Maybe I watch too much political news?

 

Considering what many loyal Trump followers believe about what is being reported by the mainstream media, one wonders how the fictional Ted Baxter could be considered an idiot - when these people get their "news" from an outlet (Fox News) whose viewers test as knowing less than if they didn't watch any news at all.

Last night, as I write this, a New York judge ruled that the Trump Organization's finances were fraudulent, and that this fact need not be tested before a jury.  So, what does this mean fr the rest of us?  If one watches the "liberal" news outlets, this is painted as Trump finally getting his comeuppance in business.  By distorting financial information, he has defrauded both the state, his banks, and the public.  If one watches the right wing news outlets, this is painted as our ex-president being attacked by the "deep state."  What I see is that a cult leader's corruption is being exposed to the public, and that its followers are fighting the cognitive dissonance that occurs when one truth competes with another in their minds.

Trump, simply, is a two-bit grifter who got lucky for a while.  If it weren't for "The Apprentice" show, he would never have been portrayed as a successful businessman on TV.  All of these shows followed a loose script, with Trump making judgements on whether someone succeeded or failed, usually ending one contestant's run with the phrase: "You're Fired!"  If an uneducated person were to see this show, s/he might think that he is the model of a successful businessman, and someone who could run a country if given the chance.

Think of the phrase: "I, alone, can fix it."  His loyal followers never will ask the simple question: "Did he do it, alone or not?"  They see others getting in his way, and blame his (and their) failures on his opponents.  The rest of us know he's unfit even to work as a carny.  But the Dunning-Kruger effect has kicked in.  Those who know the least about a subject will think they know much more than they do about that subject.  They will follow people who shout loud and project confidence, not people who speak softly and know how much there is yet to know about things.  This is simple, but a sad part of our human nature.

Why am I worried?

Right now, Trump is ahead of Biden in preliminary polling.  If Trump regains the presidency, we will again see political chaos, and the erosion of human rights.  As a transgender person, I fear what forces he will unleash to cement his hold on power.  But what happens if Trump is convicted in one of his criminal cases, and is unable to serve?  Virtually all other GOP candidates are likely to win against Biden.  Bailing out for the good of the Democratic party's chance of winning the 2024 election may not be on Biden's radar right now.

I fear a competent GOP leader in the White House, as s/he would be beholding to many of the same people who supported Trump.  But being competent, this person may do much worse than Trump ever could do.  Unlike Trump, this person knows that s/he alone can't do it.  But s/he with others can do it.  And we already know that they want to do to us transgender people....

 

A Trump supporter posted a reply on Mario's Facebook page.

 

The other day, I posted an image similar to this with the phrase:

Lock him up!
Lock him up!
Lock him up!

And she responded, replying that Biden should be the one locked up.  Regardless of how one feels about Trump and Biden, I am disgusted by both parties' inability to discipline troublesome members when they break the law. I was one who said that Bill Clinton should have been impeached for committing perjury in regard to having sex with Monica Lewinsky.  I was also in favor of going after Bush #43 for unwarranted searches (actually, unwarranted, secret wiretaps) after 9/11.  Yet, I would have given him a hall pass on that if Congress had given him an express OK.  So when the GOP refused to discipline Trump, I was appalled.

Being a member of the LGBT community, I feel at risk by the laws being passed in our most conservative states.  The radical right would rather us not exist, and wants to deny us the medical treatment we need when it is called for, as well as denying us our basic civil rights.  Trump gave the radical right a hall pass to pass laws that would disenfranchise us in exchange for them looking the other way while he cut deals with unsavory characters and with foreign powers.  

The radical right wants to use our existence as if it were a waving red cape at a bull in a bullfight.  To preserve their power, the right's leaders are making us their focus of hatred.  Considering that my acquaintance likely uses Fox "News" as her only news source, I can't help but believe that a reasonably sane person can be corrupted by a steady diet of misinformation that reinforces her existing beliefs.  

I don't believe that our current president is guilty of a crime.  However, I do believe that the son is guilty of a crime for which he had a plea bargain deal, and should have been allowed to cop the plea.  Instead, we will have a trial where justice is not served.  The verdict passed on the son may (or may not) be just, and the trial will be used by the political right to smear our president.  So I closed out the conversational thread by saying that if there is evidence, the father should be tainted.  But if not, the political right should stop stirring up the base with falsehoods.

It saddens me that we no longer have the "fairness doctrine" to preserve objectivity in news reporting.  If this were in effect today, we wouldn't have a nation as polarized as we are now.

Willie Nelson must be very happy...

 

I usually write this blog several days in advance, so this post will be relating to old news for most of us. President Biden has issued a blanket pardon for all those people convicted of the federal crime of possessing cannabis.  Our president has also urged congress to change the laws regarding cannabis, and has encouraged governors at the state level to do the same thing for their jurisdictions.  I can only imagine Willie Nelson lighting up a spliff to celebrate this event.

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When I was in college, I was one of the few people who didn't have a connection to buy my own weed. Therefore, I only smoked if a friend would pass me his or her joint.  For the most part, cannabis had little effect on me at the time, as it only made me sleepy.  I can still remember one of the few times that I did get high, and I was tasked to drive from Flushing to Fresh Meadows (Queens county, NY).  Instead of making a left turn onto the Long Island Expressway's service road, I continued South until I reached the outskirts of Jamaica.  Let's just say that my my then girlfriend was more affected than I was, and that the only way to see the movie Logan's Run is well under the influence.

Over the years, I have had some interesting experiences with weed, but not in the way you might expect.  For example, I was engaged once, and the woman who I was engaged to didn't think I would smoke.  She lit up a joint, shared it with her friend, and didn't even think I'd enjoy a smoke.  (You can easily guess that I didn't get married to that woman.) Another time, I was with a friend who was recovering from cancer, and he shared some of his stash.  While smoking, "The House of the Rising Sun" came on the radio, and I did an impromptu translation of the first verse into (my long forgotten) German. Lastly, I visited some friends (documented in my previous blog) to watch some old cartoons, and enjoyed some of their stash - and had to wait a while before I was safe to drive.  (People needed to be fully alert to drive to/from their home.)  There are more stories, but these are the ones that first come to mind.

Now that cannabis is legal in New York, I don't find that it will influence how I live my life.  Although recreational cannabis is not officially available in my state, it is available in at least one nearby state. I have no urge to go to a dispensary to buy any weed.  Yet, I will continue to advocate for complete legalization, as I consider cannabis to deliver a safer high than that from other legal substances.

It was 20 years ago today....

How many of you remember 9/11/01?  Do you remember where you were when the towers were hit?  I certainly do.  Virtually all New Yorkers knew people who were directly affected by the terrorist attack, people who died, as well as survivors.  

I began writing this entry on the day where the last US serviceman/woman was evacuated from Kabul, with the idea that this would be the rare post to appear on the day being discussed. 

 

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Politicians certainly know how to get us into wars - the loss of roughly 3,000 people in one set of attacks was more than enough to justify this war.  But once Bin Laden was killed, it was time to leave.  And leaving a war zone when a nation hasn't really won a war will always be messy.  We saw this in Vietnam, and we just saw this in Afghanistan.  We ended up depending on our enemy to provide security while we exited the theater of war.

Politicians will be long arguing about what Biden did right and what he did wrong.  But the deal to get out was made by Trump (one of the few good things for which I'll give him credit), and left for others to implement.  As for me, on the whole, I think Biden did the right thing.  Yet, there was much room for improvement.  At least we got over 100k people evacuated before the Taliban took over.

- - - - - - 

But how many of us remember what it was like before 9/11/01?

20 years ago, airports and other public spaces were relatively free from "Security Theater".  (Much of what we see is meant to impress the public.  What the public doesn't see is really meant to protect us.) One could meet family at the arrivals gate, going through minimal security inspections which were meant to keep people from bringing firearms on planes.  If one wanted, one could go to the airport, go shopping inside (why, I don't know - but Pittsburgh once advertised its airport shopping), and then go home.  I could bring my soft drinks through security, and not have to pay outrageous prices to quench my thirst.  

One of my trips had me traveling from San Antonio, TX to White Plains, NY with a change of planes in Chicago, IL.  However, the plane coming from Denver, CO was late, and I'd never make my connection to New York.  Luckily, the gate agent changed the booking the second leg of my trip fly on on another airline (something not done today), and said that I had 30 minutes to make it from American Airlines' terminal to United airlines' terminal.  Little did I know that I'd be running from the far end of one part of the airport to the far end of another part of the airport, going through security (exit and reentry) in the process with only 2 minutes to spare.  I could not have made this connection less than a decade later.

Two decades ago, corporations were much more lax regarding building security.  I could go to a job interview without having to present any identification when I entered a building.  In the years that followed, I'd eventually have to go through 2 or 3 sets of security checkpoints in one building to get to a job interview.

 

- - - - - -

We were much better off 20 years ago.  But once our image of being secure was punctured, we went crazy trying to restore it - and went to war.  No politician would "man up" and say it's time to "bug out". Americans never want to look weak. Our politicians kept making excuses to justify staying in the war zone.  I am very thankful for our president being smart enough to exit this war, and keep future generations of American servicemen/women from dying in a "forever war".  

 

 

 

PS: I'd love to find out what Joe Haldeman would think of our exit from Afghanistan.

 

PPS: I think you may be interested in this song by Gilbert O'Sullivan:

"All they wanted to say."

So appropriate for 9/11, don't you think?

 

 

 

It's the end of the week, and I hope things keep going well.

 

I find the news more interesting than most of the "entertainment" that is on TV these days.  But I'm not talking about politics, which can get quite boring after a while.  Instead, it's when the news outlet covers something other than politics - such as when a city shuts down its commuter mass transit overnight to save money.

This week, politics was the lead item for every newscast.  No, it was not because the Federal government was doing something new to screw us.  Instead, it was because the government was gradually undoing some of the messes that were made over the past 4 years.  I was pleasantly surprised that on the first day of Biden's presidency, that his administration rolled back some of the executive orders (XOs) which hurt the LGBTIQ community.   

Given that I ingest media which tends to have a center-left bias,  I can't help but feel good about what is happening.  However, if I were ingesting media with a center-right / hard-right bias, I might feel as if the world has collapsed around me.  The reality is somewhere in the middle - the operating bias of our Federal government has shifted towards the center, but with input from the left. A quick look at our president's nominees show that most of the candidates are well qualified for their positions.  However, if one looks from the perspective of our hard-right media, one would see candidates chosen because they meet a quota checklist.  Again, reality is somewhere in the middle.  When one has a surplus of qualified candidates, why not choose people that please key elements of the party's base?

Well, since this week has been pleasantly eventful, let's hope that next week is even better!

 

400,000 dead and counting

SARS-Cov-19.  Why has something imaged as nicely as this caused so much trouble around the world?  The answer is amazingly simple.  People are not by nature to be consciously aware of invisible infections that take time to incubate.  For example, how many of us use the "5 second rule" when food falls on a contaminated surface such as a floor?  I'll bet that some of my readers follow this rule.  For many of us, if we can't see it, it doesn't exist.

As I may have mentioned in earlier posts, my dad died of the virus.  Sadly, he died before proper protocols were established to help keep people in nursing homes safe. My dad was one of 400,000 people (so far) to have died due to the virus, and still, many people believe this virus to be a hoax.  It didn't help that our 45th president modeled inappropriate mask wearing behavior while in office, as many people model their actions on that of the leaders of their tribe.

Now that vaccines exist to help arrest the spread of this virus, we still have to get 330,000,000 arms stuck, so that we can slow down the spread of this virus in the 50 states.  This will take quite a bit of time, considering that our 46th president has pledged to get 100,000,000 arms stuck in the 1st 100 days his administration is in office.  That is a tall order at best.  But what about the other 230,000,000 of us?  At the rate POTUS #46 has mentioned, we won't be done vaccinating our citizens until year end.  What would happen if this virus was the result of terrorist use of bio-warfare technology.  This is not so far fetched as one might think.  A few years ago, a similar scenario was posed in a work of fiction, A Brief History of the Dead. Would we be as complacent about getting everyone's arms stuck as POTUS #45's administration has been?  I'm grateful that POTUS #46 has chosen Dr. Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania's Secretary of Health to be his Assistant Secretary of Health.  Not only has POTUS #46 chosen a competent person for the job, but he has chosen someone who had the support of both Democratic and Republican parties for her office.  (And this should overshadow the fact that Dr. Levine is also Transgender.)  Pennsylvania's loss is America's gain.  And we should be happy for that.

I still hope to have my arm stuck before summer starts.  But I expect that there will be problems before that happens.  Hopefully, we will all be able to stay safe until we have all been vaccinated.  Until then, keep wearing your masks, wash your hands frequently, and avoid large, dense crowds when you can.

 

 

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Final results, some lunch, and a chair

 

As I start this entry, I can finally that there is a light at the tunnel for us transgender folk. Our 45th president has been declared to have lost the presidential election, and our national nightmare is almost over.  This doesn't mean that we've won the war against regressive elements in society.  Instead, we now have denied the worst elements of our society a key friendship with someone with access to the levers of power. But this entry is not about the trouble caused by our 45th president.  Instead, today's discussion is about a more mundane subject - a date with FH that had us going to Beacon, NY with a return trip to Forest Hills to assemble a chair.

Last week, FH asked me to order a chair from Staples, as she couldn't receive a delivery during the day.  As much as I was a bit reticent about doing this, I agreed to do so.  However, it took me until late Wednesday night to place the order for the chair, and it came on Friday morning before I went for a 4 mile walk along the Croton Aqueduct Trail with my friend DS.  Once home, I realized that I had to clean up much of the disaster my apartment had turned into over the past few months, so that I wouldn't be excessively embarrassed if FH came inside for a minute.

The next day was our date. I did some last minute cleanup, and then drove down to Yonkers to meet FH.  She hadn't been to Yonkers in years, and was surprised that the old Nathan's Famous was no longer there.  In its place is now a much more modest venue, with other stores occupying the land the original building once used.  After taking care of some business, it was off to Cold Spring to do some walking around and then grabbing a bite to eat.

It took us an hour to reach Cold Spring, but there was nowhere to park.  The municipal lot was full, and the town was full of people walking around, enjoying a warm November day.  After a few rounds through town, we were unable to find a place to park.  So it was off to Beacon for lunch and some exploration.

There is a Thai restaurant near the dummy light in Beacon that is pretty good.  So we found a nearby parking space and ambled over to it.  While walking there, a group of cars passed by, people honking their horns in a celebratory manner.  Joe Biden had just been declared the winner of this year's presidential election by several networks (finally!), and people celebrated as if a house had fallen on an ugly Wiccan practitioner from the West, with an opportunity for someone to acquire a gently used pair of red shoes.  Once done with lunch, we explored Beacon a little before starting the long drive home.

On the way home, we decided to pass through Cold Spring again, and again, no parking was to be found in town. We were now off to Forest Hills, and to assemble the chair that was loaded in my car.  When we finally reached FH's apartment building, we were extremely lucky - there was a parking spot open directly in front of the entrance to her building.  We unloaded the box containing the chair, and brought it up to her apartment.  A few minutes inside the apartment, we started to open the box and put the chair together.  As expected, we encountered a few glitches before getting the chair assembled. But all went relatively smoothly, and we were able to watch our future president's "victory speech" while we have each other massages.  

Although I am not sure of where things will go, if they will go, etc., FH is a nice woman to be with.  However, I also have to see where FL wants to go, as I am still not sure of which of these two women I want to be with. 

PS: FL and I had a discussion shortly after I wrote this entry.  My dual-gendered nature is something more than she can handle.  So we've agreed to remain good friends.

 

 

 

 

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