DEFEAT FASCISM

 Been much talk lately about how such a frightening percentage of Americans accept buffoonery and debauchery from so many of our political leaders. I'm not too smart nor well educated but I have my thoughts. I think an appropriate analogy for the American psyche at present aligns with the old sci-fi films of the 1950s.

I think the evil is always there within us. It's tribal and genetic. Distrust and violence are embedded in our genes. Tendencies for warfare with strangers are natural.

We haven't subdued them through religion or philosophy. Rather, what we call morality is a result of social contracts, agreements, and barters. I won't kill you or steal from you if you won't kill or steal from me. Let our villages trade with each other, not raid each other. Let us see how peace and harmony works to our benefit. Let us develop a monetary system so we don't have to steal animals for survival. Let us talk, not fight. Peace results from rational thought.

So evil becomes subdued like the 1950s monsters, deep underground.

Then an explosion opens a path for evil to rise, a path to destruction. It isn't from a bomb, but from evil-minded politicians who use our distrust as a detonator. We become engulfed by the results of evil. We need a John Agar to develop a plan of survival that, "Just might work.

With apologies to Steven Pinker.

DEFEAT FASCISM

 I'm not prescient, or smart, or highly educated. Well, that last I am by the standards of my state. But after the Covid epidemic slowed, and people got checks, my nephew and I decided that there was money to be made in day-trading stocks of sound, but undervalued, retail companies.

The decision rewarded us quite well. When, unlike Elon Musk, I decided I had enough, I ceased the enjoyment and concentrated on Life-Partner, her animals, and my guitars. By then, fixed-income vehicles had moved into yields of nearly five percent. Following conventional advice (I ain't smart enough to figure it out on my own) I moved us from equities (except for that little percentage on the top of the investment pyramid that can't hurt but might provide some fun in the autumn days of life) and sat back.

Now that America has chosen a band of thugs, charlatans, neo-Nazis, and grifters to run the three branches of government, I realize how temporarily fortunate I am. I say temporarily for I know I talk too much for them to grant me immunity for long. So these days I enjoy my good fortune and work on what I'll utter as my last when they line me up against the wall. I've narrowed it down to:

(1) Foxtrot Delta Tango
(2) I told you so.
(3) What were you thinking?
(4) You gotta hate people of color awfully bad for this, and
(5) Would someone please buy Donald Trump a banjo?

I guess the bottom line is that choosing someone to govern the country ain't like picking a favorite on a reality-TV show. Too bad 77,302,580 Americans didn't figure that out in time.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 BRIBERY

Years ago, in an Arkansas far away, it was a well-established situation that a professional services firm wishing to do business—when the contract was governed by a specific state cabinet agency—would have first to make a “campaign contribution” to the constitutional head of that agency. It was a dirty but necessary cost of doing business, one deemed and declared to be legal. How the head of the agency turned the contribution to personal use was a process that led him to a prison sentence.

Too bad for him. If the people and process were in operation today, there is good news. The United States Supreme Court just ruled that it would be perfectly okay to pay the favor off openly, in cash, and without danger of indictment as long as the payment occurred after the work was done and not before.

Only Sam “The Flag” Alito and Clarence “Big Cigar” Thomas could have developed that logic stream.

There is one catch. That lies in the fact that the public official must have sufficient trust in the paying party that such emolument can be delayed until the proper and legal moment. Since the deal can’t be included in the contract, both sides must trust one another. It could be done with a nod and wink implying “I know as much on you as you know on me.” In botanical terms, the leaves must be as rotten as the roots.

In other words, there must be a level of trust not normally extant in such people.

It has taken awhile, but we are there.

Coda: Supposedly it would work like a "reverse tip." Now if only there were some way it could be made tax deductible.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 TREASON

When I was a teenager, someone told me that if you did anything portraying the United States flag upside down it was an act of treason, the FBI would come after you, and you would be sent to prison. I believed it to the point of once trying to steam off a stamp that had a picture of the flag on it that I had mistakenly pasted the wrong way. Didn’t work, and that was when the cost of a stamp was important to me.

Now I know it’s okay. A Justice of the United State Supreme Court has indicated so. I still don’t do it though. It’s that oath I took, and all.

Some are saying that justice should recuse himself from certain cases since he believes in displaying treasonous beliefs in public. He won’t. The Chief Justice, John Roberts won’t make him, saying, “The practice we have followed for 235 years [is that] individual justices decide recusal issues.” This “we’ve-always-done-it-that-way” seems more fitting for poor workmanship or an excuse justifying school segregation than behavior in the highest court in the country.

That’s the court, by the way, that didn’t buy said argument in the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954.

Things change I suppose. Next time I accidently paste a stamp on upside down I won’t end up throwing the envelope away and I’ll thank Justice Samuel Alito for saving me 66 cents. Now I’ll run to the PO and buy some more stamps. I’ll ignore local laws and if a police officer stops me for speeding through the city streets my defense will be, “I’ve always done it that way.”

TODAY'S EPIPHANY

 LAWYERS

 I’ve always gotten on well with attorneys. I admire them for their logic and willingness to see that all, not just the favored, receive a fair trial. Do some push the limits? Sure. But some physicians prescribe antibiotics for viruses. Some engineers designed the crematoria at Auschwitz. Heck, some urban planners even promote bike paths when kids are starving in the Mississippi River Delta.

Oh, and part of my feelings for attorneys are mercenary. They always made sure I got paid for expert testimony. Mostly my feelings stem from admiration for their knowledge. I might have followed the law, but I thought all attorneys had to do what Perry Mason did. That image shied me away. The thought of standing and speaking in public was more terrifying to me than thoughts of snakes, vampires, sci-fi monsters, or meeting a Catholic nun in the dark.

One of my best friends is an attorney. We jogged many a morning together and shared thoughts. He is a Harvard Law School grad, so unlike the venom-spewing Ted Cruz or Tom Cotton that they might be from different planets. I learned logic, dedication to the law, and concepts of the advocacy system of jurisprudence from him.

Imagine then, my dismay at the condition of the current United States Supreme Court. I always imagined it as a pinnacle of dedication, Knowledge, fairness, and legal righteousness. Along came the current majority.  Now I feel as I might have, as a youth, to find that Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Red Ryder, Tex Ritter, Lash Larue, and Hopalong Cassidy, were really Nazi spies.