Ugly Times

Donald Trump, President of the United States. I can write it, but I still can't believe it. Representing the worst in us, the most vulgar, petty, mean and violent. So how's he doing so far? Did he rise to the occasion and surprise us by being presidential? Quite the contrary. He's building ruin, destruction, mayhem.

Foreign policy: it seems to be all about alienation, identifying the enemy. Let's make a list (he did, and by he I might mean President Bannon, the Nazi). Offend and insult first our NAFTA, North American partners/friends, Canada and Mexico. Threaten war against Mexico and at the very least a huge wall, thus damaging U.S. relations with all Latin American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Offend TPP partners: Brunei, Canada again, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico again, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and Australia. Then insult Australia again. Threaten war against China. Threaten war against North Korea. Prepare a war against Iran. Or maybe Yemen (opps). First Muslim ban on: Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Libya. But in the process frighten and alienate all Muslim-majority countries like: Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Malaysia, Niger, Tunisia, Djibouti, Albania, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brunei, Burkina Faso, Chad, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Comoros, Gambia, Guinea and Guinea Bissau, Jordan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Mayotte, Oman, Qatar, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Western Sahara, and the Palestinian Territories. Does the President even know where these countries are? Does he have friends from these countries? Does he know any Muslims? Does he know that there are 2,595,000 American Muslims? Not to mention other non-Muslim majority countries with large Muslim populations (over 1 million): Benin, Burma/Myanmar, Cameroon, Canada again, China again, Congo, Eritrea, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Israel (surprised?), Italy, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nepal, Netherlands, Philippines, Russia (oops, 9,400,000 Muslims), Spain, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, United Kingdom (3,577,000 Muslims). Notice the European countries in this list? Oh yeah, he insulted and threatened the European Union too: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia (Melania's hood), Spain, Sweden and still the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Are there other countries to cross off his hit list? Oh, I forgot that he plans to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. 194 countries have signed the treaty, 128 have ratified it (or more now), including the U.S. on September 3, 2016. I'll spare you a complete list, but the countries who did not sign this life-or-death agreement are: Nicaragua, Syrian Arab Republic, Uzbekistan, North Korea. Basically Trump has destroyed American relations with every other country on earth, in only two weeks!

Oh boy, that's horrible. It's the old match metaphor: years of hard work to build a house, just one match to burn it down. Is Trump doing better at home, where he says he is concentrating his goodwill at the expense of the rest of humanity? (Does he have any humanity? Does he know what being a refugee means? Can he feel the suffering of others?)

Some critics have called the barrage of Executive Orders, meant in part to confound the opposition (it's working), un-American. Un-American would mean in contrast with our values, history and laws. Evidently the Trumpists and the Hillary-supporters (the majority) do not share values. The ACLU and the KKK do not share values.  Then let's talk about history. Andrew Jackson, the corrupt, vindictive racist is not a president to admire. Okay, let's talk about recent history. "The United States is in a disastrous state and corruption and degradation has been rampant for decades. Carnage." Um, I don't think I want to talk about recent history because Trump seems to have been living in an alternate reality. Nightmareland. Not-Great America waiting to be saved.

So let's talk about the law, something we can all agree on. The Constitution. The first amendment: freedom of religion (severely threatened for non-Christians and non-believers), freedom of speech (they're checking people's Facebook posts in airports), freedom of the press (DT: journalists who are not government mouthpieces should be terminated), freedom of assembly (tear gas and arrest for protestors, see Dakota), freedom to petition (totally ignored millions of signatures). Every Italian knows that a clique that runs the show through repression of the people's will is called "Fascism." Look it up.

Things look worse every day. Sad.

Happy trials, Martin


Mutt: Looks like bad jokes are needed more than every.
Jeff: Here we go.
Mutt: What's a witch's favorite school subject?
Jeff: Spelling.
Mutt: What kind of lights did Noah have on the ark?
Jeff: Floodlights.
Mutt: What do you call an Italian with a rubber toe?
Jeff: You got me, what?
Mutt: Roberto.
Jeff: P.U. I had a dream last night that I was a muffler.
Mutt: Really?
Jeff: I woke up exhausted.
Mutt: Did you hear about the optometrist who fell into a lens grinder and made a spectacle of himself?
Jeff: Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent.
Mutt: They told me I had type A blood, but it was a type O.
Jeff: I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. I just can't put it down.
Mutt: I stayed up all night to see where the sun went, and then it dawned on me.
Jeff: I changed my iPhone's name to Titanic. It's syncing now.
Mutt: I don't know what that means.
Jeff: Never mind. What you seize is what you get.
Mutt: Can I tell an English teacher joke?
Jeff: No.
Mutt: Please.
Jeff: No.
Mutt: Okay, past, present and future walked into a bar.
Jeff: I said no.
Mutt: Wait for it. The situation was ... tense.
Jeff: No.
Mutt: Sorry. Forgive me.
Jeff: Good night.

Quote of Every Day

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.  Martin Niemoller

New National Anthem Update

Several weeks ago I proposed an alternate anthem for the next four years: "I Won't Back Down," by Tom Petty. Good choice. But yesterday I heard a song so beautiful and so moving that I must revise my recommendation. The clipped off ending makes it ring in your head. Go women, you got this.

Notes from Trumplandia

After the trip back home from hell -- stuck 2 days in SFO and another two in Istanbul snowstorms, for a total of about 90 hours door-to-door -- I got a case of the flu from hell, so far 8 days of coughing my lungs inside out for a total of 666,000 painful hacks, with 5 days of hallucinatory fever like I can't remember since I had typhoid over 40 years ago, and all the while following the exponential disgustingfulness of our elected leaders -- I feel compelled to leave my sickbed and turn in this report to my foreign readers (all 6 or 8 of you) on what I experienced firsthand in the New USA during my recent visit from a politicalogical-sociological standpoint.

How's that for a first sentence? Can you tell that I haven't slept more than an hour a night for the last week?

Okay then, down to work: My first idea was to write an insightful essay about Trump the Trickster. Based on my background in folklore studies, I thought I could show how he's actually the expression of an ancient archetype, the creator-destroyer of worlds, blahblahblah ... and maybe I will someday.

Then my delirium gave me an even better idea: Race War. Why and how one is being subtly set up and launched. Remembering the late 60's (as I do), I see similar signs of race war on somebody's agenda, somebody's way to gain or distract or just have fun breaking heads, but, yeah, another time.

Then one word in the Russian dossier summary struck me -- Pervert. I know DT the Perv ain't news: the predatory behavior, the porn films, the penis brags, pussy-grabbing, if she weren't my daughter, mistresses, prostitutes, assault and abuse, and more we'll find out later. One thing about perverts is that they love company, they form clubs, so who does DT surround himself with: Julian Assange, Mike Tyson, Bill O'Reilly, Arnold Swartzeneger, Roger Ailes, Steve Bannon, Jeffery Epstein, Andrew Puzder, Corey Lewandowski, and Vladi Putin. Not a full or confirmed list but you get the idea. And it is all horrible, a rape culture so vulgar and filthy that in the end it's hard to look at. Or joke about.

So what happened on the ground regarding the Prez Elect (or PEE) for me to report about? Not much. People aren't talking. Like the eerie winter of 2001, following 9/11, there's a tense fake calm that equals fear. The country-town-neighborhood-friends-families are divided. The issue was avoided in holiday gatherings. One liberal friend told me she "felt like vomiting" every time she thought about that monster. But she said it in a whisper, as if 1984 were still in effect. It is a uniquely distressing moment for half the country, or three quarters I should say, and that includes most of California.

Republicans and Democrats, like Dodgers and Giants, play by the same rules. Everyone wants the transitions to go smoothly. Yet that ends now. No more rules, no smooth transitions in mutual respect, no more morality.

Come Friday, the trickster, race war-monger, pervert, un-named one has the nuke buttons and can't wait to destroy something, or everything.

Happy trials, Martin

Mutt and Jeff are both sick too.

Mutt and Jeff, the Survivors

Mutt: Whew, that was close.
Jeff: You're telling me.
Mutt: Coulda been worse.
Jeff: What? Charlie Manson for President? Jim Jones? Jeff Dahmer?
Mutt: Hell, we could have elected Donald Trump!
Jeff: Nah, that could never happen.
Mutt: We've been away too long.
Jeff: Third class passage wasn't that bad. But I still can't paddle a boat, canoe?
Mutt: What do you call a cardboard belt?
Jeff: Oh, we're going to start right in with the bad jokes?
Mutt: A waist of paper.
Jeff: Okay, did you hear about the mathematician who was afraid of negative numbers?
Mutt: I bet he stopped at nothing to avoid them.
Jeff: So what do you call a deer with no eyes?
Mutt: No idea.
Jeff: So what do you call a deer with no eyes and no legs?
Mutt: Still no idea. How old are the hills? That joke is older.
Jeff: A medical question: what's the difference between an oral thermometer and a rectal thermometer?
Mutt: I'd say the taste mainly.
Jeff: A guy's driving when he sees a bar and decides to stop for a drink. There's a bouncer who stops him and says, "Sorry. You need to have a tie to get in." The guy goes back to his car and looks for a tie, but can't find one, so he puts jumper cables around his neck and goes back to the bar. The bouncer sees him, chuckles, and says, "Okay, go on in, but don't start anything."
Mutt: I gave away all of my dead batteries today.
Jeff: Oh, yeah.
Mutt: Free of charge.
Jeff: I was at an ATM this morning and this older lady asks me to help her check her balance.
Mutt: Did you?
Jeff: Yeah, I pushed her over.
Mutt: What's the difference between a nicely dressed man on a unicycle and a poorly dressed man on a bicycle?
Jeff: I'm guessing attire.
Mutt: What did the executioner say before going to work?
Jeff: Time to head off.
Mutt: For me too.
Jeff: See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya.

Wait, wait. I'm not ready.

Maybe we aren't ready. For enlightenment. Maybe the recent election is a message about the work we haven't done on ourselves. We, as Americans, seem immature, spiritually unprepared for our present or future. Our cell phones are progressing so fast because they're machines, objects that we focus on. Humans need generations to progress, if we really do. When I was younger I pointed to the end of slavery as proof of progress, but now they say there are more slaves (many sex slaves, many children) in the world than ever before. What kind of human being is involved in human trafficking? How can we invite them into our family?

What kind of selfishness is dominating our world? The bullying, the hatred, fear-mongering, the obsession with money. In our literature bullies are the evil villains, when did they become heroes? We humans, we Americans, can't separate ourselves by who we voted for; we all need to do better, be better. But that takes decades, right? And it's not linear or measureable. We're not machines that can be upgraded to newer models. It's hard to be better. And we're lazy.

Since I was a boy I've seen progressively less open racism (until now). Were people just hiding their bigotry and fear because it was unpopular to voice or did they really change inside? What does deep change take? Education, meditation, legislation? Sesame Street?

Women (who we all come from) have been stifled and abused for millennia, now can they finally be truly equal to men? Well, hell yes! Except that it doesn't seem to be happening. Like there's an ominous Trump-shaped male shadow stalking behind every free strong woman. Such an easy thing as equal pay, which most countries in Europe take for granted, is so hard to pass. In a male-dominated Congress. Such an easy thing as a female president ... Such need for protection, yet one third of all women ...

I get angry, frustrated, bitter. I lose it, I rant. These are reflex reactions that I need to change. Jane Goodall told us that apes make war, so someone asked her if that means it's inevitable for humans too, and she answered, "No, because we have self-control." We're not Neanderthals because we have self-control. We don't have to give in to base instincts, violence, to the ugliness in ourselves, because we have self-control. Or do we? We even have trouble not over-eating.

I'm confused. I feel inadequate. Not up to the task. Global-warming, for example, is so huge and I'm so small. My part in the disaster or the solution is so unclear. And we're all called to save our world, but we're not superheroes. It'll take hard work, lifetimes of commitment. I feel I need to work on myself to prepare, like a samurai swordsman or a concert violinist I need constant practice and training to be able to take on the dark side and win. Yet action can't wait; I still have to get the job done now.

So it's stretch, smile, focus on love and justice and peace, and get started on my new day.

Happy trials, Martin

Mutt and Jeff get back tomorrow from their ocean cruise on the Titanic.

Make America Fail Again?

Is 'do what works' illogical to some people? The majority? Can a society be suicidal, masochistic, self-mutilating?

And can you read numbers? Do you care more for slogans or facts? Here are the last fifteen years:

Finally, one of the great scenes in TV history from 2012:

New National Anthem

I'm officially proposing this Tom Petty (and the Heart Breakers) song as our national anthem for the next four years. In part this is due to the objectionable phrase, "the hireling and slave," in the current anthem. Partly because we need reminding every day to stay strong and hold the line against fascism.

While I'm at it, let me show you the cover of Petty's recent album with his old group Mudcrutch. It's a photo taken by my great-grandfather, Louis H. Pedersen, published in the National Geographic in 1916. My cousin Dan writes a terrific blog, and you can find the full story of the bear photo here.
http://pedersenwrites.blogspot.it/2016/06/197-who-will-remember.html

Definitions 2

_{Xenophobe: a person unduly fearful of what is foreign and especially of people of foreign origin.}

_{White supremacist: a person who believes in a racist ideology centered upon the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior in certain characteristics, traits, and attributes to people of other racial backgrounds and that therefore white people should politically, economically and socially rule non-white people.}

_{Autocrat: a person invested with or claiming to exercise absolute authority. A person who behaves in an authoritarian manner; a domineering person.}

_{Megalomaniac: a person with a mania for great or grandiose performance, which comes from a delusional mental disorder that is marked by feelings of personal omnipotence and grandeur. A megalomaniac will have an unnaturally strong wish for power and control, or the belief that he/she is very much more important and powerful than they really are.}

_{Nationalist: a person with a devotion, especially excessive or undiscriminating devotion, to the interests or culture of a particular nation-state and a belief that nations will benefit from acting independently rather than collectively, emphasizing national rather than international goals.}

_{Authoritarian: favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom. Synonyms include: autocratic, dictatorial, totalitarian, despotic, tyrannical, autarchic, draconian, absolute, arbitrary, oppressive, repressive, illiberal, undemocratic, anti-democratic.}

_{Oligarch: a person who believes that a country, business, etc., should be controlled by a small group of people. The leader of a small group of people who control the government.}

_{Conspiracy theorist: one who expounds a belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for an unexplained event.}

_{Hypocrite: someone who says they have particular moral beliefs but behaves in way that shows these are not sincere: a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, especially a person whose actions belie stated beliefs.}

_{Nuclear codes:  The Gold Codes are the launch codes for nuclear weapons provided to the Presidents of the United States in their role as Commander-in-Chief of the United States armed forces. In conjunction with the nuclear football, the Gold Codes allow the president to authorize a nuclear attack.}

_{Last but not least:}

_{Conscience: a person's moral sense of right and wrong, viewed as acting as a guide to one's behavior. The complex of ethical and moral principles that controls or inhibits the actions or thoughts of an individual.}

_{See also: a guilty conscience, a question/matter of conscience, to follow the dictates of conscience.}

_{Happy trials, Martin}