Trump rhyme

Is it really a coincidence that Trump rhymes with stump, hump, plump, rump, clump, dump, frump and lump?

He

He’s a player on the world stage, and his role is buffoon.

He’s making America great again…for the 1%.

He always tells the truth, and if he was Pinocchio, his nose would challenge a giant sequoia.

He’s draining the swamp and replacing it with a cesspool.

Trumpian way

Be concerned about your children and grandchildren. This despicable President will now be able to make a second Supreme Court appointment, and we can only shudder at the consequences of that. Medicare and Social Security are in deep financial trouble. This administration has noticeably diminished America’s stature in the world. The Congress can do nothing but pass tax cuts for the rich. Among them integrity and decency are more and more rare. Leadership in government is about ideology and personal gain more than about compassion and problem solving, undoing more than doing. Civil discourse is eroded. Money and power are gods, and God is ideology.

As always, there is still hope. Women and minorities in political wins. Grassroots resistance. The voices of compassion and justice can still be heard. Faith in optimism and resilience. A number of thoughtful people have begun to write and speak about the failure of American democracy, and the signs are clearly here. But we are still a great country; but fortunately not yet great in the twisted Trumpian way.

Women

How long have men essentially run the world? Gradually women are assuming more positions of power and responsibility. Some of them take on the qualities and strategies of male leadership, perhaps naturally so in the current climate.

I believe though that the traditional qualities attached to gender are more masculine and feminine principles that can be attached to and mixed in individual persons rather than fixed to a particular gender.

With this in mind I’d like to see the world taken over and run by women, women from the whole gender spectrum. Give them 100 years, say. See what happens. Could it be worse?

Three

Happiness can sometimes be a form of misery.

It is possible to know yourself, but impossible to understand yourself.

Life is no more interesting than you are.

Clouds

Take clouds for example.

Clouds soak the color from the sky.

Clouds seduced us into inventing fractals.

Who hasn’t had the universal wish to float on a cloud

Without the fear of hurtling back to earth.

Countless daydreams have their origins in clouds.

Watch clouds long enough and they will morph into everything.

The energy of their spiraling fingers

Will splinter homes and fling away the occasional bovine.

Some say clouds cry, sad and black.

Their moisture plinks and slams and splatters.

Forget their Latin names.

Just look up at them like children do.

Spectacle and ritual

Think about it. American culture has replaced ritual with spectacle. Cast-of-thousands events, drunken celebrations, lots of bling, lots of money. These have become of characteristics of weddings, transitions to adulthood, births and deaths.

Spectacle is of the moment. Ritual is of the lasting. Spectacle is transitory. Ritual connects. Spectacle is entertaining. Ritual touches humanity. Spectacle is contrived. Ritual evokes meaning.

What then does this confusion of spectacle and ritual mean?

Chronic depression

Chronic depression is the devastating consequence of your brain turning on you. It poisons the way you see yourself and the world. It blocks acceptance of the way those you care about see you, making fertile ground for low self-esteem and the darkest of thoughts.

The pain of depression is like no other. It’s a wall. A cave. A prison. A tunnel that seems endless. A pain that must end because it saps the life from you.

We are a culture that shames—body type, skin color, lifestyle, weakness. This makes depression difficult to admit and hard to uncover. People must be willing to care, to love, to try to understand and always to ask.

immigration

It’s hard for me to believe that most migrants from Mexico and Central America would make the long and dangerous trek from their homes, leaving everything behind, traveling with children, to come to America just to suck on its tit. Most of these people, if allowed to enter, become productive citizens, many likely paying more taxes that Trump. Doing jobs Americans won’t do.

Besides that, we owe them something. The American appetite for drugs fuels the cartels which in turn fuels much of the violence in their home countries. In Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala, Chile and other Latin American countries, American government and business interests have formed America’s own form of colonialism.

We adopted a child from Guatemala. I know what his life would have been like had he stayed there. Instead he grew up here, spent 4 years in the Marines, 2 tours in Iraq and is not a law enforcement professional. He has contributed more to this country than some recent immigrants, Melania and her parents.

Whatever the Congress, the President and law enforcement come to in solving the immigration problem, they must do it with compassion, a fair appreciation of the contributions of immigrants and an honest sense of history.