Month: March 2025

[N.B. We had resolved to take a “time out” from writing on the unsavory subject of our perverse President and his MAGA sycophants; however, a recent plethora of their jarring acts eroded such firm resolve, with the impact of a wild tsunami.]

Traditional Americans have always been passively mindful of the principal vulnerability of our unique Democratic Republic. The Nation’s significant population of inadequately educated, grievance-inclined populists, its political and social divisiveness, anecdotal acts of religious extremism, and atavistic prejudice have eternally existed, threateningly analogous to a pile of smoldering ashes bearing the empirical potential to ignite a destructive conflagration of the Founder’s radical experiment in humanistic, enlightened polity.

Like the apocryphal infestation of locusts as recited in the Book of Exodus, the past several months have evinced a devastating, pestilential attack by Trump on long-standing citizen rights inscribed in the American Constitution. The classic principles of the fascistic, authoritarian handbook have been applied in such a dystopic degree that we have been unable to refrain from expressing our distress and great alarm.

The present Administration, infamously led by a demonstrably unfit, egoistic, neurotic, chief executive with a record of 34 major felony convictions, outstanding criminal felony indictments, and a demonstrated persona, reflective of an absence of respect for the constitution and the rule of law, has recently outperformed, even himself, in authoritarian, fascistic acts; destructive of our Democratic way of life. This paragon of immodest pathology, as known, tactically selected a Cabinet of perverse but personally acceptable, loyal persona to support his egregious and non-democratic agenda; notably, an Attorney General whose loyalty to the orange, ego-deranged autocrat demonstrably exceeds her legal responsibility to the American people. America’s neurotically-egoistic snake oil salesman has boasted of his (skewed ideation) of having received a “Mandate” from the people, despite the empirical fact that he won by a mere 1.5% of the vote.

Before the “imperial” ascendency of this orange national hazmat, what imaginative individual, in his most pessimistic ruminations, could have conceived of an outlandish American President who would, ruthlessly and despotically effect the occurrence of the following grim travesties against the democratic, constitutionally observant Nation:

• The brutal arrest, torture, head shaving, and lifetime incarceration in the especially fearful prisons of El Salvador, of dozens of Venezuelans without due process, on the irrational, bogus evidence that they bore tattoos and, therefore, ipso facto, were gangland criminals. It is notable to observe that the MAGA loyalist, chosen by Trump, as Secretary of Defense has (White Christian Supremacy) tattoos all over his body. [see: plinyblog # 253 “Tats”]
• The arrest by ICE ( functionally, the Presidential Gestapo), wearing black masks (?), of an innocent female foreign graduate student at Tufts University and her forcible abduction to a jail in Louisiana, based solely upon her written expression of opinion on the war in Gaza.
• Trump’s fascistic retributive pogrom against his political opposition, most relevantly against the dutiful professionals legally appointed to investigate his multiple crimes; and law firms, lawyers and Judges who he envisions to be against his interest.
• His employment of the bizarre assistance of a perverse, billionaire autistic savant to imperil our federal infrastructure by the irrational elimination of functional agencies and departments, as well as their experienced civil servants, thus weakening the operation of our Democratic Republic; the latter program, heartlessly including legislatively created federal programs of assistance to elderly and disabled American citizens. and to needy third-world countries. Most suicidally pathological is the perverse elimination of the Nation’s existentially important medical research agencies, including the NIH and the CDC.
  • Trump’s totalitarian attack on the Nation’s existentially valuable institutions of higher education, Universities, inclusive of educational institutions, such as the revered Smithsonian Institution and Museum and other American landmark institutions of education and enlightenment.
• The autocratic attack on the right to vote by making the exercise of the definitional democratic voting franchise both difficult and politically corruptible.
• The outrageous, Hitler-like declaration of intent to seize other sovereign countries, such as Greenland, Panama, and most bizarrely, our traditional neighbor and close friend, Canada,
• Trump’s declaration of imperial intent to use the American Military Forces to accomplish the above and to enforce his extreme xenophobia regarding immigrants.

In our haste to identify the extant nightmarish danger to our uniquely humanistic and free Nation, we are conscious of the possibility of the omission of other cogent sources of concern for the Nation’s democratic endurance which, in our dismay and concern, we may have impulsively omitted,

However, speaking for ourselves and derivatively, for our Founding Fathers and those many young Americans who have paid the ultimate price in the defense of our Nation and its unique Democratic form of Republic (the latter, referred to by our singular head of State, as “losers,” and suckers,”), we would loudly and angrily broadcast the following message to the MAGA -Trumpists: “FOR SHAME !”

-p.

We’ve been told: the ancient bard,
Could hear the “music of the spheres.”
We have since seen harmony on high,
But astral strains never were heard.
We do hear the music of “our” sphere,
Whose virtuosos perform in nature’s realm.
One has but to attend to hear.

The splash of raindrops on trembling leaves,
The whistled wind-song thru tall dark reeds,
The high pitch scratch of cricket limbs,
The basso profundo of bull frog croaks,
The redundant “coo” of mourning doves,
The baby sounding off for the mom,
The wolf intoning his baritone aria,
The countless chirps of little birds,
The gleeful chatter of sportive chipmunks,
The staccato sound of barking dogs,
The brassy honks of overflying geese,
The lakes soft slosh on muddy banks.

One can, in truth, faintly hear,
If he listens, most meditatively,
The upward thrust of perennial plants,
The final melt of tardy snow,
Spring, is that really you?
Have you just returned?
Welcome, do come in, Spring, my love.
Bienvenue!

-p.

The evolutionary gift to Homo Sapiens of the foundational capacity for interactive communication, enabled the ability to retroactively relate empirical experiences, and proved to be existential to his survival and continuence. Uncountable eons of Man’s continued advancement preceded the miraculous development of distant interactive (“virtual”) communication, enabled by the contemporary miracle of the internet.

Said innate and foundationally systemic predecessor of the modern, internet-facilitated, “virtual” transmission of  interactive thought and provides the cogent theme of this writing. We will elucidate the subject following an autobiographically inspired but contextual note.

We have gratefully attained the remarkable age, appropriately described as “late octogenarian,” arriving in relative good health but, unhappily, in need of a “walker” for ambulation. Notably, we are fortunate to be able to report that our adult life has been fulfilling notably, as husband and father, and contextually, as eternal student, reader, traveler, and regular participant in the rewarding lifetime inclination to inquiry and contemplation.

Despite the loss of the physical ability to walk about unassisted by the slow and plodding employment of a “walker,” we have observed that our frequently thematic, life-long conversation with ourself, referred to in our numerous (1,250) blogs, together with our elective reading and travel have enabled a recollective library of memorable or non-internet (“virtual”) library of contemplative reflection, consistent in their enjoyable reprise. From Socrates and Spinoza to Sigmund Freud, Dickens and Trollope to Faulkner and Roth, from the plays of Euripedes to Arthur Miller, from rafting down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon to the Louisiana Mardi Gras, from Paris, Bruge, and Prague to South Holland’s Keukenhoff Gardens and the Galapagos Islands, from the various Caribbean Islands to Cape Town, South Africa; personally from marriage, children and divorce to happy remarriage, from the days of kindergarten, College and Law School to practice and retirement. These recitations of experience are among the library of reprised “virtual” exercises of our intimate recall.

We often luxuriate in our comfortable easy chair with a plethora of “apps” to recall and virtually experience.

-p.

The case of Swine v Gump, pending in the Village Court of Wistful Vista, had finally reached the trial stage after two years of exchange of pleadings, two contested motions, discovery, and mutual depositions. The hotly contested and publically debated litigation involved the thorny and complex issue of aggravated trespass and theft (“civil conversion”) of property. Despite the heavy rain, the Village Courtroom, presided over by the Hon. Derwood T. Sprout, an elderly, partially retired Judge from the State Superior Court.

A brief summary of the matters at hand is as follows: The contending parties have been feuding neighbors for many years, having ingeniously discovered numerous reasons to maintain their hostile and contentious relationship. However, the presenting case does appear to involve valid litigatable issues between the two adjoining neighbors. It seems that the plaintiff, Elvira T. Swine, and her husband, J. Throckmorton Swine (no children) planted an expensive bing cherry tree, four years ago at the proprietary edge of their property, adjoining a dividing wood fence, the latter, marking the boundary between the Swine and that of Samuel J. Gump and Cornelia “Carrie” Gump (one son, in Wistful Vista High),

The cherry tree had finally bloomed and produced a substantial number of the long-awaited Bing cherries. The problem, however, was that the substantial tree had blossomed and yielded its copious harvest of fruit only on one side, the fruit-bearing half hanging over the Gump side of the proprietary fence. The Swine side of the broadly expanded tree, bizarrely, yielded no fruit, only bare, leafy branches, to the intense consternation of the Swines.

The two unfriendly neighbors had never presumed to enter upon the adjoining real estate of the other, however, Mr. J. Throckmorton Gump, one late afternoon after working hours, witnessed the alleged trespasser and larsonist., Elvira T. Swine (“fat Elly”) standing (“trespassing”) on his private property, picking cherries from the tree. He angrily shook his fist at her and demanded that she leave. Elvira, tactically and provocatively, ignored Gump’s shouted demand and continued to pick the beautiful red cherries, leaving only after she had filled her small, handheld bucket.

Gump angrily retreated to his house and, in a state of stupefying anger, telephoned his lawyer, Arnold Fensterwald, of Gruenwald and Fensterwald, Attorneys at Law, 10 Loudmouth Circle, Wistful Vista. The next morning, Gump, sleepless and irate, related the facts to the law firm’s young associate, Filbert Nutley, recently admitted to the State Bar. The lawsuit in question was initiated and filed in Court later that week, after Gump had reluctantly agreed to the law firm’s outlandish retainer.

The publically celebrated and hotly contested, non-jury trial, lasted one week, during which the parties testified, the depositions and discovery proceedings incorporated into the record, and representatives of the Real Estate Title Company and the local Agricultural Extention had testified as “expert witnesses.” The legal issue was one created by the necessary weighing of the contested equities existing between the sanctity of private land ownership as compared with the rights of the neighboring party who had planted the fruiting tree within his property line; but acted in the context of disappointment that his long-awaited harvest of fruit appeared to grow only on the boughs of the tree, hanging over the neighbor’s property; thus, raising legal issues as to to its access necessitating a legal trespass and, complicated by recondite issues concerning ownership of the hanging fruit.

After the conclusion of party testimony and the eloquent closing arguments of the respective parties, Judge Sprout, as customary, invited the attorneys to his Chambers to explore the possibility of settlement and avoid the difficult necessity to resolve the presenting legal dilemma. In the course of the conference, the Judge and both attorneys noticed in the photographs of both properties, introduced in evidence during the trial, that both tracts of land were equal in dimension and, even more remarkably, that plaintiff Gump’s house and property were identical in size and appearance to that owned by Swine (presumably. both properties having been built by a common developer). Shortly thereafter, the case was settled to the satisfaction of all parties by the mutual exchange of deeds of ownership to their real estate properties. The luscious Bing cherries could, thereafter, be rightfully harvested by the new owner of the tree.

The following Spring, exactly one year to the day after the effectuation of the settlement, Nature intervened by bizarrely causing the cherries to appear exclusively on the other side of the tree, now by the legal settlement, once more, on Gump property; which ironically bizarre event was ultimately, and mercifully resolved by the complete felling of the perverse tree by a resident beaver family.

Mother Nature, possibly wearing gardening gloves and overalls, had, impatiently and finally, adjudicated the tiresome problem.

-p.

The venerated French thinker Montesquieu is known to have made the following observation: “True is it that when a democracy is founded on commerce, private people may acquire vast riches without a corruption of morals. This is because the spirit of commerce is naturally attended with that of frugality, economy, moderation, tranquility, order, and rule. So long as this spirit exists, the riches it produces have no bad effect. The mischief is, where excessive wealth destroys the spirit of commerce, then it is that the inconveniences of inequality begin to be felt.”

In his sonnet, the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelly famously included the following statement on the ephemeral basis of human hubris: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; look on my works, (entirely crumbled into ruins), ye mighty and despair!”

It is our view that the official handbook of mental diseases, the DSL, should be supplemented with the category of relentless manic disease, evinced by the irrational and pathologically driven aspirations of the celebrated billionaire class for even further monetary wealth. In this exotic atmosphere, it might be usefully and empathically recalled that many citizens merely live “from paycheck to paycheck.”

The metaphysically rational and ubiquitious office of “money” is as a medium of exchange, accepted for payment of goods and services. Montesqueieu’s statement, quoted above, that excessive wealth, however, is destructive, corrupting, and productive of feelings of inequality, seems to be empirically valid. As a perceptive guide, research reveals that one billion remarkably, represents one thousand million dollars. We are advised that, unrelated to its ubiquitously utilitarian function as a medium of commercial exchange, the following individuals are reported to own this medium of exchange to an astronomic extent.:Elon Musk, 200 billion dollars; Jeff Bezos, 195 billion dollars; Warren Buffet, 133 billion dollars; and Bill Gates, approximately 106 billion dollars. Such quantities of assets, like a cosmic recitation of “light-years,” are difficult, if not impossible, to easily comprehend; however, it is to be bizarrely noted that these competitive, Ozymandan accumulators of uneeded, astronomical quantities of wealth ardently lobby for superfluous “tax breaks.”
By their neurotic and reductive aspirations, these modern day Ozymandic Pharaohs, blindly and reductively, ignore all societal humanistic values of empathy and unselfish action.

Their unrelenting, mania and singularly horse-blinder dedication to the competitive accumulation of assets, to the exclusion of all other considerations, in our view, is notably pathological.

-p.

In our recent ruminations, we incessantly reprise the painfully empirical questions: What has happened to “America the Beautiful?” to the sacred experiment of the venerated Founders Fathers in their radical creation of a Polity ” By and for the people?” What happened to “One Man, One Vote?,” to the prudent protection against abuse afforded by the wise architecture of “Separation of Powers” with its dynamic “Checks and Balances” ? to “Equality under the Law?”; indeed, to the assurance of the ultimate endurance of the American traditional way of life? The contemplative, mainstream American citizen, cognitively aware of the eternal vulnerability of his Democratic Republic suddenly finds himself in the nightmarish reality of its imminent existential peril.

Donald Trump’s public declaration to be a “Dictator for one day, ” may have been the singular occasion of truthfulness in his innate, characterological serial mendacity, yet it empirically constituted a tactically temporal understatement. His admiration of autocratic tyrants like Putin, Viktor Orban, and Kim Jong Un, was unashamedly proclaimed on countless occasions, as was his empirical contempt for the American Constitution and Rule of Law. Donald Trump’s success in two Presidential elections was essentially founded on the votes of a large and toxic melange of populist voters with systemic grievances and, notably, without adequate education, added to polluting industrialists who pathologically extol profit above human and planetary health together, with the contextual support, monetarily and otherwise of Russia’s Vladamir Putin.

It was the popularized, intimate “bromance” between the neuroticly needy egoist, Donald J. Trump and the cunning Vladimir Putin (the latter, the sworn enemy of the American Nation and the peace-loving Nations of NATO)that had its honeymoon in the present transmogrification of our unique Democratic Republic to its current deplorable condition in which the tenets of democracy and personal liberty are potentially and tragically at risk. To the neurotic delight of our toxic and egoistic Chief of state, the desired acquisition of unlimited power and riches is predictably attainable, by the replication of Putin’s demonstrated authoritarian tyranny. As to these attainments, Donald J. Trump is systemically amenable, in pronounced contrast to his distaste for unregulated, enlightened democracy and liberty.

Trump adhered to Putin’s guidebook for authoritarian rule, by initially eschewing the societally fundamental concept of truthful facts for the more personally favorable. “alternate facts,'” attacked the institutional news media, especially the newspapers, derogated the Constitution, and where relevantly useful, sabotaged the Nation’s system of laws, meddled in its definitional political elections to the extreme point of sponsoring an insurrection against his own government. Like Putin, he has managed to escape appropriate jeopardy for his plethora of criminal acts.

In the quid-pro-quo of the mutual exchange of treasonous turpitude, Trump eagerly succumbed to Putin’s example as an eager student of the political science of his said mentor, by his consistent refutation of the constitutional tri-partite government; and substitution of the Putinesque-style rule by autocratic tyrant with the loyal support of a horde of intimidated, profoundly rich oligarchs.

Trump’s large group of intimidated billionaire oligarchs includes Jeff Bezos and Rudolph Murdoch, resulting in his notable reduction of personal newspaper criticism. The oligarch du jour, however, is the autistic savant, Elon Musk, who, as Trump’s irregular and unconstitutional confederate, in governance,.has taken the wrecking ball to many legislatively established and vitally needed federal agencies and departments, as “wasteful”; without the benefit of a scintilla of relevant factual support, to increase his, autocratic ubiquitous power.

Such a dystopic, bizarre caricature of the American Government, by contrast, does present an accurately rendered portrait of Putin’s corrupt and unprincipled rule. It has no valid context in the humanistic and liberating American scenario and must be eliminated by the informed, citizen-voter, There is no conceivable plot of real estate in democratic Washington for the perverse establishment of an ersatz Kremlin.

-p.

The soil curates small slips of man
His life, his work, his resume
Some petit detritus of his life
A library of tales again retold.

No need to search with system code
Items are best secured by chance
With lucky use of spade and rake
Close searched where man did live and die.

A rusty nail, a piece of tool
Both witnesses to man’s resolve,
To raise a shelter for repose.
A fragment of a printed page,
Reveals a ken that there’s yet more.
Old cans and jars and rusty spoons,
Betoken victory over want
And man’s resolve to live out life.

The grassy fields are seen as doors,
Enclosing bits of lives past lived-
Far better than the research “App,”
With cold results in digit code!

-p. ( Leonard N. Shapiro, August, 2016)

It would appear that the medieval magic wand of Merlin has transmogrified, over the ages to to a modern form, the black velvet-tipped “Sharpie,” now wielded by an Orange Sorcerer, aided by his Apprentices, a/k/a: “The Muskrats.” This modern iteration of the medieval Magic Wand in the hands of the contemporary Sorcerer, evinces power, far beyond that demonstrated in the days of King Arthur.In the hands of this evil Sorcerer, under the surreptitious claim of “eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse,” has wreaked such a degree of evil that mere contemplation and obligatory acceptance are as analogously difficult as swallowing bite-size stones. Such arbitrary and reductive evil practiced by the Sorcerer and his Apprentices is egregious and devastating, both, procedurally and substantive. It may be useful to examine both categories.

[Procedural irregularity]: The creation and alteration of governmental departments are the legally designated office of the elected legislature, i.e., Congress. The prudent and pragmatic procedure involves the conduct of an investigation regarding the \ function of the proposed, or existing, department, followed by a hearing (often public) and a conclusive determination by the designated Committee. The results are thereafter reported back to the Legislature for appropriate action.

No such orderly and legal prerequisite has been observed by the evil Sorcerer; only the quick, regally assertive action of his magic wand, viz., the black, velvet-tipped “Sharpie.” Observably, this demonstration of the purely arbitrary power of the orange Sorcerer is as egregiously irregular as it is societally devastating (as will be shown). The uninformed, ignorant, reductive exercise of sophomoric impulse, by the egoistic Sorcerer with the egotistical flourish of the omnipotent wand has had empirically devastating societal results.

[Substantive harm] The uninformed, arbitrary elimination of key governmental departments by such neurotically assertive flourish of the magic wand, has, in addition to the irresponsible and hurtful discharge of countless dedicated federal civil servants, resulted in the serious handicapping of the proper functioning of the Nation. Such previously existing utilitarian] entities had been needfully established and had been engaged in the traditional performance of vitally necessary governmental functions and humanistic services; including the furnishing of food, and medical assistance where desperately needed, domestically and internationally.. The latter, in addition to its empathic purpose, has the significant, additional office, internationally, of, what is termed, “soft diplomacy.

The baselessly cruel and insensitive elimination of USAID, which had been furnishing desperately needed food and medicine to needy third world countries, the elimination of the Department of Education, the FAA, the health research facilities of the NIH, plus, the foolhardy and hazardous elimination of NOA, the EPA, and other existentially vital agencies; in addition to the financial handicapping of necessary agencies such as Transportation, the IRA, the IRS, Small Business administration, HUD, Department of the Interior, and sadly and worrisomely, countless more.

The populist meme, “Make America Great Again,” (MAGA) is easily seen as tactically deceitful and propagandic (analogously deceitful as the empirically discredited “Right to Life” misnomer). The greatest and most valuable resource of a Nation is its people. The elimination of resources impacting citizen education and development, health, safety, and welfare (most egregiously in the arbitrary and egotistical desire to demonstrably wield power) is a toxic impediment to America’s true “Greatness,” and a metastatic danger to its endurance.

-p.

In these dispiriting times where observable personal interest overrides aspirational considerations of responsibility and humanistic empathy, we have elected to reprise our views on the metaphysical source of interpersonal virtue and plain old goodness. We find ourselves besieged with news and observed experiences of self-interest, and lack of personal empathy for the feelings and well-being of others; notably exemplified by the media’s quotidian demonstration of the disgraceful behavior of our political representatives.

The metaphysical origins and lifelong curation of humanistically moral behavior are tied to our life experience and our accumulated development of a self-image. It has been our understanding that one’s self-image, ultimately, is the resultant product of our societal interactions and accumulated reactions to our perception of, and by others. The nuanced self-image, so developed, is our referential guide to our behavior.

Sophomorically construed, ineffective programs of rewards and punishment programs are haplessly practiced in raising children and, at relevant times, in a futile attempt to encourage perceived moral rectitude in contemporaries. As will be further elucidated below, positive moral choices, to be meaningful, must, appropriately be founded upon an intrinsic, inner direction. Actions motivated by reward, or refrained from, for fear of punishment, whether earthly or “heavenly,” can be morally evaluated as behavioral quid-pro-quo; performed with a self-interested motivation; and, accordingly, not qualified to be seen as performed on moral principle. Moral action based upon anticipated reward is tactical, not morally mandated; antisocial acts, refrained from execution, solely in fear of punishment, are self-interested and prudent, but not based upon moral principle. Only inner-directed moral choices merit valid humanistic kudos. We will elucidate by a previously written, hypothetical example.

If I were foolish and selfish enough, in a rare moment of confused intention, to steal the reader’s wallet; then, the following day, ruefully return the wallet with apologies such as “Please forgive me, I do not know what possessed me, I may be the recipient of your charitable response, “Dont worry, we will forget all about it.” However, I am not able to recollectively forget it. thinking, analytically, “What kind of person am I, to have stolen the wallet in the first place?” The valid source and appropriate dynamics of our sense of morality are our developed and referable self-image and not the consideration of external consequences.

It is our confident declaration that the plethora of exhibited miscreant behavior on the part of individuals, notably, those in politics, is based on the insalubrious absence of a maturely developed, humanistic self-image. It is only, (if ever,) that Mankind universally develops such a referable moral self-image, that he will be enabled to eschew repugnant inclinations and behavior, such as are daily demonstrated, by the Trump-MAGA adherents.

=p.

The Trump Administration recently announced the arrest and summary deportation of hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants, apparently based upon unproven allegations of criminality, under the guise of the “Alien Enemies Act” of 1789. It is, however, indisputable that the archaic Statute is relevant solely in times of war and respecting the Nation’s enemies.

The extrajudicial, and unconstitutional event was shockingly redolent of the Hitler regime in the 1930s, in that it was conducted in an arbitrary, fascistic manner, employing Gestapo-style, strong-arm tactics and without due process. The Venezuelan immigrants were arrested, manhandled, handcuffed, shackled, and head-shaved, without the benefit of the usual and appropriate procedure of, legally stated, valid charges, indictment, right of attorney, and a fair trial by an impartial jury, as mandated by our Nation’s criminal law strictures, and with the initial assumption of “innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Such autocratic, fascistic, and shockingly Kafka-like action of the Trump Administration and its ersatz “Storm Troopers,” ICE, set off a tectonic shock to mainstream American citizens, traditionally imbued with the governmental procedures of due process under the law; Constitutional and Statutory Law. Instead of the mandatory application of the Nation’s equitable criminal procedure, the reductive determination of prima facie guilt was summarily concluded by the ubiquitous presence of tattoos on the arrested individuals. Notably, and, perhaps, relevantly, the only empirically identifiable tattoos are those burnt into the arms of those we have encountered who are the singular survivors of the Jewish death camps in Europe during the Second World War.

In addition to the absence of any rational determination of guilt, the abhorrent procedure was shockingly and distastefully redolent of the arrest of German Jews by the Gestapo in 1930’s Germany, easily identified by their mandatory wearing of a sewn “Star of David” on their outside apparel; and the determined and painful cry, of the survivors, “Never Again!” Such a Gestapo atmosphere has no acceptable place in our Democratic Republic, albeit the election of an egoistic, amoral, self-described “Dictator For One Day.”

Two slim but welcome rays of hope dispelled the dark hopelessness of the event. The first was the judicial grant of an injunction against this atavistic evil procedure by a responsible and dedicated Federal Judge, and the second was the notable relief experienced when Chief Justice Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Administration’s absurdly autocratic-based application to sanction (“impeach”) the dedicated jurist who granted the injunction.

We cannot refrain from noting the telling fact that the Presidential Cabinet’s new Secretary of Defense, irrespective of his known toxic alcoholism, sexual abuse and lack of experience was, nonetheless, selected by Donald Trump to oversee the ubiquitous and vital operations of the Pentagon, the Army, the Navy, Airforce, Marines and other existentially significant Federal and State services, has publically revealed numerous emphatically expressed, large body tattoos, emblematic of his adamant support of White, Christian Militias, the latter inarguably constituting an ongoing serious threat to our Democracy.

-p.