Varieties of Practicing Freedom

Here we go again. Is anybody else ready to get off this ride?

Trump is actually doubling down on his attacks on the legal Haitian immigrants of Springfield, Ohio, people who escaped unimaginable horror and were welcomed to Springfield to start their new lives and boost the local economy. 

Trump said at a rally last night, "The fact is—and I'll say it now—you have to get them the hell out. You have to get them out. I'm sorry. But get them out. Can't have it. They've destroyed it."

The crowd started chanting, "Send them back! Send them back! Send them back!"

Is anybody surprised that their hatred of illegal immigrants has spilled over into hatred of legal immigrants too? What could the possible reason be? 

Perhaps it's the same reason that Trump was sued in the 70's for not renting to black families. Or maybe it's the same reason that he took out full-page ads in the 80's demanding the execution of the black and Hispanic Central Park Five who were later exonerated. (He still refuses to apologize for that, of course.) Or maybe it's for the same mysterious reason that for years he whinged on about how our first black president was not from here, not genuinely one of us.

By now, we should all know what hole comes to Trump's mind when he thinks about certain countries.

Now that I think about it, I'll just say it, his "shithole nation" comment was about Africa nations, but he went out of his way to also include Haiti, and this was years ago. That seems noteworthy, doesn't it? In that meeting he asked why we would want immigrants from those countries, and why wouldn't we want more immigrants from places like Norway. Is he actually against immigration, or just certain types of people immigrating?

Hmmm, I think I'm starting to detect a distinct trend. 

The Republican mayor of Springfield had this to say of all this anti-Haitian immigrant campaign nonsense: 

"They're campaigning and they're making decisions in the moment. We've asked before, we'll continue to ask, we need help, not hate. We need peace, and asking the leaders of the national stage to speak well of our city and to understand the way their words and the impact that it has had on our city."

The town of Springfield has had Nazi and KKK demonstrations, and schools and public buildings have been closed due to bomb threats. They didn't ask for this attention, but Trump decided to give it to them and he won't let it go.

JD Vance said of his role in pushing the pet-eating false narrative, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do."

Know this, Trump and Vance are clearly CREATING this suffering. 

Some people say that they still need to know more about Kamala Harris before they vote. Do we really need to know more about her, or are we finally to the point that we can see that she's better than anybody who is filled with anger and hatred? 

We certainly don't need to know more about Trump. We know him well, and he gives us fresh examples every single day as to why his first Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, referred to him as, "the most flawed person" he had ever met. With friends like these, right?

Not only should each of us know in our hearts that Kamala is a better person than Trump, each one of us could pick anybody at random who would be better than Trump, and his decades of attention-seeking, race-baiting, hate-fueled rhetoric and actions. 

Dear Reader, I guarantee that you would be a better president than Trump. 

He was a disaster as president, as even conservative presidential historians agree. It's much worse than that though. When you look at these garbage attacks of these people who came here with hope, and his decades-long pattern of hatred, it's all the proof you need to know that he's a disaster as a human being. 

Except for the Native Americans, all of us have ancestors who came here as immigrants seeking a better life. Like many in Lancaster County, my ancestors came here seeking to escape from religious persecution and social unrest. If someone like Trump was in charge back then, none of us would be here now.

If we choose him again to be the soul of the nation, with all of his vile flaws on clear display, then this nation has a dark, dark soul.

September 25, 2024

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This Joker controversy of real-world violence following screen violence puts me in mind of Alfred Hitchcock. A reporter once asked him how he felt after finding out that a serial killer killed his third victim after watching Psycho. Hitchcock said he wondered what movie he watched before killed his second victim, and pointed out that maybe before killing his first victim he simply drank a glass of milk.

September 25, 2019

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Here's a fun thought experiment... imagine what Trump would be saying about the economy right now if he were president, if the stock market hit a record high on the same day his opponent's company stock plummeted.

September 25, 2024

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An email to Brian:

Strange... On the way home I was listening to Oliver Sacks' autobiography, and he said something about gaining a sense of satisfaction knowing that horseshoe crabs have been mating on his beach on the full moon between May and June for several hundred million years. It gives him an appreciation for "deep time." I just tried to look up the exact quote, and the quote that I did find reminded me of what you just wrote above, about driving through the desert. It's actually why I love going to the beach (I'm going to be there this Thursday through Sunday), and it's absolutely why My Darling Clementine is my favorite film.

"The sense of deep time brings a deep peace with it, a detachment from the timescale, the urgencies, of daily life. Seeing these volcanic islands and coral atolls, and wandering, above all, through this cycad forest on Rota, has given me an intimate feeling of the antiquity of the earth, and the slow, continuous processes by which different forms of life evolve and come into being. Standing here in the jungle, I feel part of a larger, calmer identity; I feel a profound sense of being at home, a sort of companionship with the earth."

*see the bottom for the full quote

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The bad thing about stacking the Supreme Court with anti-abortion judges, is that Trump won't be able to pay for any more abortions.* The last thing this world needs is more Trump DNA.

*Okay, okay, that's an unsubstantiated fact. But I'm going to allow myself one, for every 20,000 of Trump's. This reminds me of the Bill Maher bit- I Can't Prove It, I Just Know That It's True. Trump has more than a little Mike Damone in him, and everybody knows it.

September 25, 2020

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Today the UN General Assembly burst into laughter when Trump started bragging about himself. So he's the laughingstock of the world, his personal nightmare. Fox News isn't reporting it, so I wanted to make sure that everybody was aware. 

This just in: Trump is now says that his bragging was intended to get a laugh, so Fox News is probably reporting it now.

September 25, 2018

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In Fairmount I met up with old friends, made new ones, and remembered the good times with the ones who weren't there- and after driving 20 of the last 60 hours I'm back in PA.

September 25, 2011

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One of the co-op's drivers blew out the ass of his shorts today while lifting some boxes- and he wasn't wearing any underwear. I'm glad he didn't blow out the front cause I don't think we have a license to sell hot dogs.

September 25, 2010

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On this day in 275, the Roman Senate chose an emperor for the last time, 75-year-old Marcus Claudius Tacitus. Things can seem inevitable to happen again in the future, but we rarely know the last time we do something.

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One of the most famous plays in the history of baseball happened on this day in 1908 - Merkle's Boner! Giants' Rookie Fred Merkle failed to advance to second base on a game-winning hit, and was later called out on a force play. The Cubs went on to win and Frank Merkle went on to be remembered forever for the "boneheaded" play he made when he was still a teenager.

They couldn't word that differently???

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The Hustler was released on this date in 1961.

Fast Eddie Felson- "I'm the best there is Fats, I'm the best there's ever been. And even if you beat me, I'm still the best." 

https://youtu.be/hPVE98hpOWo

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William Faulkner join us on this day in 1897.

"We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it."

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Robert Bresson was born on this day in 1901. From Notes on a Cinematographer:

"My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected onto a screen, come to life again like flowers in water."

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Mark Rothko was born on this day in 1903. When you make it to Mad Men as a cultural touchstone, you've really done something.

Jane- "So it's smudgy squares. That's interesting."

Apparently people have broke down weeping in front of them. Rothko said that they are having the same religious experience that he had while painting them.

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Shel Silverstein join us on this day in 1930.

"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be."

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Aram Saroyan was born on this day in 1943. He has a book of minimalist poems. Here's one:

"Lightght."

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Mark Hamill was born on this day in 1951. I had a premonition when I was in third or fourth grade. I was sitting in my kitchen eating breakfast in the morning before school. On the radio they said something like, "Today is the birthday of..." and somehow I knew, I knew, that it was Mark Hamill's birthday. They continued, "...Mark Hamill." I wouldn't have had any way to know that. Bizarre experience. It wasn't a deja vu. I knew beforehand what was going to happen next. I still think about that.

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Michael Douglas was born on this day in 1944, and Catherine Zeta-Jones in 1969.

Gilbert Gottfried reposted a Huffington Post article saying Michael Douglas revealed his throat cancer was caused by oral sex. Gilbert wrote, "I think cancer is a small price to pay to lick Catherine Zeta-Jones' pussy. He also went back and forth with Norm Macdonald on the same subject, in one of comedy's greatest moments, culminating in a slew of thoughts on eating out Hitler's asshole.

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James Carse left us on this day in 2020. From the magnificent Breakfast at the Victory:

"It is one thing to see something remarkable appearing inexplicably in the world. It is quite another to see the world itself as remarkable and all of existence as inexplicable."

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Other notable birthdays- Pedro Almodóvar (1949), Michael Madsen (1957), Will Smith (1968)

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Another notable deathday- John Bonham (1980)

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Vanity Fair- WHITE HOUSE DOUBLES DOWN ON DONALD TRUMP’S VOW TO STAY IN POWER NO MATTER WHAT

Important info. Draw your line in the sand.

"Yet rather than assure the country that it has nothing to worry about re: Trump refusing to cede power should Joe Biden win the election, the president’s supporters have argued that he’s right to take his cues from an authoritarian regime."

http://vntyfr.com/GYGO3MR

September 25, 2020

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Denver Post- Guest Commentary: I served under six presidents — four Republicans, two Democrats — only one has failed to serve U.S. national security interests, by Robert Cardillo

Another day, another devastating insider account of an unfit president, and a warning for the country:

"I have briefed him up close — and I have seen and felt the effect of his faults on our nation’s security. Out of respect for the confidential nature of Oval Office conversations, I will not provide details. Suffice to say that the person you see presiding over COVID-19 press conferences is the same one in the privacy of his office. He has little patience for facts or data that do not comport with his personal world view. Thus, the conversations are erratic and less than fully thoughtful.

"While it is natural for there to be tension between the intelligence community and senior policymakers, President Donald Trump’s decision to rely upon the word of dictators like Vladimir Putin is an unprecedented betrayal of his oath to the Constitution. Our current president bases his decisions on his instincts, and his instincts are based upon a personal value proposition — what’s in it for me?"

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/09/25/donald-trump-fails-us-national-security-interests/

September 25, 2020

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Aesop- "We hang the petty thieves, and appoint the great ones to public office."

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Chief Joseph- "Do not misunderstand me; but understand me fully with reference to my affection for the land. I never said the land was mine to do with as I choose. The one who has a right to dispose of it is the one who created it. I claim a right to live on my land, and accord you the privilege to return to yours."

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Montaigne- "Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity."

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Stephen King- "I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries."

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Sigmund Freud , Moses and Monotheism- "Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race. Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief. If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man’s evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity."

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Dr. Seuss- "I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living."

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Louis C.K.- "I have a lot of beliefs, and I live by none of 'em.... I just like believing them. I like that part. They're my little believies; they make me feel good about who I am. But if they get in the way of a thing I want, I fucking do that."

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The full Oliver Sacks quote, from The Island of the Colorblind And Cydad Island:

I live on an island — City Island in New York — surrounded by the brilliant transient artifacts of man. And yet each June, without fail, horseshoe crabs come up from the sea, crawl on the beach, mate, deposit eggs, and then slowly swim away again. I love to swim in the bay alongside them; they permit this, indifferently. They have crawled up to the shores and mated every summer as their ancestors have done since the Silurian, 400 million years ago. Like the cycads, the horseshoe crabs are rugged models, great survivors which have endured. When he saw the giant tortoises of the Galapagos, Melville wrote (in The Encantadas ):

    "These mystic creatures…affected me in a manner not easy to unfold. They seemed newly crawled forth from beneath the foundations of the world.…The great feeling inspired by these creatures was that of age — dateless, indefinite endurance."

Such is the feeling inspired, for me, by the horseshoe crabs each June.

The sense of deep time brings a deep peace with it, a detachment from the timescale, the urgencies, of daily life. Seeing these volcanic islands and coral atolls, and wandering, above all, through this cycad forest on Rota, has given me an intimate feeling of the antiquity of the earth, and the slow, continuous processes by which different forms of life evolve and come into being. Standing here in the jungle, I feel part of a larger, calmer identity; I feel a profound sense of being at home, a sort of companionship with the earth.