Trump

In certain card games a "trump card" takes all lower suits, all lower denominations. In "life in America" a "trump" is an aberration, a mistake, a foolish self-glorifying error.  Our "trump" is a wayward, willful, and already failed President of the United States. This Trump has done more to harm Americans and citizens than any foreign power. He has corrupted the process of government, betrayed the art of compromise, and done meaningful damage to the American Psyche!

Trump is the failure of all of us.

In Search of Some Miracle

Americans are, frankly, in search of some kind of miracle. Something to save them from the erratic behavior of their President. Something to make all the bad decisions he has made somehow mitigate themselves, and turn out to be not so bad.

We seek a wiser sort of human to undo all the horrors Trump has visited upon the environment, the healthcare system, the tax code, the EPA, the FDA, the NIH/NEA, and countless other agencies. Trump, he says, is watching out for our best interests -- as he decimates international trade and climate agreements, perpetuates and spreads his own kinds of racism, elitism, and xenophobia across the land; creates havoc on the Internet and among good practices in many fields, and generally proves to the world that he bears a "mandate for ignorance."

What is that miracle? Who is that miracle? Ivanka? Jared? Anyone?

Failing the Future

In so many ways out institutions are flawed, fearful, and incapable of providing for a changing future. We still try to hold on to "the illusion of privacy" on the internet and in our personal dealings with media, when all around us we are "tracked, profiled, and analyzed" at least as potential customers,

Our schools will not "go paperless" into the virtual or even the experiential world because selling books and pencils is how we make our profits. Our "grade schools" are not supported (especially our teachers) while we seek some "miraculous change" that will make "learning automatic." Human beings want learning to be like sleep, easy and comfortable and non-combative. But learning is anything but...

We expect results without effort (online classes are great; I just fill out the worksheets and they hand me the degree), jobs without expertise, success without application. We try to emulate the "music man" of musical theatre --- just "think the note and you will be able to play that French Horn, or Bassoon, or whatever..."

Like our oft-mentioned President -- we limit ourselves to present knowledge and never "blow past' the parameters of current understanding." We flaunt our stupidity as if it were superior to knowledge -- safe in the belief that we will not be challenged because we believe something to be true.

Resist; resist; resist. Life is not an "idiocracy."  

Virtual Text Books

How long will it take colleges, including my own, to understand that their own bookstores (selling in paper texts) is the wave of the past. Making money off students when online resources are available, is what is putting colleges in the "respectability hole." How can you trust an educational system that literally bleeds every dollar out of you for: tuition, activity fees, lab fees, special fees, application and processing fess -- and then is complicit in the "Educational Business" game by keeping textbooks going long beyond their useful lifespan.

If colleges themselves are capable of going "paperless" -- why aren't students?  It is a cheat and the students know it. And they will "vote" with their feet.

Hope Springs...

Linda needs to "stay with it" -- continue her treatments, continue her therapies, continue her healing.
So hard when despair gnaws at the roots of one's day-to-day life. Impossible when the pain never seems to stop. Meditate and get right with yourself. Understand that this part of your life must be passed through, just like all the others.

Everyone has their troubles -- some of us have more troubles than others do. That is the fate; that is karma; that is luck. I for one don't believe God is out to hurt us, if there really is a God. I don't believe he/she wants to torture us, moment by moment, until we die. I am a positivist, a humanist, in that regard.

Positive Thoughts -- About Life, About Health, About Trump

If I could possibly send out positive thoughts to everyone out there who is suffering, hurting, in pain, or in despair -- all at once -- I would do so. We all need to begin to think positively, even as we resist, even as we refuse to give in to the stupidities and indignities being forced upon us.

My Sister Linda is having a very rough time right now, trying to survive way too much pain; way too many surgeries and procedures; inordinate amounts of suffering.  Just like immigrants, just like the poor, just like those of us who are so affected by the Trumpian onslaught -- my sister is just trying to do her best to survive -- in a hospital, with a very very slowly healing infection. Life is not fair; it seems like for some of us life is never fair.

Maybe there just is no "fair" or "kind" or "nice" -- only sadness and bad luck. I hope that is not the case -- I hope there is a greater truth than we are; a kinder God; a bigger Presence; just because if life is only random and chaotic, there may be no reason to live it.  

The Pain of Living...and under Trump

Life is tough enough -- into the lives of my students come cancers, financial problems, lost jobs, difficult problems with children/parents/spouses, school and learning problems, Veteran's Administration snafus, and every manner of difficulty that can be imagined. And all of those individual problems are exacerbated by living in the era of Donald Trump.

We are and will continue to be "unsure" about whether government is even on our side -- much less "of the people, by the people, for the people." The world and our smaller world is at "six's and seven's." We don't know what tomorrow will bring: war (with North Korea, China, Iran, someone else); an unstable earth (undone by rapidly rising climate change, pollution, instability, catastrophes, and unnamed future events. Life has never felt more like chaos than right now.

Time has "stood still" and has begun to sputter -- if that is even thinkable. Life is looking for its own balance. Resist.