. The net result of the 2018 midterm election is that we will put off decision making for another two years and watch very little actually get done. Again. Now that one branch of Congress can block both the other branch and the Executive as well, and the other branch and the President can block the House as well, the divisions between us loom even larger than before. But we also have restored a check on the system and with it restored the balance our Founding Fathers intended. Democracy stumbles forward, wounded but alive, recovering and trying to find a peaceful middle ground.

Seasick

I have been silent for quite a while. To be frank, I simply did not want to deal with all the disappointment. Red wave, blue wave, choppy seas—it just got a bit nauseating. It is election night and I have high hopes but no confidence. I need a Dramamine. With a whiskey chaser. I also have been busy—am busy—with family, and working on my latest project. But this morning I woke up thinking. Today we define where we want to be as a nation. Will the result be a red tide or a blue-nami? Will the divides between us grow sharper or will they begin to heal? Will we become subjects to the conscience of a king or to our own? There are many unanswered questions. Tonight may point us toward an answer that many will like and many will find flawed and unsatisfying. But tomorrow will be business as usual.

Trying not to Talk Politics

Greetings from the Big Sky. Summer is in full retreat. The air has the feel and smell of Fall. That stretch when it gets to feeling like you are about to melt, better go jump in the lake, only hit a couple of times and lasted a couple of days. It was a very busy summer up here in Lakeside, so much so that all of a sudden tomorrow is September. The traffic is still insane by our standards. The lake is inviting and the launch areas are so busy they would benefit from traffic signals while the boat-free trailers rest along the side streets, their burden lifted for now. Driving by them, at least we don't have to worry about sudden movements, as we would with the deer. These great beasts do not seem inclined to either freeze in the middle of the road or dart across it at the last minute. Parked is parked. The deer, incidentally, are in hiding until deep into the night. By then, the trailers and their burdens are gone again. I am trying very hard to battle my addiction and consciously not write about politics. Of course, writing about not writing about politics is a way of writing about politics, isn't it? My grandson is ten years old. He doesn't think about politics at all. Unless Super Mario World is a political app, that is. When I was ten I was advising my father on hoiw to vote in the 1960 presidential election. Different times, different people. I think my father wanted me to be prepared. After the Great War no one believed there could be another. Yet the cannon fired within twenty years. After World War Two (now they were numbered) no one would be naive enough to call an end to all wars. Papa took his family out of Europe in part because it was a battlefield waiting for new battles. But with America one of the two major powers left in the world, he wanted me politically and historically aware at a tender age. Perhaps I was his canary—my reactions to the news told him what to expect. No one wants our kids to grow up too fast, on the one hand, yet we rush them into the larger world on the other. Politics no, trade skills yes. History, not so much; computer skills definitely, most assuredly. Smell the flowers as long as they are virtual and trust us that we get the scent correct. Xander does have an interest in war. Academically. He is learning the game of Risk. He also plays video games in which things blow up. He likes to blow up balloons. It's fun, and certainly not very threatening to ward off an attack of killer balloons in formation. I used to do something similar with my toy soldiers, staging massive battles in which almost everybody died just to stand up again at the end for Round 2, and look at me. I never held an assault rifle or set foot in a hostile land, yet I hate wars with a passion. Maybe it's all those marines and Civil War soldiers I killed over the years, I don't know. The body count is higher than I care to admit: I played war a great deal, and I turned out all right. Maybe Xander will, too, as long as we don't stifle him and as long as we remind him that killing, really killing another human being, is one of the “Nots” on that very old, very important list etched in stone that so many of us seem to ignore. I guess if we didn't need a list, there wouldn't be one.

The Collapsing American Empire

On July 14, 1789, French protesters stormed one of the most profound symbols of their oppression under the rule of their kings, the prison called the Bastille. It was almost defunct, holding only seven prisoners at the time, but its significance rocked all France. The French Revolution had begun and the Bourbon Empire was about to collapse. Empires fall. All empires collapse under their own weight. The actual moment of death is obvious, but the process of dying can be so slow that no one even notices until that final moment. Rome fell, once and for all, in 476 but was spiraling downward for centuries. Bourbon France began its death throes on that afternoon in July, but the reasons for the revolution's success were being laid down on the road to the guillotine for decades. The British Empire collapsed in 1948 but the process began as soon as Queen Victoria was pronounced Empress of India a hundred years before, or perhaps could be traced to England's inability to hold onto its colonies in the New World. Churchill's efforts to preserve the Empire came to naught because the trends were already there. Make no mistake. The United States is an empire. We have our hands, our money, our language and our soldiers in every part of the world. Most Americans don't even realize we are an empire. But we are, and we are dying. With everything going on around him, Donald Trump is poised to destroy the democratic system in order to hold onto his power. All the signs are there: deep divisions among the people; blind unyielding sycophantic loyalty to their leader from a significant part of the population and the other members of the government; corruption in government running rampant and unchecked; the will of the majority totally ignored by those in power; interference in the way our leader is picked, by another powerful leader who wants us weakened; stiffer, even cruel policies against immigrants; and serious profit-taking among the small class of super-rich patrons of the President. A new poll came out, based on a Pew survey asking which president in your lifetime did the best job. The Number One President turns out to be Barach Obama. Memories are short and so are the parameters of the survey, but democrats Obama and Clinton ranked 1-2. Republicans Bush, Bush and Trump did not fare as well, with Ronald Reagan still revered by those old enough to remember him. Memories are short, which is why long term processes that affect the life of an empire go unnoticed. Most of us just go on with the daily job of living, regardless of what is happening on the larger stage. That same poll placed Donald Trump in position number 5. He is not wildly popular but he does have a solid base of support. How will those voters feel when Trump declares himself tsar?

Freedom of Thought

About 350 years ago, the man whom Isaac Newton said had the most elegant mind of their time, declared, “The world is my country, science is my religion.” Throughout history people have been excommunicated, expelled, executed, boycotted and banned for thinking outside the box a given society finds comfortable. Due to an accident of birth, Christiaan Huygens was free to express his ideas without fear. In the United States of America, that freedom from fear has been a cornerstone of our democratic way of life. So far, so good, but we must forever be vigilant. We must forever watch against those who think the box is just fine the way it is, or, worse, fondly remember a smaller box still.

The Reading Room, or TMI

I used to think, going to the bathroom, what a waste of time. It was one of those questions for God I was collecting. What's up with the platypus? Why fleas? Why do we need to eliminate? Why is that efficient? Why aren't we green? Wouldn't it be ever so much more efficient, and less violent, and easier to boot, to photosynthesize? Just get some sunlight or a vitamin D3 supplement and you're good to go. No muss, no fuss, no cutting down our cousin trees to make toilet paper, no wasted time. But then, I realized, I would never know the joy of a pepperoni pizza fresh out of the oven with cheese so hot and stringy it literally attacks and attaches to your lips. I would never know how to cool down my throat with a lovely long pull on a frosty glass of imperial stout. I would never get to see a three-in-the-morning Montana sky with all those Milky Way stars shining down on me like something out of a van Gogh. Mostly, I would never get to enjoy the wasted time spent in the bathroom, going, cleaning, preening, trimming, brushing, going again. Sitting. Reading. I make great progress on a book while on the throne. I will never complain about elimination. In fact, I look forward to potty breaks. The peace, the quiet, the satisfaction, the relief, the two pages closer to the end. And besides, without all of this I would never understand why my four year old granddaughter CharleeRose thinks that poots and toots are the funniest words she ever heard.

Plutocracy in America, A Quick Quote for a Long Subject

“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, but we cannot have both,” wrote Louis D. Brandeis, a Supreme Court Justice appointed by Woodrow Wilson. He goes to heart of the matter today, 77 years after his death: if America is a plutocracy (ruled by the rich) then it cannot be a democracy (ruled by the people). Given that we the people only get to vote for the candidates that the rich supply us, I think it is obvious what the United States has become. Donald Trump is not causal, he is merely the most blatant example of a truth we are reluctant to admit. He has torn the bandage off the wound festering on the abdomen of Liberty. It is up to us to decide whether he has done us a favor, and treat the wound, or let him and the Party of the Rich dig at the wound until Liberty dies.

Smells Like 1933

It used to be that Hitler comparisons were easy and cheap. If you wanted to slam someone in authority or power you just pointed out how similarly they were behaving like the Fuehrer and the Nazis. It is a quick way to get a rise out of anyone, supporter or detracter. This is no longer true: with President Donald Trump the comparisons may be easy to draw, but there is nothing cheap about this man's concerted and obvious attempts to make the Executive Branch of the United States government the only branch. He hates sharing power, yet he seems to have no real goals except gaining more and more of that corrosive stuff, power. Congress is an obstacle—even his own party members can't seem to agree on anything except tax breaks for the rich and the Mueller investigation has gone on too long. The Supreme Court is becoming a 5-4 Yes Man. Our symbols are more important than the rights, ideals and responsibilities for which they stand. Above it all, despite swimming in a sea of suspicion and controversy, stands Donald Trump on his rock, doing and saying one outrageous thing after another, wondering how far he can go, kissing up to dictators and tyrants while spurning democracies—playing with the big boys he admires. They know how to rule, he says. America is changing the spelling of her name to Amerika, and those who protest what we see happening from border to border, from sea to shining sea, will be drowned out in the end by ignorance and apathy. But when the camps are opened up again and American citizens are placed in them, remember you were warned. Yes, I admit, I am sounding hyperbolic, but it smells like 1933 all over again and I do not want to see history repeat itself. This country is supposed to live by the rule of law but the very rule of law is under attack.

Night Owls

CharleeRose is a night owl. Her dad works from 5:30 in the afternoon until closing time at two a.m., and sometimes as late as three. CharleeRose doesn't want to go to bed until her Daddy gets home and all is right with the world. She won't nap, either—too afraid to miss anything. Try as we might to get her sleepy, she angrily tells us, “I'M NOT TIRED!” and bounces herself around the room, off the furniture, the dog, her brother, her parents and her grandparents. In calmer moments filled with rational discussions, adult to child, she says with a certain level of pride, “I'm incapable of sleep.” We got a trampoline in the hopes that she would bounce the energy clean out of herself. She loves it—wants to bounce and run around and kick balls pretending to play soccer. It gives her great exercise outdoors, is a draw for other kids in the neighborhood, but as for exhausting her naturally, it hasn't helped. But, then, if I am honest with myself, if I didn't have to go to work at three a.m. myself, just about the time her daddy gets home, my own day clock would return to night owl status, too. It's more my natural rhythm: in bed by three, up by noon. So maybe there is a genetic component operating here. As it is I go against nature—my nature—and the grandkids both think it's hysterical that Opa has to go to bed before they do even on a school night. As for CharleeRose, she remains incapable of sleep. We keep trying. Victory is getting her to fall asleep before Daddy gets home. For her Opa, victory is getting her to fall asleep before I do. That has happened, I believe, once, just last week. She passed out on Oma's lap before eleven p.m. and I did a victory lap around the house with Dublin, the dog, who happily bounded along with me after I woke her up.

A Nation of Immigrants Like Me

I am presenting two blogs today, one political and both personal. I want to stick with personal stories. I want to entertain you, to be a proper storyteller and not a pundit, but sometimes you just cannot ignore the world around you. This is, profoundly, one of those times. I think about this a lot lately. I am an immigrant. My parents came from a “good country,” as “proper Northern European stock.” They were not refugees fleeing from an existing terror, rather, they were fleeing a place still recovering from massive terror and where the fear that such terror could recur was still palatable. They had a sponsor; they went through the proper channels; they waited the requisite amount of time between application and invitation. Assimilation was easy, virtually automatic. Hell, my countrymen helped forge this nation and gave America the principles of liberty and tolerance etched into the fabric of our founding document, the “Declaration of Independence.” I was two years old. I had no choice in the decision, no say. My parents came seeking a better future for my brother and for me. Had I been able to rationally understand what was happening I would have agreed, but I was too little. That decision was made for me. Looking back now, I see that there are so many things that would not have happened had I not been born and had I not been brought to America. I do wonder what we all would have felt if, at Ellis Island for however long it took to check our papers and establish the authenticity of my parents' claim to enter the United States, the officials in charge ripped me away from my parents until the dicision was official. It was a different time, a different place. Yet, had we been asylum seekers—a legal request so many today are trying to make legally, declaring their wishes at the border and awaiting review—only to be separated and our family unit torn apart by the US government, well, we would have thought Adolph Hitler had survived the war and was living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Trying to Hide From a Bug

You can't hide anything from little children. They have marvelous hearing and acute eyesight and an insatiable need to know exactly what you are doing and, hopefully, why. I snuck home a purchase of my favorite flavor potato chips, salt and vinegar, and was putting them away in the cupboard for later snacking. CharleeRose, my soon to be four-year-old granddaughter, yelled, “Pringles! Opa, can I have some?” I pulled out the barbeque flavor chips that had her name on them but she said, “I want those.” Her mamma said, “Salt and vinegar? That's my favorite.” “Mine too,” I said. Then I told Charlee, “You might not like them, Bug.” Bug, short for my little Ladybug. “They're sharp. Try one. It's okay if you don't.” She grabbed the offered chip. She took an aggressive bite. Paused. Crunched it up in her mouth. Considered. Swallowed. Took another bite. Grabbed the tube of chips and ran off down the hall. I never saw those chips again.

Success In Singapore?

I don't begrudge our President his success in Singapore. On the one hand, it is a good thing to open communications with North Korea. On the other, however, Trump has elevated Kim Jong-un to a position of prominence on the world stage not befitting a country with the size and the economy of North Korea. Inviting that nation to join the rest of the world is one thing. Being played by a third rate dictator is another—and Kim played Trump like a fiddle with his own trump card, his nuclear arsenal. Kim got what he wanted, legitimacy. We got promises. Neville Chamberlain got promises from Adolph Hitler in Munich, 1938, and we all know how that went—and Kim is no Adolph Hitler, although he might think he is. North Korea is no Germany. Their nukes do pose a threat, but all the bluster from Kim has been in an attempt to hold onto his power and bring him right here, recognized as important by the allegedly most powerful and important man on the planet. Kim can easily see himself as Trump's equal right now. Trump praises Kim with term and tone similar to his praises for Vladimir Putin and other totalitarian regimes. In fact, Trump admires dictators who have an ironclad hold on their countries. He turns his back to those democracies who support us in what Ronald Reagan declared was our mission, to promoite democracy around the world. He also squashes a deal with another rogue nation, Iran, that was working under its limited purview and might have helped that nation rejoin the world. Once again, Trump has presented the American people with actions that are hard to reconcile with what America is supposed to stand for, and I think it shows where his affections and ambitions lie—with dictators. On this one, Fox News's faux pas before the meeting took place was not far off the mark.

Irony and IV Fluids

This is a very short story about cause and effect. Last week a serious outbreak of a particularly nasty variety of flu reached a level of infection among Americans that bordered on epidemic. 49 of our 50 states reported cases, and several people have died from the disease. This variety was not covered by the annual flu shot, although reports are that someone who received a flu shot would have an easier time fighting this strain off. Still, dozens of people across the nation have died from the illness. Making matters worse, the national supply of saline IV fluids, key to combating this flu and all sorts of medical situations from surgeries to chemotherapy, is low. No patient yet has suffered lesser care, but the IV shortage could become a crisis in the upcoming months. The major suppliers of saline IV fluid are in Puerto Rico. Those manufacturing plants were hit hard by Hurricane Maria and the facilities damaged. On top of that, they still don't have electrical power and are running on generators, trying to catch up with a backlog of orders pouring in. Perhaps if the U. S. government had done a better job in helping its territory, American citizens in every state of the union would not have to worry that there will be enough saline IV when they need it. Our President gave himself a very, very good grade on the response to the Puerto Rican disaster, but, as Donald Trump seems unable to fathom, things are a bit more complicated than water bottles sitting on a dock.

The Profane President

In my favorite all time play, Inherit the Wind, there is a passage in which the fiance of the man on trial for teaching evolution asks his lawyer, a fictionalized version of Clarence Darrow named Henry Drummond, why he curses so much. Drummond responds that English is a poor means of communication and we have to use every tool at our disposal. “And besides,” he adds, “there are damn few words everyone understands.” I understand Donald Trump. I watched him descend from a staircase and spew out vitriol as he announced his candidacy for president and thought, this man is a joke. But the joke grew and became a parody and then a travesty and then a presidency. It seemed he would go out and say something outrageous, topping himself time and time again, just to see how far he could go before he lost his appeal. But he did not lose his appeal. And he was elected—granted, through the Electoral College and with something in the neighborhood of a quarter of the eligible vote. 39% of Americans give him an F as president and another 17 a D—over 56% fail Trump. Yet he remains. Investigations and huge questions about his competence abound, yet he remains. He is the laughing stock of most of the world and wildly unpopular at home, yet he remains. And he will remain for four years barring impeachment or a federal indictment—neither of which seem likely as I write these words. And now, his racial bias once again spews forth with expletives spoken out loud. How do we get rid of thi embarrassment? Talk of the 25th Amendment depends on a cabinet that opposes him, which it does not. Yet the majority of America has no confidence in, and even expresses fear of, this man. I would call for a vote of no confience if I could. But I can't. Americans have no recourse but to wait it oust.

Immigrant Song

It is easy for a white Western European to say, “They're not assimilating like we did.” It's true, our ancestors managed to maintain their sense of cultural heritage while assuming the identity of true Americans, and did so for the most part with little effort. I myself am an immigrant; becoming an American was as natural for me as leaving the Old World was for my father after the devastation and horror of World War Two. But we assimilated into a culture that was pretty much already the same as the one we left. Our ancestors shaped the prevailing white Western European culture here. The Spanish, the British, the French, the Dutch, the Swedes, the Germans, the Norwegians, the Danish all were crucial in making colonial and later revolutionary America a melting pot – for Spaniards, Brits, French, Dutch, Swedes, Germans, Norwegians and Danes. Our ancestors did not assimilate at all, if you think about it. They brought their cultures with them and forced them down the throats of the indigenous peoples across the length of the New World. Their motto could easily have been: “Assimilate or die.” Join our culture or suffer the consequences. Conquerors do not assimilate. In fact, when we began inviting laborers from other parts of Europe, and Asia, we wanted their labor but we pushed against their culture. Even the Irish, themselves Western Europeans, were met with hostility. Still another entire group of people we imported as a labor force – free labor, against their will. So what worries us about immigrants? Do we fear that the Muslim world will do to us what our ancestors did across the globe? Or are we simply afraid to lose our white supremacy? Inquiring minds want to know.

Hand over the Reins: Vonnegut and #MeToo

In 1987, my all-time favorite author, Kurt Vonnegut, published one of his best novels, Bluebeard. The novel was a critical success but falls, popularly, far under his most famous works like Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle and Sirens of Titan. To me it stands second only to Slaughterhouse Five. It is the story of a fictional abstract expressionist painter named Rabo Karabekian, who, like the character Bluebeard, spends much of his time trying to understand the relationship between men and women. The plot set aside. Vonnegut presents two startling ideas that dovetail into today's world perfectly. The first concept is that no art is permanent, that perhaps very little of what we do will last even beyond our own lifetime, but what does survive is going to be our best work. When he was younger Karabekian experimented with a new type of paint that enhanced the effect of his photo-rrealistic paintings. But the pigments in the paint break down after thirty years, so every single work begins to disintegrate right on the canvas and Karabekian has to come to grips with impermanence. He then pours his heart and soul into one final work, the secret locked in his studio barn. It is the only work that he himself feels has 'soul.' And it is that enormous painting that creates the greatest message of our age, or more precisely, its title. Thirty-one years ago Vonnegut told us men to make room, to let go, to hand over the reins, to admit we haven't done such a fabulous job running the world. See the 5,219 battered people, the child Karabekian among them, left behind in a valley by the Nazis as they fled the end of the war, protected not by soldiers because there weren't any to protect them, not by any men because there were none to protect them. Five words that could become the new anthem of our #MeToo era, courtesy of one of the greatest writer of the past century: “Now It's the Women's Turn.” Mark well, and remember.

Buffalo Hunters: Trump and Our Presidency

I wrote this over a year ago, in the reflective hours just after Donald Trump won the Electoral College. If anything, the words are more resonant today. Buffalo Hunters The biggest hope I heard expressed these post-election days is that Donald Trump did not mean what he said, and that he will not do the things he said he wants to do. I know that drawing a parallel to the world of 1933, specifically Germany, is considered the last resort of poor argument. Still, looking back begs the issue of what lies ahead. Katherine Anne Porter wrote a novel in 1962 entitled Ship of Fools, about the passengers and crew aboard a cruise ship headed from Mexico to Germany in 1933 just as the Nazis have taken control of the German government. This situation back home is a major topic of conversation and concern. Several of the passengers are Jewish, and they know the rhetoric of hate spewed out by those who now have taken power toward the Jewish people. One of them says to another, “What are they going to do? Kill us all?” I have heard the rhetoric of hate spewed out by the Trump campaign. “It can't happen here,” is another favorite phrase uttered by those who believe someone else will protect them. I ask you to be a protector, in case. Do not for a moment relent. Do not for a moment think Trump can't possibly mean it. Do not for a moment relax your guard believing that one man cannot take full control of America. It can happen; dystopian stories of the past several years are clear on this point, and art too often comes in ahead of life. There are signs to watch for, such as the demonizing of the Press, and calling anyone who disagrees a traitor, or a cancer. The system may right itself, but most Anericans don't trust it to do so, which is in part why Trump was “selected.” He was not elected. He did not win the vote. He has no clear mandate from the people other than this: we are all dissatisfied with the status quo. We Americans tend to forget our own history, or worse, most of us do not know it. We have a powerful mythology of freedom, but our freedom has come at a great price, in hard fights, one by one since our Founding Fathers set up a democracy that excluded everyone but the landed gentry from the vote. We have suppported dictatorships and still do. We have attacked and invaded countries smaller and weaker than ourselves, sometimes to ill result. We have oppressed people on our soil and outside it, and sytemmatically and intentionally caused the near-extinction of one of our most magnificent creatures, the American Bison, then made it a symbol of our greatness. We are not the noble people we think we are. But we could be. We are, it seems, at a crossroads. We have two roads to choose from, one that leads forward and continues the fight for economic and political freedom; the other that tries to go back to a time imagined to exist that was less complicated but also much less free. We have veered off our path, but, as Englishman Robert Plant famously sang, there's still time to change the road you're on. Remember, they can kill us all. And we are they.

Open Letter to Trump and Second Thought: Deportation

Immigrant Status (An Open Letter to the President) Dear Mr. Trump, I do not address you properly, I am aware. The title, Dear Mr. President, and the title, The Honorable POTUS, just do not fit with your name. I apologize at the outset, but I do not believe you care one way or the other. It seems that those of us who do not belong among your followers, although they be a significant majority of the American people, also do not belong to your idea of what America is and how She feels about you. Even when an office deserves respect, its occupant still has to earn it; in my eyes, you have not. I am an immigtant. I came to America when I was two tears old, carried through Ellis Island by my father. I became an American citizen when I was seven, automatically, when my mother became an American citizen. I did not take any tests, I did not take a loyalty oath, I did not pledge to go to war against my homeland if ever the occasion arouse wherein the United States would find itself at war with the Netherlands. I grew up a liberal, evolved into a bleeding heart liberal. I belong to no organized religion. I am a pacifist. Although I am of good Aryan stock, as some might say, I still began my life as a foreigner, an immigrant. Like Arnold Schwarzenneger. Like Henry Kissinger. Like Jospeh Pulitzer, Rupert Murdoch, Madeline Albright, To this day I feel something of an outsider looking in at and, as James Baldwin might say, loving and therefore feeling free to criticize America. I fear for her. I fear you. Given the above, when exactly will you deport me? A Second Thought about Deportation I wonder... I wonder if Donald Trump could even pass a citizenship test. I wonder if such a test should be a requirement of anybody runing for the office of POTUS. I wonder if such a test should be a requirement for anyone running for public office. I wonder, if Trump failed, should he be deported? I wonder, would anyone else have him?