Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of wealth and taste
I’ve been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man’s soul to waste
(“Sympathy for the Devil,” The Rolling Stones)
I’m a registered Democrat. My father and his father were too.
My father worked as a brakeman on the P&LE railroad. His father was a Pennsylvania coalminer. My father’s uncle was a union organizer.
My father’s father died young, soon after a coalmining mishap, leaving seven children and their mother behind. The company offered no compensation. Sorry, it wasn’t our fault.
His uncle was blackballed. Sorry, no work for you today.
My father was a union man. Later he became disenchanted by the corruption. Still, he told me: A bad union is better than no union at all. The capitalists always exploit the working man.
My father saw the world in black and white. Good and evil. Workers and owners. Protestants and Catholics. He grew up in a mixed coalmining village. German Lutherans were honorable. Irish Catholics were not.
My parents were born-again fundamentalists. By age 5 I knew the world was divided into Baptists and Papists. By age 10, I knew the world was divided into Democrats and Republicans.
I once asked my father about the two parties. He told me: Democrats look out for the working man; Republicans look out for the businessman.
I know now it’s not that black and white. Still, I remain an unapologetic social democrat. I’m loyal to my tribe. (I’m also an Orioles’ fan.)
I watched the Democratic convention. I liked it.
I thought it was so convincing that the Republicans would throw in the towel and forfeit the race. After all, they could have no answer to the Democrats’ arguments.
I was wrong.
I watched (some of) the Republican convention. As it turns out, they have answers.
Good is evil. Evil is good. Fact is fiction. Fiction is fact. Real is fake. Fake is real. White is black. Night is day. Up is down. Heads is tails. Hate is love. Lies are truth.
Yes, it’s terribly confusing.
But what’s puzzlin’ you is the nature of my game. Pleased to meet you. Can you guess my name?
I know, I know. I know that’s unkind. I know it’s unfair. And I know it’s not helpful.
But sometimes I just can’t help myself.
(Must be the devil in me!)
_______________________
See Paula’s impressionistic photograph on the home page.
It’s so hard for me to understand how an endless stream of lying, boasting, and whining from a man who’s had every advantage in life and is the most powerful person in the world can be heard with approval by so many Americans. Most of them know he’s got zero empathy and no honor. He’s cheated on all three wives and bragged about it. He’s tapped into a deep well of cultural and racial resentment that sustains his base (currently about 40% of the populace) despite what he’s done to the country and the obvious corruption and incompetence of his Administration. It’s disheartening to realize that the result of the November election is in any doubt; it’s a damning indictment of the character of America.
Trump — and other family members—have discovered that it’s easier to make money via donations for political favors, and graft — by getting rid of inspectors generals and scooping into the public trough than failing at businesses, especially now that the courts shut down the family “charity,” that was bogus from the start That should be a hint, America. Strategy now? Blame the present chaos on Joe Biden, who is not the President and has not been for the past 3-plus years. Trump owns—but of course does not—those years.
Love this, Randy. I too thought of songs during the rnc, to keep me from going into a deep depression. Below is the song/lyrics that came to mind during trump’s Thursday night speech.
Mother, mother
There’s too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There’s far too many of you dying
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some lovin’ here today, eh eh
Father, father
We don’t need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we’ve got to find a way
To bring some lovin’ here today
Just a simple ME TOO, BROTHER!
Claire and I skipped out of town for the Repugnant Misinformation Convention. We rented a cabin and hid deep in the woods at Lost River Park–no television and no telephone, but we had Wi-Fi, so we were able to read all about it. It’s just as well to read about this fest of factual distortion and prevarication and to digest it slowly. If at home, my exploding blood pressure would have caused untold damage to myself and no doubt more than one inanimate object.
Give John Prine’s, “A Caravan of Fools,” a listen
Go O’s!
I also watched the RNC, often wondering at the apparent appeal of what used to claim Grand Old status. Was this a stupendous (the greatest ever!) case of gaslighting? Perhaps (in my view, most likely). But what can progressives – those who used to forge a union with working folk – learn from the appeal?
“The extreme progressives seem to me, as far as I can judge with the poverty of my information, to be hasty, irresponsible, in many ways quite frivolous in their exaggerated and confused enthusiasm. They also seem to me at times to be fanatically incoherent, but I do not sense in them the chilling malice and meanness which comes through in some od the utterances of extreme conservatives.” Thomas Merton, Confessions of a Guilty Bystander pp. 286 (1966)
Amazing, isn’t it, how much bad can be conjured up when one partners with a devil… and disguises it as good and great!
The biggest wound inflicted by the GOP in these dark days–as least so far as I’ve experienced it–has been disillusionment. I thought “my fellow Americans,” reflected a common belief in the Republic. I was wrong. It’s only “some of my fellow Americans,” maybe a bit more than half. I never would have thought it before now. This is a wound that runs deep, because it’s a wound to hope–mine and many others’.
Randy, I’m still waiting for my “religious dream”, Jesus returns and throws the swindlers, money grubbers, and liars out of the “big house” which slaves built!! Will it happen this year????