I
was just outside and Nancy had a modern version of “Can’t Hurry Love” playing
on the radio. Norman Goldman’s motto is “You
Can’t Hurry Progress” it seems. You know
there is this tribe on a southeastern Asian island where they can sense
tsunamis coming from way off. And this
tribe is very proficient at things like throwing spears to catch food. And they are missing certain words from their
vocabulary such as waiting and hoping and anticipation. They live completely in the present
tense. The element of waiting or
momentum “stalling out” just doesn’t exist here like it does with United States
politicians. I heard that little meeting
today with Trump and the students and parents of that Parkland high
school. There was a lot of “thank you
for listening to us” and everybody was trying to be very polite and deferential
toward Trump. But at times all of that
politeness and patience can be like a nuce around your neck cutting off the
flow of events as surely as a tourniquet.
There is something constricting and strangulating about knowing you don’t
have any real power except for your words.
Words can go in one ear and out the other. At least Sol Allinsky in his book “Rules for
Radicals” believed in the leverage of force to back up their words. There had to be the threat of something bad
happening to you if you didn’t follow through.
There are times I think about the novel “The Strange Case of Benjamin
Button” and how too much of life seems to be suffering the blows of one event
only to have another event buffet you a few days or weeks later. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could somehow make
events un-happen. (Selah) This may sound like the ultimate reactionary
position. But I look over the past
twenty years and I see the tide of events, which used to be in our favor in the
sixties and seventies – now being continually against us. And I’d like to know how to change that. I don’t think “Possibility Thinking” will do
the trick. It has to be something
beyond belief to have real teeth. There
has to somehow be “knowing” involved along with that warm, fuzzy belief. People with the power can afford to live in
the present. The rest of us have to be
content to live either in the “by and by” future, or else take refuge in the
past, when things made a lot more sense.
Yes I know the line (from
Harrison) of “with every mistake we must surely be learning”. The trouble is the guy who’s supplying the “mistakes”
and “mishaps” of the future has an endless supply and can throw them at us
seemingly whenever he wishes. It seems
that the best we can do is make our schools and armed fortress the same way we’ve
armed airports and government offices to the teeth. It seems as if living with fear and even
dread seems to be “the new normal”.
Two
busloads of those Florida High School students went to Tallahassee,
Florida. The legislature was pretty
intransigent. One of their favorite chants
is “Drain the NRA”, but they have other chants. Now we hear that President Trump is meeting
with some students about gun control.
There is talk about raising the age to 21 when you are able to buy
assault weapons. Now there is a rumor
from the conservative “trolls” that some of these students are paid
actors. If President Trump has finally
decided to go against the NRA, I wish he’d let us know.
This
is Wednesday February 21, 2018 and like yesterday morning the picture jammed on
“Days of our Lives” but what I saw was strange.
Marlena is now in on this plot to kill Steve and they are talking openly
about Billy as an ISA member. Kayla gave
Steve the antidote. Suddenly he’s
better. Paul and Will are now free. In yesterday’s episode they were tied
up. But now there is a new wrinkle in
the thing. Because this ISA lady pulls a
gun on Trip calling on him in his apartment to “explain the situation” to
him. She lied to him saying Steve had
been moved from the hospital and wouldn’t let him confirm that with Kayla. The reasoning behind Steve’s “betrayal” is
that when Joey confessed to the crime of killing Trip’s mother it blew the ISA
cover.
Thom
Hartman has been talking a lot about gun regulation. He wants to license guns and also ban the use
of assault weapons such as AK 47’s and AR 15’s. The latter is a good gun for the armature to
shoot is because it has almost no recoil.
These assault weapons are about killing as many quickly as
possible. On the Norman Goldman show
yesterday there was talking about having your gun card that has to be renewed
now and then and you need to bring your weapon with you when you check in
annually. If they slapped a fifty dollar
fee once a year for the privilege of owning guns, maybe they would think twice
about owning one. Even a fifteen dollar
fee would send a message. Thom Hartman
is bent on saying that gun fanatics have small penises.
Several
weeks ago we said that something would “happen” in nineteen days, but we didn’t
know what. One thing that happened today
is that the Rev Billy Graham died at age 99 in his native state of North
Carolina. He was the last of the
evangelists that wasn’t associated with the far right. You could add Schuller to this declining list
also. These two were main stream
evangelists accepted by the American people.
The Rev Billy Graham did a lot of good and his crusades were responsible
to saving a lot of souls and turning people’s lives around. Unfortunately his son Franklin became more
political. I would hope that no
Christian would endorse the sexual escapades of our President. Pat
Robertson is really sounding old, almost like he’s on medication now. Joel Olsteen is very encouraging to watch
but I really don’t know what his politics are.
I got in the line behind Mario to see Dr
Messina. There wasn’t much else I could
do but to tell the good doctor exactly what is going on in my life. I mentioned the dental diagnosis and how I
don’t want to have the work done. I
mentioned Mom’s fall, and her alzheimers, and the fact she may have had a
stroke. Then I mentioned Judy’s
Parkinson’s disease. Dr Messina then
asked me if I was getting depressed over these things and I said yes. He boosted my Celexa from 20 to 30 miligrams
and said “Try not to think about that stuff”.
I then said “I guess I’ll try and not think my lack of money either”,
and Dr Messina said “If you had money it would solve a lot of problems” and on
this I have to agree.
At times Trump seems flexible but always in the wrong way. In 2000 Trump wanted to run as an Independent and have Oprah Winfrey as his running mate. Trump was centerist in his past and was more open to gun regulations way back when before the Koch Brothers got to him. Even Mitt Romney hated Trump two years ago calling him the worst kind of phoney and a fraud. Even Judy suggested I watch that speech, which I did. Now Judy is all for Trump and Trump and Romney have kissed and made up. I guess the saying is true, "Money doesn't [just] talk; it swears". [Monday] I got two Oreos and juice
from Rico in the courtyard after ten. I
continued to have Thom Hartman on but don’t remember it. The temperature never got out of the fifties
and it has continued windy at least through mid afternoon. We had some kind of a breaded chicken chunks
dish and boiled potatoes and carrots.
They announced there would be no seconds. We had pineapple for dessert and I got
Jerry’s pineapple. I had the Gary and
Shannon show on till ten to two. I slept
through “Draining the Swamp”. I think
they were going to say something about Joe Biden running for President
again. Biden they tell us would be 78 on the day he was inaugurated. It's too bad the milenials can't run for President now. They extend to age 36 now in this year of 2018. The earliest I myself could have run for President was 1988. That's how long my generation had to wait. Only the Generation X'ers seems to have come into their political own right away. Some lady sang the Star Spangled
Banner too sexy and Gary mocked her. Sometimes I think people major on the minors and minor on the majors. This is inverted thinking. They had the house whisperer on from 11:30 to noon.
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