If Republicans win tomorrow everyone gets a check for $5,000.00. No matter who you voted for. Everyone. But only if Republicans hold onto the House and the Senate. Oh yes, there is a bridge to Brooklyn that he’ll sell you, too.

He also wants the State of Alaska must throw out all ballots cast for Democrats or Independents. Unless the Republican candidate wins. Then it wasn’t rigged. When my son went to pre-school there was a poster on the wall the title of which was “The Toddler’s Creed.” The top two items in the list read like this: 1) “If I’m playing with it, its mine.” And, 2) “If you’re playing with it and having fun, its mine.” Donald J. Trump did not go to the same pre-school as my son, at least I don’t think so, but he must have seen the poster somewhere and not recognized the sarcasm. He took it as gospel. Literalist that he is.

We know by now, after ten or more years of being forced to watch Trump’s inability to function in anything other than a transactional relationship, that he believes himself to be the consummate dealmaker. He tells us all the time. A transactional relationship treats everything, including human beings, as commodities to be bought and sold, not as people with an inherent dignity and being unto themselves. Let’s put aside the blatant bribery of promising money for a vote. Disdain for the law by the man/child has been normalized by now. If 210 million people vote tomorrow as expected that would be 1.05 trillion dollars out of … what … the coffers of the United States of America? Taxpayer money? The current debt of the U.S. is $40.75 trillion, that’s $126,646 per individual citizen. What’s another $1.05 trillion? That only adds $3,063.90 to each citizen’s debt. Do the math. You would still be clearing $1,036.10 in profit. If you trust the man who made the offer and if you actually think it is possible. Or if you still haven’t awakened from the coma. And/or if you think math and debt really works that way/

Most of you have probably voted already. This is just that horrible waiting time. We waited and watched in 2016 as the election that, and I say this sardonically, “wasn’t rigged” played out. We did the same in 2020 for the election that we are still being told was “stolen.” And we did it again in 2024 for another election that we are told was “not rigged.” That is the reality we have agreed to live with. As he has said himself repeatedly, “If I win, I’ll accept the results. If I don’t, I won’t.” He must think we are all as stupid as Pete Hegseth.

I suspect these elections will be more closely watched than maybe even the Super Bowl. We’ll wait and see and celebrate. But not too soon. Don’t celebrate too soon. This is only the first step in a long process of moving ahead and turning the grief of the past ten years into a future that we can all live with and be proud of. VOTE, if you haven’t already.

In 2011 I was living in Milwaukee. Some of my friends were teachers and everyone I knew stood behind the teachers, students, and public sector workers who marched on the capital in Madison to protest then Governor Scott Walker’s attempt to strip unions of their rights to bargain collectively. This was taking place at the same time that what we now know as Arab Spring was taking place. What was happening in Tahrir Square in Cairo, in Tunisia, and elsewhere was in the headlines across the world but the teachers and students and workers who stood in front of the Capital and sang and chanted and asked for their right to talk about their future were only in the local papers and on social media as well as in all of our hearts.

At some point, after maybe a week of standing in the cold in the square outside of Scott Walker’s office in the Capital, someone from Tahrir Square in Egypt took out their phone and called in a pizza order. A dozen or so pizzas to be delivered. Not to the people in Tahrir Square where they stood against the violence but to the people in the square in front of the Capital in Madison, Wisconsin, a quarter of the way around the world. Six thousand one hundred fifty three miles away. Using their phone they reached out and fed cold hungry people. But beyond that simple act of kindness they were extending a hand in solidarity with a cause that, to the media, was entirely different than the cause in Tahrir Square. The person who sent the pizzas recognized that to the people standing and protesting, wherever they were, the cause was the same. Everyone wanted to be recognized and treated as human beings with needs and a voice to express those needs. Everyone wanted to be heard and seen. As the Mandalorian says, “It is the way.”

The information about that gesture was shared on social media around the world. Young people everywhere, the young who are more involved in social media than anyone, who intuitively get it and use it and yes, perhaps too much, but they are talking to each other and they are listening to each other and they are a collective force in the world and in the politics of the world and they will demand that we change the way it works because they see all too clearly that it does not work the way we have been doing it. And if we don’t change it they certainly will, if it is not too late. So as much as I may rail against social media at times I know that it is here to stay and that it carries with it a great power to communicate and to influence and to change things. And of course there are bad people, bad actors as they call them, but we know that now, we know that everyone isn’t good, everyone doesn’t want the best for all of us; some just want what is good for them and them alone. And, yes, those people use this easy means of communication to disrupt, to hurt, to destroy, but we can identify those people now and teach our children to recognize them and not be duped. My hope, my prayer, is that we maintain the wisdom to tell the difference between a con, a lie, a manipulation, a scam and the truth and that we follow that truth and scoff at the con.

November 3rd is fast approaching and we will find out how much we have all learned about how to tell the difference between the truth and a lie, whether we know now what is good for us and what will only hurt those that come after us, and how hard we are willing to work to preserve the freedoms that we all enjoy and celebrate. We should know by now that working together, reaching out across differences, focusing on the welfare of the group, all of us, rather than on the individual is a better way to thrive and thriving is far better than just surviving.

It is clear from reports coming in from Florida, Brazil, Ukraine, and elsewhere that what the media coyly refers to as “the tech bros,” billionaires responsible for Meta, Amazon, X, Space X, etc., are feeling the heat from Trump’s long running melt down and are trying to influence voters and missiles by withholding access to social media and satellites that they control.

Angie Nixon, a clear speaking angel of democracy running for the senate seat in Florida, reports that META closed down her Spanish language Instagram account during a get out the vote rally for the Hispanic population in Florida.

Trump and Musk are pointing fingers at each other because the Starlink service that Ukraine pays for which helps them shoot down the thousands of incoming missiles from Russia, the ones that are killing civilians every day, shut down on the exact same day and night that Putin launched the most massive attack to date. They try to sell it as an accident but coincidences like that need careful planning.

Bernie Sanders and Pramila Jayapal, along with a half dozen others wrote an open letter to Zuckerberg, the creator and he-who-profits-most from META, stating that there was proof that he had suppressed content on Facebook that supported Lula, the left leaning candidate for President of Brazil, and had promoted content in favor of Bolsonaro, the son of the former dictator of Brazil, who has now fled to the bosom of the godfather of all dictators, Donald J. Trump, and is sitting with his feet up and a colorful rum drink in his hand near the beach in Miami. Bolsonaro lost the election in Brazil in what is considered a legitimate upset, and because he is suspected of money laundering, witness tampering, and general mayhem about the election, and the government was asking for his passport he flew the coop and lit out for the safety of his totalitarian brethren.

I think, although I guess it is more accurately a hope, that we are all aware by now of the universal power of what is simply an information delivery system, also known as Facebook and Instagram, X, and related platforms. The Internet offers access to the world and by making communication as easy as speaking or writing and punching a button it opens the door to anyone who has anything to say, whether it be true or merely the fantasy of an individual longing for attention. This, as Messrs. Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos certainly know and enjoy, is a great deal of power to put into the hands of merely mortal men. Men make mistakes. Men have peccadilloes which may turn into fetishes that pervert and cause harm to others. Men are subject to succumbing to greed and avarice, lust and the corruption that seems to follow power as a small dog does a pocket full of treats.

Our Constitution is built on a system of checks and balances because those who devised it were aware of these tendencies amongst homo sapiens and they meant to put up guardrails so that power, though it may corrupt an individual or two, is not able to corrupt society as a whole. We have collectively taken a knee to those who created and control these instruments of communication and they are using them to manufacture an image of a world that they alone will rule while we the people are expected to follow along obediently, mumbling gratitude for their guidance and the gift of their wisdom. For starters, it is not wisdom, and it will only ever benefit them as they sit securely in their high castles overlooking the sea. It will not benefit us as long as we allow ourselves to be pawns in their game.

As Peter Parker’s uncle Ben said years ago, paraphrasing the Bible, FDR, Winston Churchill, and William Lamb, “With great power comes great responsibility.” These men, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Musk, and the ones hidden away behind walls made of money, are hardly capable of taking responsibility for themselves let alone the civilization that has been built up slowly over thousands of years. They are infants, gluttonously consuming everything that they see and making up stories to justify their indulgences. Just as healthcare, democratic elections, and the truth should belong to all of us, so too should the means of communication. Otherwise it is too easily manipulated by the few to dominate and corrupt the reality that we all share.

“Boy, oh boyo, boy” as my Ohio grandfather used to say as he shook his hand as though he had just touched something hot, it’s getting pretty crazy out there. Grandpa wasn’t much for understatement so if he were alive today and watching this … let’s call it an “election season,*” he would probably drop his head and sigh, long and loud, look up, find my eyes, smile a crooked smile, put his arm on my shoulder and say, “Well, it is what it is, isn’t it.”

I get close to fifty texts a day asking for money from Democrat candidates. One of them so pathetic as to start each of probably six per day with the words, “Please, please, please, pretty please, with sugar on top…” They contradict themselves too. The fellow up in Maine is “losing by 3 points” in one and twenty minutes later he’s “ahead by 2 points.” According to them it is all up to me, if I don’t contribute for the fourth or fifth time the world is going to shrivel up and die. Yet every poll shows Democrats ahead in races where it was never expected. Every pundit, everyone who follows these things says that the so called blue wave is going to be bigger than ever. That is no reason to be come complacent but how much money do they think I have and if they are honest about their claims, most of them anyway, of wanting to get money out of politics, why do they continue to make it all about money. Several candidates continually imply that who ever raises the most money will win their district, or their senate seat.

I understand the urgency. For almost two years I have written almost daily about how urgent it is to change the thinking that brought us to this place with Donald J. Trump guiding the United States, representing us to the world, and turning the economy into a mosh pit. But the way they carry on I begin to wonder what they are really doing with the money I send them. How can I trust someone who tells me they are losing at one moment and half an hour later tells me that they are winning. If that is the kind of organization they are the head of then I wonder if they are going to be a good Senator, no matter how inconsequential Susan Collins is as a person and as a politician.

Counting tomorrow there is one week, seven days until the first step to taking back the government will happen. And there are some remarkable things happening as we get closer. Louisiana may seriously be up for grabs. Jamie Davis, a black farmer working the same land his grandfather worked as a share cropper is running against Julia Letlow, who husband died in office of Covid-19. She ran to fill his seat in Congress and won. Now she wants to be a senator. A black farmer in Louisiana is pushing the white women hard and with the amount of early voting and the masses of black voters who are getting out there and voting he has a very good chance. It is one of those moments where a working person may well replace a person from deep in the political class. Conrad Cable is another farmer from Louisiana running to send Mike Johnson back to whatever he was doing before he took the job of being Donald J. Trump’s lackey and boot licker. There are two other Republicans in the race and two other Democrats. The election on 3 November is a primary of sorts and if Johnson gets less than 50% of the vote he faces a runoff. In a typically racist decision from this Supreme Court back at the end of April 2026 they threw out the district maps in Louisiana claiming that they were racist against white people because they allowed black folks to have two districts where they could chose who spoke for them in Congress. Of course that isn’t the way they worded it but that was what it was. There has been such a reaction against that decision, it has mobilized the black vote to such an extent that professional observers give Democratic candidates a chance like they have never had before. Trump, as is his way, over reacted and sent more money to Republican candidates, threatened armed intervention, and brought as much pressure to bear as he could. As an example of how far his support has fallen that only brought more people out to vote against him and those who mindlessly support him, like Mike Johnson.

There are five indigenous women running very competitive races. Two are runnng for he Senate: Mary Peltola from Alaska and Peggy Flanagan from Minnesota. Peltola is of the Yupik people, a native Alaskan and Flanagan is from the White Earth Nation, what we white people call the Ojibwe or Chippewa tribes. Flanagan has been the Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota through everything that state has been through in the past twenty months. Peltola was the first Alaskan native elected to the U.S. House of Representative and now she is running to be the first Senator. Deb Haaland is running to be the Governor of New Mexico. She is a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo and she was Joe Biden’s Secretary of the Interior. Sharice Davids, running for representative from Kansas, is of the Ho-Chunk people. She was first elected to Congress in 2018, but she has many more firsts on her resume such as the first openly lesbian person elected to congress from Kansas, of all places. She is powerful, clever, and committed. Yvette Herrell, the only Republican on this list, is running for Congress from New Mexico. She is of the Cherokee Nation and served in the New Mexico legislature before going national. It is important that all five of these candidates are women and that they are indigenous peoples. I strongly endorse Flanagan and Peltola. If they win it goes a long way toward flipping the Senate to an independent thinking body that may take the checks and balances clause in the Constitution seriously. I also endorse Deb Haaland in New Mexico. She was very active as Biden’s Secretary of the Interior and, plainly speaking, we need to hear the voices of more women in the management of this country. And now more than ever we need to hear the voices of people who know what oppression feels like so that we can turn back the tide that Trump, Miller, and Vought have created.

I still think every party has made this about money when it should be about policy but, as my grandfather would have said, “It is what it is, isn’t it.” Let’s just keep moving until we can change all of that.

*I call it an “election season” because the media and pundits everywhere have turned all elections into sporting events. This election happens to coincide with the end of the baseball season, the beginning of the basketball season, and the near midway point of the football season. Politics is for every season but we should try to remember that it is not a game, it affects all people, and is about much more than winning.

Donald J. Trump would not be where he is and we would not be where we are without the help of a small number of people. His father, Fred, is the first and most obvious one. DJT reportedly inherited 400 million dollars and a real estate business which, to those living in New York City at the time, made him a racist slum lord.

Roy Cohn is one of the other early influences on Trump’s world view. Trump was 27 when he met Cohn at a club in New York City in 1973. Trump and his father were being sued for discriminating against African-Americans and Puerto Ricans seeking to rent apartments in several of their housing complexes throughout Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. Cohn represented them and used a tactic that Trump uses to this day: When someone sues you the first thing you do is deny, deny, deny, and deny again, very loudly, then sue them back immediately. And sue them for a ridiculous amount of money. In warfare they call it “shock and awe.” Cohn sued the government for the Trump family and, even though their suit was thrown out of court as being frivolous, the suit against them was settled with no damages and no admission of guilt. Trump Management Inc. merely had to promise not to do it again. Ah, the power of the bribe.

Cohn gained fame by sitting next to Joe McCarthy, the Senator from Wisconsin, as chief counsel during the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1953 wherein they accused everyone they didn’t like of being a “communist” and got them blacklisted if they didn’t cooperate and name names. Trump has resurrected the word as an epithet. Cohn proved to be too much, even for Washington, and he went back to New York where he was a fixer and legal representation for Mafia crime bosses, real estate moguls, politicians, the Catholic archdiocese, and club owners around town. He gained a reputation in the gay community for being a viciously gay man who denied his homosexuality. He was indicted several times for unethical conduct as an officer of the court but managed to slip out of each indictment. Finally the New York State Supreme Court disbarred him for unprofessional conduct. He died of AIDS denying that he had the disease right up until his final moment. If anything on that list of behaviors sounds familiar you’ve been paying attention.

There was a point during his first term that Trump was recorded saying, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” His first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, recused himself from the Russia investigation rather than break with the tradition of honoring the law and Trump asked the heavens, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” because he needed someone for whom the law was merely an obstacle to be gotten around. He also needed someone who was a vicious backstabber willing to do literally anything to fix a problem for his client. He may have found someone equally in love with evil when Stephen Miller crawled out from under a rock and across his desk. I don’t think that Miller has been so influential in forming Trump’s world view as Cohn and his father were but he together with Russell Vought have harmonized in a remarkably dissonant way with Trump’s narcissism and his declining mental capacity to spawn the monster we are forced to listen to every day. They helped him find and focus the true voice of his belligerence. They have freed him to become even more truly himself than ever before. So the poor little rich boy, despised by his father for his stupidity and treated to the cold distance of his mother’s inability to love, banished to military school where he learned discipline and the idea that winning is everything and power is winning, the young man who tortured animals, who was laughed at and scorned by those he most wanted to be like, the butt of joke after joke told right to his face at parties throughout New York and Washington and especially Los Angeles, that young man rolled up his sleeves and went to work seeking revenge upon the world that could not, would not, should not ignore him and now wishes it had.

Miller is the savage dog who, given the immigration problem to solve instantly went to work hunting down and deporting black and brown people everywhere. A racist who does not view his victims as human beings he is too hideously ugly to sustain a life in the public eye but works well behind the scenes pacing, growling, screaming, and dictating policy to the Commander in Chief, chumming the water to get Trump riled up and destructive. Russell Vought is the long distance runner, looking a generation ahead to a utopia of his own design. He is what passes for an intellectual in Trump’s dumbed down world, cold and calculating to the point where he wouldn’t be tolerated and no one would show up if he were the host of the party so he is content to meddle behind the scenes happily sowing discord, confusion, and violence, planning and plotting until the Rapture takes him to his just reward. Whatever that turns out to be.

Jeffrey Epstein was obviously an influence on Trump and may have introduced him to a sexuality that he was only aware of in a locker room, frat boy kind of way before they got engaged. But it was fun while it lasted and Trump had to send him away when he became a liability as Trump’s sphere of influence grew wider. Now and for the past two years the ghost of Epstein has been hammering on the door wanting to get back in to tell us all of his many triumphs but Trump and his mini-Cohn’s have managed to block every attempt to reveal the truth.

There are those that believe the pastor of the Trump family church had a strong influence on his world view. It is hard to imagine Trump being influenced by a man of god but not that hard when you realize that the pastor in question was Norman Vincent Peale. Peale was not the first preacher to take to the public media as a way of expanding his Protestant ethic but he was one of the most successful in the middle part of the last century. His book, The Power of Positive Thinking, had a huge influence on Trump and his showmanship was a guide to Trump’s way with the media. Peale was the spiritusl mentor until he discovered Mein Kampf.

Musk triggered his greed. Bannon gave him a voice. Roger Ailes got his jollies until he died by hoisting the infant on his shoulders and parading him through every living room in America that dared to watch Fox News. Those three weird sisters didn’t so much influence the man as they helped to resurrect him. He himself would like to think he is a “self-made man",” but it is far from true. He and others created the commodity that a portion of the population bought and continues to kneel before.

Why are Putin and Russia our enemy? Is it because we got in the habit of having them as an enemy ever since their revolutions in the early part of the 20th century? They were “communist” revolutions, which openly threatened our capitalist economic system. Ronald Reagan, the cowboy from California, who acted as President in the 1980’s called them the “evil empire,” the implication being that we were the “good empire.” In those days it was called the U.S.S.R., the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or the Soviet Union. We in America went to great lengths to express and to litigate our fear of the Soviet Union and communism. Trump has played that song again and again as he attempts to tarnish his Democratic opponents with the dried up red brush of “communism.”

History being what it is you could trace this narrative of inherited antagonism back to the 19th century and the “great game,” the perpetual warlike and political conflict between Great Britain and Russia over control of the subcontinent and the warm water ports in the Black Sea. Great Britain wanted to protect its colonization and exploitation of India and Russia wanted to be able to access the rest of the world all year long so they needed a warm water port. Most of the history of Russia is of them wanting to be considered either a powerful nation in the east or in Europe, the west. They are still functioning that way. They are and have always been “wannabes,” turning their heads at once toward the east and the west and always ending up with a sore neck and a headache.

Much of the history of powerful nations in the ancient and modern eras depends on their conjuring up an “enemy.” The people who govern seem to believe that we need an enemy, a threat to our existence, in order to maintain control of the population. In the ancient world those enemies were often acutely real because resources were scarce and we fought over food/game, territory/land, water/life, minerals/gold, silver, uranium, rare earth, etc., and, at times, over belief systems, ideas conjured up by theologians, popes and priests. On paper, in the headlines, what we were fighting over was the power to protect ourselves but usually what we were really fighting over was simply the right to appear powerful. Appearing powerful keeps enemies from attacking. Again with the “enemies” idea. Have we conjured Russia or do they really pose a threat to our way of life?

Are we just stuck in a rut needing an enemy to draw us together, and Russia fills the bill because it always has? Under Putin Russia certainly is playing its part as our enemy. Putin actively threatens not only those who have always been our allies, the whole of Europe, the geographical buffer that protects the United States from the mass that is Russia, and he prods and pokes around in our sense of ourselves using gangs of hackers to fill the ethernet with false stories, lies, and propaganda, pitting us against one another. Russian interference with our elections is not a “hoax,” as stated by some, it is and continues to be real. Both Republicans and Democrats agree.

As Barack Obama once said Russia is really a small nation begging to be treated like a big one the way they were back during the Cold War. They don’t make anything and have only oil, gas, and weapons to export. They also export war. They have been attacking Ukraine unprovoked for twelve years and are now helping Iran in its defensive war against Israel and the U.S.. The war in Ukraine threatens those nations that have been our allies since well before WWI. The war in Iran, as irrational as it is, threatens our allies in the Middle East. So, why cozy up to Russia now if they are actively acting aggressively toward us and our friends and allies? The time to have acted in a friendly way toward Russia and dropped the “enemy” schtick was at the moment when it no longer was the Soviet Union and became, once again, Russia. At that particular moment, when Mikhail Gorbachev was the leader of the Soviets and was reaching out to the west as an ally, there was a real possibility of rapprochement. However, at that moment the Russian people, guided by their confusion which was exploited by the Soviet propaganda machine, led by Putin and other former KGB apparatchiks, turned against Gorbachev and he was ousted and became persona non grata in Russia, whereas most Russian scholars in the west think of him as a visionary who was about to lead the world to lasting peace. Putin wanted someone he could control in the big chair at the head of the table until it was safe for him to sit there, hence the drunken buffoon Boris Yeltsin. And the leaders of the world’s major players do not want real peace because, as stated earlier, having an external enemy, even if imagined, makes it easier to control your own population,

It is not our way as Americans to step in unless our national interests are threatened. Most politicians do not think beyond the next election. Therefore their interest is to appear to be standing on the winning side in any conflict. Is that Trump’s rational for not so suddenly and not so subtly sitting down next to Putin and siding quite clearly with Russia in their war against Ukraine? Does he perceive Putin as the winner in this war and therefore wants a seat at his table? Or is he merely miffed that the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, also a television star before he was called to represent his country, a man who is literally ten inches shorter than Donald J. Trump, stands head and shoulders above Trump in the eyes of people around the world? Or could it be that Donald J. Trump, sensing that he has run out his string here in this hemisphere, knowing that he has grifted his last grift here in the good old U.S. of A., is now looking ahead to where he might live and be glorified as he spends the money he has stolen from the American people. Since Russia has refused to extradite other citizens of the world who are fleeing prosecution and Trump has long emphasized his strong feelings of love for Putin it makes sense that he would be promoting a safe home behind the Iron Curtain.

I never really wanted nor expected to live forever. I don’t look forward to dying but I accept the inevitability of it all. Death as a fact of life I am alright with but dying, I suspect, will be uncomfortable. I still occasionally paraphrase Woody Allen when he said, “I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” All this morbidity is by way of saying that my greatest sorrow today is that I will have to live the rest of my life listening to, reading about, digesting, talking about, and writing about the Trump legacy of corruption and crime and his and his partners attempted coup upon the democracy of the United States.

A friend sent me a copy of Frank Rich’s piece in the New York Magazine issue of 8 October 2026. The article is titled: Trump’s Shameless Collaborators. It is an excellent article and itemizes, point by point all the the transgressions and corruptions that Trump has been guilty of somehow remaining untouched by the law primarily because of the cowardice those whose job it is to offer checks and balances to the administrative branch of government. Rich goes on to call out many of Trump’s “collaborators” and details the reasons for their standing by while Trump enriches himself as he passes the cost on to we the people. It is an excellent article and I suggest everyone try to find a way to read it.

As I read through the article I realized that I was one of those people who think that the death of Trump, or the removal of him from office by whatever means possible, his eventual conviction of the many crimes committed with imprisonment to follow will end the agony we have all endured for the past ten years. When those things happen it will indeed be a relief. However, it will not confine the past ten years to the dustbin of history. Nor should it.

First of all the process of holding Trump and his immediate circle of criminals accountable will demand a level of rationality and conviction that only a few in government appear to have. But they do exist: Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Presley, Greg Casar, Summer Lee, Delia Ramirez, Bernie Sanders, Jamie Raskin, Thomas Massie, Ro Khanna, Cory Booker, Jasmine Crockett. Elisa Slotkin, and several others have spoken out clearly, logically, and loudly against the so-called policies of Donald J. Trump. There are several judges throughout the court system who have been willing to hold him accountable however their will has been superseded by the fascist judges in the Supreme Court. Jack Smith, once a federal prosecutor, has proven to have the tenacity, the intelligence, the work ethic, and the moral outrage to go the distance. Jon Ossoff, of Georgia, is another who may be more of a human being than he is a politician worried about his job and the perks from lobbyists.

The process of holding Trump, et al, accountable will happen. It will take time and we will all have to pay attention so that everyone is held to account, even those who sat silently by sitting on their hands and hoping not to be noticed. The media and the millions of voices on various social media platforms, including myself, who have collectively begun to sound like flies buzzing around the carcass of that opossum that ran under the wheels of Bob’s pick-up when he pulled out of the driveway to go get a load of gravel last Friday, will all have something to say. And we will all have to pay attention because not paying attention, being complacent, is what got us into this mess to begin with.

My greatest sorrow is that for the rest of my life, be it ten years or twenty, I will be hearing and reading the name Donald J. Trump because I suspect that each co-conspirator will write a book and then go on all the talk shows to sell said book and try desperately to clear their name, restore their ruined reputation, by telling the “inside story” of the twelve years of tyranny of Donald J. Trump and how they would have stopped him if they could have but some vain hope prevented them from having the courage to act.

After the midterms, if everyone you know gets off their butts and votes, as the ex-Presidents sing, we can begin to rebuild for a future that includes all people of all classes, colors, and creeds. But in order to do that thoughtfully we will also need to heed those who participated so that we get a clear picture of how this happened and why, So, the endless dissection that historians and pundits will plague us with is necessary and vitally important. Democracy is an organic thing. It grows by the actions and reactions of those who embrace it with active love and intelligence.

Trump is trying to build his legacy all over Washington, D.C. He seems ignorant of the fact that his only legacy will be crime, corruption, and contempt for humanity.

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“Keep Calm and Carry On.”

There is a lot of upside to living in Oregon. Yes, it rains a lot in the winter, but less each year. Yes, property taxes are high, but there is no sales tax so no annoying change taking up space in your pocket. Yes, there is a bit of a “little sister” thing that some Portlanders get about Seattle, but the traffic is far less and the food just as good. And yes, the eastern part of the state is far too heavily armed and many of the citizens seem to be dying for a fight with the emphasis being on “dying.”

But the upside, the mountains of the Cascade Range, the astonishing coastline, the fact that it is mostly green all year long, make it well worth the downside. But the best thing about Oregon is that it has managed to figure out a way to do vote by mail and they have been doing it exclusively since 1998. About a month before the election date you get a thick, 100 plus page pamphlet in the mail explaining the position of every candidate and every referendum, in detail. Photos of the candidates, their own statements about themselves, a list of who has endorsed them, educational background, everything you might want to know before casting your vote. Then about three weeks before the election you get your ballot in the mail. I got mine on Friday. I also got a hand-written, very cheerful postcard reminding me to vote early and where to drop my completed ballot if I no longer trust the United States Postal Service, which I don’t.

Oregon is exclusively vote-by-mail and there has never been a question about the authenticity or fairness of the process. It works. The federal government, under the management of the cartoon character known publicly as Donald J. Trump, doesn’t like it but he just generally does not like anyone who doesn’t like him and the vast majority of the state doesn’t. Those heavily armed people in the east used to like him but more and more of them are seeing that he does not care about them so much as he cares about increasing his own wealth and that he is not the fantasy superhero that he imagines himself to be.

Oregon also has a lot of fun at his expense when they protest his criminal behavior. Legend has it that around the time of the second No Kings Day someone from Vancouver, Washington, just across the river from Portland, bought about two hundred and fifty inflatable frog costumes and passed them out to people protesting the presence of I.C.E. in the city. Now you see them at every protest march.

Sometimes they bring a friend. See above. You get some very interesting groups of people coming to protest, to be with other interesting groups of people, to listen to the music and the speeches, and to make their voices heard. No matter how quiet and demure those voices might be.

The people who organized today’s event across the United States did a very smart thing. Rather that a march to say no to Donald J. Trump and his trillionaire friend

they made this event about voting, specifically voting early. The verbal diarrhea that issues from the president himself on a daily, or nightly basis, is no longer worth getting upset about. Well, it is worth getting upset about but now the proverbial ball is our proverbial court because if everyone who can vote does vote, early or on 3 November, we will throw a wrench into his plans at hemispheric domination by turning the Congress from a bunch of terrified mice hiding at home rather than doing their job into working women and men who love democracy and will fight everyday to make it work once again. And if we have gained anything from the last ten years of Trump-dom it is the knowledge that we too must be vigilant and work every day to preserve and protect the democracy that allows us to freely protest and make our voices heard. The future is in our hands and it can be very liberating to handle that responsibility.

VOTE EARLY IF YOU CAN. IF YOU HAVE TROUBLE CALL SOMEONE TO HELP YOU. THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO WANT TO HELP.

“First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” The line is spoken by a character in William Shakespeare’s play Henry VI, Part 2, in Act IV, Scene 2. The character who has this brilliant idea is called ‘Dick the Butcher’ and he is part of an attempted coup by ‘Jack Cade’. Cade is illiterate, a bully, mad for power, charismatic, and wants to tear down the established order and make himself king. If you put him in a blue blazer with a long red tie and orange hair you would get the idea. However, the play was written in Elizabethan times, four hundred or so years ago, so Cade is usually played as a ruffian and he is a populist so he poses as a working class bloke.

Shakespeare was known for putting words of wisdom into the mouths of fools. See ‘Touchstone’ in As You Like It, or ‘Polonius’ in Hamlet. So putting a line like “ … let’s kill all the lawyers” into the mouth of a villain, a man who promotes violence and the overthrow of society and remaking it in his own image, especially during the reign of Elizabeth I, probably elicited a laugh from those sitting in the uppers and possibly a quiet mumble of agreement from the groundlings. The laugh would have come because the wealthier classes recognized that their position in society was secured by a healthy respect for the law and the people charged with interpreting and enforcing that law. Their laughter therefore would have been of the scornful variety with some recognition of the irony and a chuckle of relief that such an impoverished rebellion as that posed by ‘Cade’ and ‘Dick the Butcher‘ could never happen under the watchful eye of their magnificent Queen and her estimably fair government. The groundlings, the poorer classes, workmen and women, those that serve the wealthy, would have grumbled and thought of how their cousin Morty had been hanged, drawn, and quartered after he was convicted of heresy because he continued to be a practicing Jew when all Jews had been banished by law from England since 1290 CE and continued to be banished until 1656 CE. Or they might have remembered with regret how they themselves had spent two days in the stocks for stealing a loaf of bread. Life has always been harsh for those at the fringes of society.

Today, taken out of context, “… let’s kill all the lawyers” is thought of as a good joke because the stereotype of the profession is that they are all corrupted by money and power and will do what they can to manipulate the aforesaid law and bend it to their will and that of their clients. This stereotype is fully realized when it comes, once again, to the man in the blue blazer, long red tie, orange hair, and odoriferous flatulence. Donald J. Trump uses lawyers the way I use Kleenex in the spring when my hay fever is acting up: get them soggy with snot and throw them away.

He has used unknown numbers of lawyer to form bottle necks in the courts so that he can do what he wants while he waits for the courts to ultimately rule against him. He can then say, with that smug, privileged smile he is famous for, “Oops, too late.” That’s how it worked for the ballroom/bunker; he’s pulling the same stunt with his “triumphal arch/sniper’s roost;” and he has done it numerous times when it has come to hurriedly putting people that I.C.E. has been rounding up on planes to get them out of the country. When he is in a hurry he uses the mutants in the Supreme Court to fast track decisions that help him stifle voting rights. He has even pushed lawyers who are far from qualified into positions of power as he did with Lindsey Halligan, an insurance lawyer who he speedily promoted to U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia so that she could drop the hammer on James Comey. And now he has promoted a woman to be his kissable lips as Press Secretary who passes herself off as an attorney but can barely read, has failed the BAR exam, and who thinks that working in China as a consultant qualifies her to be a lawyer. But she was such an obvious miscarriage of justice that she was gone in sixty seconds.

No Kings Day protests across the country tomorrow. Be there or be square. Great numbers of bodies in the street enjoying the fall day, singing and dancing and promoting our right to vote and to vote early will do nothing for lawyers, as long as we keep it peaceful, but it will show the world that democracy is alive and well in the hearts and minds of we the people of the United States.

One last thing … the mid-term elections, which, perhaps for the first time, can justifiably be called “the most important in our lifetimes” are being squeezed from both ends. The Democrats are begging, pleading, battering us over the heads for more money. This at a time when groceries cost more than they have in years, gas costs 60% more than it did a year ago, and the Trump/Netanyahu war against Iran appears to be spreading out across the Middle East which will do nothing to lessen the impact on the cost of things necessary for life in the good old U. S. of A.. The Republicans are throwing Elon Musk money at every election they think might be for sale, which in their minds means all of them. Donald J. Trump is even trying to buy each one of us with a check. If you get a $5,000.00 check from DJT use it to buy Dump Trump hats for all your friends.

Who knows what well armed but not so well regulated militia might show up at polling places on 3 November. And then there is I.C.E.. They have been grabbing people off the street at a pace that might even satisfy Stephen Miller, the doctor of disaster who must massage Trump’s sphincter better than anyone. They are putting them in “detention centers” that apparently amount to no more than a cage on a concrete floor and a pot to piss in and deporting them as fast as they can. And still the Hispanic population is not sure if they should vote once again for the man in the middle, Donald J. Trump.

Three weeks from today we will all vote and those votes will either be counted or Space X satellites will shoot lasers into the machinery and the ballots will all disappear and Trump, et al, will keep doing whatever destructive nonsense they want to do, unchecked by a Congress that has chosen to stay home for the past two years. But before that date with destiny in November there is 17 October, four days from now. This coming Saturday is another No Kings Day. It will be the 4th No Kings Day protest in the past two years. It is being organized by a loose coalition of not-for-profits that believe that we the people are the answer to this critical moment. Showing up on Saturday with or without a sign but with enthusiasm for the love of democracy and with the joy of being with people who are like-minded about how that democracy should work is an act of courage and the more people who do show up the louder our voice will be and the more clearly we will be heard on 3 November.

If you don’t already have a plan and know where to go to be one of the millions of Americans who believe in a free future contact the Indivisible Movement, 50501 Movement, Move On, American Opposition, Third Act, the ACLU, and more 200 labor and activist partners across the country, including the AFL-CIO. It has been a while since the last march and it may seem as though the work has stopped and the spirit of resistance has sagged while corruption explodes all over the globe but every action of the Trump administration brings more and more people to their senses and the wave, as the media has dubbed it, is rising. Whereas the election will not wash entirely clean the diseased world that we have allowed to grow and fester it will drive away many of the obstacles that have embedded themselves in the system, representatives who have allowed their lifeless zombie corpses to clog up the dynamics of democracy. And millions of people in the streets, peacefully protesting this coming Saturday, 17 October 2026, will send the message to the world that although our leadership is failing the spirit of America, which has always been the people, is alive and well and longing for liberty.

The writing is on the wall and almost every other surface that carries the news. The proverbial sh*% is about to hit the fan that cools the hyped-up reality of the GOP. The changing of the guard at the Capital building is imminent and Trump Palace is soon to return to its far more respectable position as the White House. Donald J. Trump sees it happening in real time and real time trumps fantasy time whether he likes it or not, if you’ll forgive the awkward pun. So what does he do? He curries favor where he has pissed on it the most, with farmers, long haul truckers, anyone who uses diesel fuel, which means all of us in a distant cousin kind of way since we all eat groceries that travel by truck. To do so he makes a deal with Russia to buy their oil, which is just crude enough to make it good for refining diesel.

We buy Russian oil. Russia makes money. Russia uses money to so it can keep killing civilians in Ukraine while it also continues supplying Iran with intelligence and armaments so that it can continue defending itself against the onslaught of the United States and Israel in the Middle East, so it can continue keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed, which will keep the price of gas and diesel and fertilizer going up and up and up, so that voters continue to loose faith in Trump’s ability to lead, forcing him to find ways to win an unwinnable election. Simple logic that is illogical which is the way of the Trumpian universe. A self-defeating action if there ever was one.

Russia has been propagating a war against Ukraine since 2014. The United States has always supported its allies, those nations of the European Union, along with Great Britain, who have been the stated enemy of Russia and its demigod, Vladimir Putin. But no longer. By buying Russian oil to make diesel fuel to get voters to like him, as he imagines they once did, Trump sabotages the sanctions that have been in place for twelve years to try to slow Russia’s brutal attack on the civilians of Ukraine. If you were still perplexed about what side of the fence Trump, et al, are perched on then it should be clear from this action of helping a dictator out so that he can continue being a dictator that Trump is not on our side. He’s on the side of the dictators, the authoritarians, the totalitarians. Or maybe he is just on the side of anyone who will hold his hand and sing along to Ave Maria. It’s hard to tell sometimes.

But whatever he is thinking the action will prove deleterious to the people of Ukraine. Violently, catastrophically deleterious. As it is his habit to guild the lily Trump now says that Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, is not a good leader because he will not make a deal that kicks the can of peace down the road and gives Putin and his dwindling army a chance to regroup and invade another day. Real world logic tells us that Putin will never stop until all of Ukraine takes the knee to him and if you extrapolate that thinking Europe would follow. That’s just the kind of ex-KGB agent he is. Zelensky, who is willing to play along because he knows that Ukraine needs the support of the United States has said that if there is a sixty day cease fire they will prepare for and hold elections so that a “good leader” can be elected. I don’t think he is being disingenuous. I think he is confident that the people of Ukraine will support him because he has supported them for the last four years of this war and is recognized as a hero in most of the world because of it. I think he also knows that it will be impossible for Putin and Russia to hold its fire for sixty days. Russia is a bit like Israel in that regard. They both seem to think that a cease fire means we keep firing and they cease. I think he believes that when Trump, et al, see that the people of Ukraine are fully behind him and see the insincerity of Putin they will come around and give Ukraine the support it needs and deserves. I think he is wrong about that. I don’t think Trump will ever drop his love of Putin. Putin is just the kind of bare-chested, tough guy, strong man dictator that Trump hopes to one day become.

And if the mid-terms are a rebuke of Trump’s actions and of the man himself, and every indication is that they will be, then any pretense of the President caring about the country or the people of the country will be blown away in the wind so that even the media has to admit that it is not a working presidency. At which point we may get to hear J.D. Vance declare that article 4 of the 25th amendment is in play and Trump will join Steven Seagal and Edward Snowden in a nice dacha somewhere in Siberia.

There is a lot going on in Ohio right now.

The Guardians, formerly the Cleveland Indians, have pushed the Chicago White Sox to a fifth game in the divisional series. That game is played tonight.

Dietsch Brothers are making some of the best chocolate in the country in Findlay, Ohio. I happen to have been born in Findlay and my grandparents are buried there. When I was spending summers with them as a youngster they made Tasty Taters in Findlay out on Prospect Avenue. Tasty Taters were, back in the day, the best potato chips around. Findlay is also the home to my son’s favorite cheeseburger, the one at Wilson’s Sandwich Shop right on Main Street and it is truly good. They make the thin and crispy kind so get a double. They also serve sugar pie, which is exactly as good as it sounds if you have a sweet tooth, which is a burden I proudly bear.

Then there is Sherrod Brown, who was one of the U.S. Senators from Ohio for three terms until 2024. He is running to be the next Senator from Ohio. Brown was first elected to the Senate in 2006 beating Mike DeWine, who went on to be elected Governor of the state. He served three terms as senator and then lost in 2024 when Trump pal and businessman, Bernie Moreno, was elected on what amounted to the coattails of idiocy that gifted us with Donald J. Trump. On 3 November 2026 Sherrod Brown will try to go back to Washington as a senator by defeating John Husted, who was appointed when J.D. Vance leapfrogged everyone to become the Vice President of the United States. Brown is a liberal, often thought of as a progressive, but remember that is in Ohio. He has always been a Democrat and his race is considered a “toss up.” It is also considered essential if the Democrats are to regain control of the Senate, which is going to be very important when it comes time to replace a Supreme Court Justice or two. Alito has already said that he wants to retire and Clarence Thomas may relieve us of his noxious presence at any time. Thomas will want to get out before he is fired, or rather, impeached. The Senate controls the advise and consent part of Supreme Court appointments so it is blindingly clear that people who believe in freedom and democracy for everyone need to be elected to the House and the Senate because those justices sit up there for as long as they want and that means our sons and daughters, our grandchildren and their friends and neighbors could be saddled with a right wing court that wants women in the kitchen, boys to be boys and girls to be girls, people of color to be quiet, and thinks “money makes the world go round.” So send Sherrod a message of encouragement and a buck or two.

Dr. Amy Acton is running to be the next governor of the fine State of Ohio. She is a public health physician and specializes in preventative medicine. She ran the Ohio Department of Health and navigated the Covid-19 pandemic as well as anyone in the country. She worked very well with then Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, who took the coronavirus far more seriously that Donald J. Trump did at the time. I lived in Ohio during that time and was very impressed with the way she navigated a very tricky pathway that constantly threatened to become more political than the critical health crisis that it truly was. She is running against Vivek Ramaswamy, who you will remember was the other extremely rich fellow who stood on the world stage as his partner Elon Musk swung his chainsaw around and hacked the federal government into little pieces. She could use some encouragement and even dollar helps not only because it is money but because the number of donors counts too.

Dr. Acton is one of a bunch of people whose careers have been in medicine, people who believe in science, who are running for positions in government across the country. They join farmers, smoke jumpers, lumbermen, fishermen, teachers, high school administrators, people who work with people, who care about people, who are also running to manage the government. Some career politicians are alright. Many are corrupt and lazy and cowards. This November is a chance to sweep up and toss out many of the members of Congress and school boards and city councils across the country who have been using government as a way to enrich themselves to the detriment of those who voted them into office in the first place. Now is the time to get involved so if you live in Ohio, or know people that do, encourage them to get out and vote on 3 November.

He was only kidding. However, the estimable Sigmund Freud said “ … in jest, one may even tell the truth.” I know a little bit about comedy and I have a couple of good friends who make people laugh for a living and they will all tell you that if a joke has no truth behind it there will be no laughter. Listen to George Carlin. Listen to Lewis Black. Listen to Steven Colbert, Jon Stewart, Trevor Noah, or John Oliver. So when Donald J. Trump says that he wouldn’t mind if Iran bombed Los Angeles or San Diego he may be kidding but he is also telling the truth. If he were Jimmy Kimmel he could say that and people would laugh and forget about it. Jimmy Kimmel is a comedian. Donald J. Trump may think he pretty funny, but he also thinks he is pretty … so we know that his thinking is seriously awry. However, he happens to be the President of the United States and people hear you differently when you have that job.

Some Iranians may actually think it is a good idea and if the President of the United States suggests it then that just might mean that it would not bring Pete Hegseth with his big muscles, wavy hair, and gigantic war machine down on top of them. Some Californians might think, “Why does he hate us?” But they wouldn’t think that for long. They know why he hates them. They live in a state that has a successful economy and he runs a country that is flopping around on the deck like a fish that is going to be dinner. And a petty man is prone to jealousy. And if Donald J. Trump is anything he is a petty man. He hates California because they think he is a funny clown of a man who may not even be a man under all that make-up and hair. And they know make-up and hair in sunny California, especially in Hollywood and San Francisco. And he especially hates California because they won’t vote for him, never have, never will.

When Los Angeles burned almost two years ago Donald J. Trump blamed the Democratic leadership of the state and the city for the fires, threatened to withhold aid, and, with a wink and a nudge to his friends in the corporate agribusiness world, diverted water from the north saying he was doing it to help fight the fires in the south but that water only drained reserves that were meant to give people in the north potable water and went to the central valley farms not to Los Angeles. With no sense of irony whatsoever he blamed the fires on his political enemies while continuing to ignore the changes in the climate of the world’s ecosystems that caused the 100 mile per hour winds and the abundance of fuel that led to the massive destruction of those fires. That should be enough for Californians to not trust Trump but it is the bad hair and make-up that really puts over the top.

What are we to make of a leader who casually tosses off witticisms like, “Let 'em take out Los Angeles, ​let 'em take out San Diego. This is a ​very small price to pay, and it's going to be over ‌with ⁠very soon."? I’m all for grinding him up and putting him in a meat pie like Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett do. That’s a musical comedy and people know not to take that seriously. Or … remember what happened to that woman who said, “Let them eat cake.” while her people starved for bread?

If you hire a country lawyer whose office is the horse upon which he rides the circuit every day … A man who worked with his hands when he was young, before he got busier than a man is meant to be … A man from the frontier where all men are created equal as long as they do the work that needs to be done … A man who reads the bible every day, who memorizes long passages and quotes it frequently … If you hire such a man to be the leader of your country then you will get a man who respects the law as a set of guiding principles which society can trust to keep certain individuals from going off the rails and sabotaging democracy. A man unafraid of hard work. A man of principle and with a strong sense of morality. A thoughtful man who thinks well and speaks what he thinks. A storyteller with a finely honed sense of fairness. A man with the strength and resolve to weather the fiercest storm.

If you hire a constitutional law professor who has been a life long advocate for the poor and marginalized … A man with a good, strong, loving family … A man of mixed race who has known oppression and the hard work it takes to rise above it … A man who knows the rhythms and joys of playing basketball, a game that perhaps more than all others relies on the intimate and spontaneous teamwork of a group of individuals … A man who approaches problems with the thoughtfulness of an academic who has a strong sense of history … If you hire such a man to represent your country you will get a man who thinks before he speaks. A man who listens to people whose experience he recognizes and trusts. A man who knows the value of talking and a man who is not in a hurry. A man who understands loss and knows that one learns more from failure than from success. A man who respects those who work hard and listen and by doing so has become a man who is respected across many nations, many borders, many disciplines.

If you hire a professional politician … A man who has spent his lifetime in service to his country and to his constituents … A man who has experienced tragic loss and understands that grief and sorrow are as much a part of life as joy … A man who loves to talk and solve problems by bringing people together rather than pushing them apart … A man who believes there are solutions to all problems and is unafraid of the work and compromise it takes to find them … If you hire such a man to guide your country through trying times you will get a man who trusts in the opinions of experts. A strong man who is unafraid to weep openly. A man who rolls up his sleeves and goes to work when the work gets hard. A man who will work late into the night to make things better for those who have trusted him with the duties of leadership, even if it means, perhaps, staying too long at the party.

And if you hire a man born into great wealth … A man whose entire life has been spent as a landlord … A man who is used to owning things and having people serve him … A man who puts his name in letters taller than an NBA power forward on everything he owns, or everything a bank owns in his name … A man who has found a way to make failure pay through bankruptcy, but has learned nothing from his failure … A man incapable of taking responsibility as long as there is someone else to blame … A man who believes sincerely that he can do anything he wants, that laws do not apply to him, that women, people of color, those with physical handicaps, everyone really, is beneath him and alive only to serve and praise him … A man who has broken the law numerous times but never paid his debt to society, as they say … If you hire such a man to be the President of your country you will get that man, a lewd, crude man, who thinks like a twelve year old boy who has been given everything but has been ignored by his parents. A man who is more concerned with leaving monuments to himself than he is with the people who elected him who now cannot get affordable healthcare, who are paying more for gas and diesel fuel and rent than ever in their lifetimes. A man who does not know the difference between a lie and the truth because he is only interested in selling and buying. A man who has the blood of hundreds of thousands of human beings on his hands because of his incompetency, his arrogance, his braggadocio, his desperate insecurity, his ignorance, and his false pride. If you hire such a man you will get what you pay for: an economic cesspool, a declining respect amongst the nations and the peoples of the earth, yet another meaningless war with no end in sight, and a lot of gold statuettes of a deluded fat man in vacant lots all over your capital.

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One of the Senate races that I think needs to be thought about carefully is the one in South Carolina. Lindsey Graham was the senator from South Carolina until he died on 11 July of this year. His sister, Darline Graham Nordone, was appointed to finish his term in office. Graham was a difficult senator to like and respect. He was very outspoken on almost every issue. He excoriated Donald J. Trump when they were both running for President. But then, like the good party member that he always wanted to be he became Trump’s most vocal supporter for a man in a position of influence. However, he went his own way on some issues like Ukraine. When he died he had just returned from his tenth visit to Kyiv. He spent time with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and had returned with a proposal that would bring Ukraine more needed support from the United States. President Donald J. Trump was known to listen to him and to respect him. At least as much as he respects anyone or anything. I don’t know if there is any investigation into Lindsey Graham’s sudden death but … well, things happen when they involve Vladimir Putin.

Graham’s sister was asked directly by Donald J. Trump to run for the Senate seat left open after Lindsey’s death. That seat is being contested now in South Carolina. Darline Graham Nordone’s opponent is Dr. Annie Andrews. Nordone is using Graham as a last name in this election. One can only suppose that choice is made to give her a more direct connection to her brother and therefore to Donald J. Trump.

Dr. Annie Andrews has been a pediatrician for her whole life. She ran a campaign for the first congressional district in the House of Representatives from South Carolina in 2022 inspired to do something after the Parkland High School shooting in 2018. Her opponent in that race, a strong Trump supporter, accused her of “child abuse” because of her statements and her care in regard to the thinking about and treatment of transgender children. As a result of those accusations she received death threats and had to hire private security to protect herself and her family. She subsequently lost that campaign but continued to work for sensible gun safety legislation and decided to continue a political career and run against Lindsey Graham for the Senate seat.

It has been said that Darline Graham Nordone does not have any political experience, that she has only ever been the silent sister of her extremely loquacious brother. This is true. Lindsey never married but remained very close to his sister throughout their lives. It has been said that she will forever express her loyalty to Donald J. Trump as she continued throughout his life and his varying opinions to express loyalty for her brother. It is implied and has proven to be true when she has been interviewed and has spoken in her role as the newly appointed Senator from South Carolina that she will speak only when spoken to and will mirror the desires of her sponsor, Donald J. Trump. This does not mean that she does not have her own mind it merely implies that she will not use it.

Dr. Andrews, on the other hand, is very articulate, outspoken in her beliefs and convictions, and passionate not only about the safety and importance of children to the future of this country but about the democratic processes and the rule of law that this country was founded upon. She too has little political experience. She is one of the “real people,” with real jobs who are showing up across the country willing and able to take the reins of management of this country away from professional politicians and lobbyists and give the country back to the people. Give her a listen and encourage your friends in South Carolina to get out the vote and change the culture.

I think the Democrats are cutting their own throats, tripping over their own feet, practicing a level of self-destruction that is unique even for hypersensitive liberals, or whatever idiomatic or long winded pile of words you favor. I honestly and perhaps naively thought that the tsunami of pleas for money would abate after the end of the month and there might be a chance to catch our breath and maybe hear some policy positions rather than the oh-poor-me-I’m-being-outspent-by-a -bunch-of-billionaires cries that I heard for three weeks prior to the quarterly deadline for submitting the numbers on their donations and that continue to this day. It all makes me trust the Democratic Party even less.

For example: Roy Cooper is running for Senate as a Democrat in North Carolina. He is a far better choice than the Trump toady who is running against him and that is so apparent that the Republican Party has stopped funding that campaign and are placing their money on the race in Kansas. In the top ten trustworthy polls Cooper is ahead by double digits in six and by at least five points in the other four. Yet in the two to three weeks prior to the 30 September deadline I must have gotten no less than four pleas a day from his campaign. And they were the least imaginative pleas of a bunch of by rote pleas like, “I’m crying my eyes out,” “Have you seen the terrible news,” “Our hearts are breaking.” Get a life, get a job, stop cluttering up my Internet space with these artificially generated sob stories and pleas for more money.

In the sixties I panhandled to make gas money but I was much more subtle about it and tried to make it fun. I would sit in the sun on the pier in Monterey with my puppy on a long leash with a sign around his neck that said: “Spare Change.” He was really cute and the tourists fell for him and put money in my hat, careful not to wake me up if I had dozed off. I probably shouldn’t be proud of that but I am grateful that I was able to experience the sharp end of the money stick because it has given me perspective. Or so I choose to believe.

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I get it that they are afraid of complacency setting in and that is why they keep hitting the woe-are-we button but I think most of us would rather hear some plans and policy initiatives. That would get us off our butts to vote, as the ex-Presidents sing, faster and better informed and that is what is going to turn the tide and set us free from the other tsunami that threatens us, the one that starts with the diarrhea of the mouth that seems incurable in the current president and follows with the incompetency that his entire cabinet has strutted and fretted these two years upon the world stage. I throw in that wildly paraphrased steal from Shakespeare because the dog I spoke of in the preceding paragraph was called MacDuff, the true hero of the Scottish play. And if you think the Scottish play is Brigadoon you’re wrong. Look it up, as my father always used to say.

Regardless of the fact that they continually talk down to we the people and waste their resources and our time, they also fall into the trap of making it all about money. There have actually been several pleas that make it sound as though he who has raised the most money by election day will win. That is not how it works, or not how it is supposed to work. The person who has the most votes will win and the American people aren’t stupid. Well, most of them aren’t. It is clear from the past ten years that some of them are extremely stupid and may need to be spoken to slowly and clearly in unaccented English, without condescension, like children. But even they would benefit by hearing policy positions and plans for the future rather than the death knell of dire circumstances that Trump has established as the primary language of politics.

And anyway, Trump’s days are done. Even he knows it. He and his family are finding cribs in Russia where they think they will be accepted and protected when they have to flee, so even though Trump thinks that if he were on the ballot everything would be better for the GOP he is, once again, wrong about that. It is precisely because of him that people in America are paying more for everything than they were two years ago, that more people have died violent and public deaths in the last twenty months, that more people living on the margins of society are terrified of who might come knock, knock, knocking at their door after midnight. But we know that and they know that and what we all need to know now is that there are people with good sense and sensibility who are working on fixing that, on pointing the ship of state away from the icebergs and into the cleared shipping channels of our allies. There is no savior. There is only us, we the people, and we must hit the streets in big numbers on 17 October, the next No Kings day of protest and partying, and in even bigger numbers on Tuesday 3 November when we vote, not for whoever has raised the most money but for the person who makes the most sense for the future.

A couple of sidebars about certain elections: 1) If Troy Jackson can’t beat Susan Collins in Maine there is something wrong with him that I can’t find. She has tripped over her own greed, complacency, and self love so many times lately that all he should have to do is speak clearly and passionately about what he will do when he gets to Washington and the good people of the Pine Tree State will get behind him.. 2) Mary Peltola can probably really use some money because Alaska is a big state and she is running a good, honest, grass roots campaign and she has to get all over that state in small planes and cars and boats on the rivers. 3) Jon Ossoff is ahead in the polls in Georgia but he could be further ahead and a big win in Georgia would show the world that we the people have come to our senses and are well on our way to throwing the clown out on the garbage heap of history. 4) The same is true of Texas where James Talarico is leading but needs numbers and support and Gina Hinojosa is also running a good, honest, grass roots campaign with no super pac money to toss the Trump toady Greg Abbott out on his skinny ass. 5) The dictionary definition of an ass kissing sycophant who goes by the name of Mike Johnson can be beaten in Louisiana. There is a black man, a fifth generation farmer, running in a state that has gone overboard in trying to stifle the voices of its black voters and he is running to unseat Johnson. His name is Conrad Cable and he is one of many real people, with real jobs, who are trying to reshape the way government thinks about people who work for a living. At least give him a shout out if you can’t give him money. He has a good voice and he speaks about what is wrong and how to fix it.

When I made the movie Animal House I had to learn how to ride a horse. I had ridden but I had not ridden with a well trained horse, English saddle, neck reining, the whole mishigas. So I studied. Took lessons at Claremont Stables in New York City, rode in Central Park, and read as much as I could get my hands on.

When I was introduced to the horse I would ride in the picture, a gelding, along with the mare that was his double, I wanted to develop trust and a sense of intimacy with both the horses so I rode them both in an indoor rink at the University of Oregon where we shot the film. I also fed them both carrots. The old proverb, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” is true of animals too. I wanted the horse, particularly the gelding, who was the star, the close up horse, to be comfortable with me. The wrangler, Stevie Myers, told me that Junior was touchy and particular, and needed to be handled carefully. As I mentioned he was the close up horse and Pinky, the mare was his double. Any riding shots I am on Pinky but in close ups in the stable it is Junior. Stevie always said that Junior didn’t know he was a gelding and needed to be able to see Pinky, who he perceived as his mate, if he was going to work well at all. So Stevie always had Pinky behind the camera where Junior could see her and then he would listen to commands and act relatively calmly.

I wanted to tell the story of this man, Douglas C. Neidermeyer, and his horse, who was his only emotional relationship. I felt there should be a physical intimacy between the two of them. Not a perverse intimacy but the relationship should be a bit beyond what one normally expects between a man and his horse. So I thought I would feed Junior carrots by putting one in my mouth and murmuring to him as he ate the carrot from his end down to my mouth, ending with a kiss. We practiced it a lot because Junior was nippy and I didn’t want to lose my nose. I thought it worked and John Landis, the director liked it and used it in the picture. I thought I had created a nice bit and it worked because it told a good story.

A year or two after we made the picture, after it became a big hit, I watched a film called Missouri Breaks with Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando. Great cast: Harry Dean Stanton, Kathleen Lloyd, Freddy Forest. Directed by Arthur Penn. The film came out in 1976, a year before we made Animal House, so I had seen it. In it Brando, who gives one of his patently eccentric performances, feeds his horse a carrot by putting it in his mouth and letting the horse eat it right down to his lips and a kiss. I thought I had created a charming bit but, as I discovered, I had unconsciously stolen it from Brando. Well, a lot of actors have stolen from the master and I am willing to not be a genius.

Ringing that bell a second time I have always thought myself terribly clever because I have said at various times, both in print and in bars, that to have the fabled “American dream” you must be asleep. I recently saw a clip of George Carlin doing a bit on the inequities of capitalism wherein he says, "The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it." Once again I catch myself stealing from the best. Carlin elaborates on the idea and makes a far better case for waking up than I do but the idea is the same. The “American dream” as understood by almost anyone who falls for it means that each generation of Americans can be more successful, richer, happier, more beautiful than the last. It has gotten so that people actually think they are promised that. What that scenario proposes is a world of unlimited resources that will allow us all to just grow more wealthy with each successive generation. However, there are a limited number of trees, no matter how fast we plant them, a limited amount of coal, oil, natural gas, of fish in the sea, clean water, and air fit to breathe. These resources are all finite just like the beaver that Jacob Astor exploited and nearly drove extinct in the early 19th century or the bison that were nearly exterminated by the railroads because the massive herds got in the way of the trains that were going to make them all rich. In the two and one half centuries that we have been a nation we have gobbled up land and resources as though there was an endless supply, all in the name of that dream.

Donald J. Trump is still at it. In the middle of the last century we began to realize that we needed to slow down on our consumption and made laws to keep the air and water clean, to maintain healthy populations of the wildlife that was already threatened, to preserve some of the wilderness areas where there might have been resources. But the man-who-would-be-king has opened up millions of acres of public lands to be exploited by mining companies, fossil fuel companies, and whoever else will slip him a wad of bills in a plain envelope under the table. He is giving away our land so that his “friends” can make money. He has changed or abolished regulations that protect the air and the water. He lives in a hot-house bubble, insulated from the reality that we all experience daily and, in his own words, he “ … just doesn’t care.” He may have looked out the window of his golden jet plane when an aide told him they were flying over the section of his wall that ran through Big Bend National Park in Texas but I doubt he has ever walked a trail anywhere let alone in that pristine country.

He thinks no further ahead that the next cheeseburger. He takes care of himself alone and expects everyone else to do the same. No thought or care for seven generations down the line which is the way the people of the Iroquois Nation made their political decisions and when the Founding Fathers imagined this democracy they listened to the elders of the Iroquois Nation.

A lot of people play the lottery and go to casinos hoping beyond hope to strike it rich and wake up to a real live American dream but most of us, the ones who built and maintain what was once the most successful economy in the world, dream only of our kids being safe and able to learn as much as they are able, of having enough money to feed ourselves and our families and to have somewhere safe to go when the next atmospheric river overfills the streams and floods the streets of our towns, with maybe enough saved for a vacation to Colorado next summer if no one gets sick because we can’t afford healthcare anymore.

There was a very good article in the online version of Atlantic Magazine recently. The article is by Noah Hawley and it is called How I Learned About Billionaires at Jeff Bezos Private Retreat. Hawley’s credentials as a television writer and producer somehow got him, his wife, and two children, along with eighty of the most elite elite, invited to an all expenses paid weekend in Santa Barbara at the Four Seasons-Biltmore Resort, which Bezos had bought out for the entire weekend. How and why he was there was and is still a mystery to him. The crowd was stacked with the most wealthy, the most influential, famous, and, let’s say powerful people in America. They ate and drank for free, enjoyed all the amenities of a five star resort, schmoozed with the most interesting people in the world, and were able to listen to Ted Talk type presentations by exerts in several fields, including one Supreme Court justice. The year was 2018. The experience was so bizarre and complicated that it has taken Hawley until just recently to process it enough to write about it.

The main takeaway for me as a reader, and I suspect for Hawley as a creative observer, is that the very, very wealthy have an extremely different world view than the rest of us. And that world view is wrapped up in their ability to just not care. About anything. About anyone. About the things that ordinary people have to deal with everyday. Like how to pay for things at the grocery store to why the price of, let’s say gasoline or childcare is so high. But it is not just that they have so much money that they don’t have to think about those little things. I admit that until recently I paid very little attention to what my grocery bill was and I don’t have a lot of money. I have enough so that, as my friend and colleague says, I can afford good insurance and good doctors and hospitals, healthcare in general, so that as I move into the last decades of my life I can trust that I will be able to do it with only a modicum of pain and discomfort. But the billionaire class, the celebrity guests, the ones who were at Bezos wedding, his weekend at the Biltmore, and those that are at the many, many retreats held for them and their friends across a crowded calendar, those people actually believe that they can outpace time. That through the timeliness and brilliance of their choices they have somehow gained a level of humanness, of humanity even, that places them above and beyond those of us that might be considered mere mortals. Not that they are gods, although one of them is spending all of his money trying to live for as long as he can, attempting, vainly, to gain immortality. Most of us are involved in a similar pursuit but our resources are considerably diminished as theirs continue to multiply and thus we are confined to live in the reality of the masses

The telling moment in Hawley’s weekend came near the end. He happened to run into Bezos as he was walking around the grounds sorting the experience in his mind. Bezos introduced himself and asked, in his most congenial way, how things were going. It happened that Hawley’s wife had slipped on wet grass while kicking a ball around with her son, fallen, and broken her wrist. Hawley told this story not to gain sympathy but to thank Bezos because his security detail had immediately rushed them to the hospital, had the best doctors available to set the bones and patch her up. She was doing fine and he was grateful. But, before he was able to express his gratitude Bezos face broke into a look of such horror at the story that his aides had to rush him away to safety. He was not even able to express his sympathy for Hawley’s experience, if he felt any. Not even an, “I’m sorry.”

Now, it is probable that Bezos along with Musk, Zuckerberg, Thiel, and most of the others are what we call “on the spectrum,” referring to the autism spectrum, and therefore find it difficult to experience true empathy. But the spectrum of humanity is vast and we are all on it somewhere even the most gifted. Even the most fortunate and ferociously compromised, such as Donald J. Trump. But empathy can be learned. If we start building walls around those that are considered “gifted” and those that are wealthy beyond reason because of the vagaries of fortune, then they never get a chance to learn how people, the rest of the people, live, eat, make love, and fight over the last pork chop. We may forget that we all poop sitting down if we have the opportunity. Hawley believes that they all live in bubble and that their wealth and so-called genius insulates them from the grimy realities of life. I think he is right. I have never hung with that crowd and would probably find myself surreptitiously filling my pockets with sausage at the breakfast buffet. But I do know the look of horror on someone’s face when I break the glass wall between us with one of my uncontrollable farts.

The worst thing that Donald J. Trump has done in his two terms as acting President of the United States is that he has established a culture of lies, deception, and bad theatre as fact. Truth is no longer a thing that we can believe in because anyone can invent truth and some people are more persuasive than others at communicating their “truth.” Honesty and trust are no longer attributes that we can count on either from government or from each other because the lie of the con-man has more heat and therefore more value . And everything we see on the news or that comes directly from the administration itself is presented as theatre, as entertainment, a distraction, so that policy and even the rule of law is but a shadow dancing in the darkness on the wall of the cave as Plato described in The Allegory of the Cave in Book VII of The Republic. If truth, honesty, and the rule of law have no value then life itself is truly meaningless and chaos reigns.

I have written about how a short interview in Vanity Fair Magazine some years ago with Monica Lewinsky affected me. She was asked what event in her life was she most proud of. He first answer which is entirely legitimate albeit a little coy was, “I survived.” Then she launched into a story about how she had solved the Rubik’s Cube when she was seven or eight. She had discovered that she could peel off the colored squares and place them in such a way that it appeared she had “solved” the puzzle. He parents had promised to give her all the candy she wanted if she did it. In other words she cheated the system and won and that was what was important to her and what she was most proud of. She had obviously been too long around too many politicians. And today that mentality sits smugly in the Oval Office and sets the tone for a world of con-men.

Earlier today I got a phone call from a man who said he was a police officer and that I had failed to respond to a summons to jury duty even though I had signed the summons and returned it. Because of this there was a warrant out for my arrest and only if I came immediately to the Federal Courthouse downtown, came to his office, and proved that the signature on the summons was not mine could I avoid the judge’s order that I be arrested and incarcerated. I suspected that this was a scam perpetrated upon older people who are more easily frightened but I wanted to be honest with them and prove my innocence. I had no memory of ever being served a summons to jury duty, let alone signing off on it and promising to serve on a jury. He made it exciting by saying that it was a Federal murder trial. I may have been frightened because I got quite angry which is often what happens when I am scared. He passed me to his superior, a Captain, who spoke very quickly and with some authority. The Captain insisted that I come, again “immediately,” to the Courthouse to prove my innocence or he would have officers at my door to handcuff me and arrest me. I was in the middle of writing but it was impressive enough that I agreed to put on my shoes and drive down to get this over with. He passed me back to the Lieutenant who gave me the address and his office number and told me to hurry. In retrospect I realize that they were playing good cop, the Lieutenant, bad cop, the Captain, because the Lieutenant was always saying how sorry he was for the inconvenience, and how he was just doing his job, and how we could get this over with quickly if I just came downtown.

So I drove downtown. The Lieutenant had told me to leave my phone on so that they could talk to me as I approached the office. That seemed strange but I was into the game now so I went along. When I was about half a mile from the Courthouse the Lieutenant came back on the line and the first thing I said was that he must be aware of the law which states that after the age of 70 people are no longer compelled to serve on a jury. I am eighty so I was exempt and I hoped that they were prepared to reimburse me for my time and for parking if I was able to find it. He said yes, of course, and that he wanted to pass me to his superior one more time. The Captain came on the line and, because I was driving I had a hard time understanding him and after a few angry words back and forth he shouted, “Pull over, pull your car over right now. I was so into the game now that I looked in the rearview mirror to see if there was a patrol car right behind me. There was not but none the less I pulled over so that I could concentrate more clearly on what this man was saying. He was quite angry and emphatic and told me that there were two warrants out for my arrest because I had ignored the summons and because I had balked at coming downtown when commanded to do so. He then said that I could avoid going to jail right then and there if I posted a $4,500.00 bond. At that point I finally understood that I was being conned and laughed and said to him something like, “Oh, I see now. This is all a scam, a very elaborate scam.” At that point he hung up and thereby I knew I was right. They had created this very elaborate theatre in order to get me to give them $4,500.00 on my credit card or Venmo or PayPal or any of those gizmos that are designed to make it easier for us to spend money. I was relieved but just to complete the gestalt I continued to the Courthouse. When I walked in the door the security man there asked me if he could help me. I told him I was looking for Lieutenant Whitemore on the third floor, room 2B. I began to explain why and before I could finish the second sentence the man said, “It’s a scam.” I obviously needed some outside, authoritative confirmation that I was right about being scammed. Why I needed that is a job for my therapist. At one point I had said to each of the two “police officers” that since they had guns that obviously made them right and me wrong. They did not laugh.

The feeling that gnaws at me still, even though I have now told this story several times and find my reaction to be totally ludicrous to the point of comedy, is that I have a strong sense that I am wrong to trust anyone, anytime, anywhere. And this does not feel like a feeling that is going to go away soon. And I don’t like it. We live on trust. Trust gets us up and out of bed in the morning. I buy meat at the grocery store and I trust that it has been raised in a healthy way, that it has been packaged carefully, that it does not carry any disease. When I get my medications in the mail I trust that they are the right pills, that they are the right dosage. I check the Internet to be sure, but can I trust the Internet? One of my best friends called me as I was driving home to tell me something and I almost bit her head off because I was riding this wave of anger at having been duped, at having played a small part in a bad play designed to make someone a little more wealthy. She had some comments on a piece I had written that I had asked her to read and I suddenly did not trust her judgement, even when she said that it was beautiful.

When you live in a culture of lies and you have been raised to be honest and to tell the truth you can become very confused and begin to act in ways that you don’t recognize as yourself, or the self you have come to know and trust, and that is not a good feeling. That is the insidious bag of excrement that Donald J. Trump and his minions have bequeathed us all. I totally get why people would rather ignore him or wish him dead. And he is doing this to the world. I trust, there’s that word again, that there are people smarter, savvier, more clever, and stronger than I to steer us into a future where fear does not dominate and where trust is again a currency that we respect.