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.