Month: October 2025

Tonight, the evening of October 31st, will signify the observance of the ancient holiday of “Halloween.” As a historical note, the annual event traditionally celebrates the lives of all of the designated Saints (“All Hallow’s Day”) and reliably features celebrants ubiquitously decked out in holiday costumes and children going door to door asking for candy (“trick or treat”).

(N.B.) This year, based on the Nation’s unprecedented, singularly bizarre events (manifested by the egregious Trump Administration), it is requested that, if possible, the reading of this mini-essay be effectively accompanied by a vocal or mental intonation of Mussorgorsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain.”

It is fortuitous that the protagonist of this year’s celebrated holiday of horrors is appropriately manifested, evidencing orange-colored hair and wielding, as his evil sceptre, a black velvet “sharpie. Tonight’s event will ineluctably feature the the President’s bizarre, menagerie, ” of selected ” yes-men (and”yes-women”), loyally incanting the unverifiable alternate-facts of their puppet master’s reductive and unsupporte declarations.

There will reliably be unprecedented (and unauthorized) fireworks, far exceeding all past holiday celebrations, in the spectacular and deadly bellicose bombing of foreign naval vessels on the high seas, holiday-appropriate property damage in the form of the barbaric and unauthorized destruction of the East Wing of the Nation’s venerable White House, masked holiday revelers in military uniforms, in joyous holiday pursuit of peaceful Hispanic citizens, hearty congratulations of MAGA respecting the jubilent holiday event of the long-awaited denial to the needy non-celebrants (domestic and foreign) of “gratuitious” relief in the form of food and medicine.

The witch’s broom, previously employed by our orange holiday protagonist, has been replaced with a more suitable, ego-appropriate multi-million Jumbo Jet (tactically) donated by a Middle Eastern Autocrat. With the future construction of the orange multi-million dollar ballroom, replacing the savaged East Wing of the White House, all will be a it should be.

What a truly magnificent MAGA Holiday Celebration!!

-p.

“

We have elected to take a short “breather” from the upsetting subject of Donald Trump’s outrageous extralegal actions such as unitarily directing the bombing of ships at high sea, his Godzilla-like destruction of the Nation’s White House, his autocratic creation of a masked “Palace Army” to intimidate and arrest peaceful Hispanic Americans, illegally enriching himself by his illegal acceptance of huge international and domestic bribes, his autocratic prosecution of political opponents, and his ubiquitous denigration of the Constitution and the American rule of law. Our expression of citizen outrage can barely be contained, despite the sincerity of the above declaration of intention to avoid such a disturbing subject.

Notwithstanding said initial dissonant remarks, the theme and purpose of this writing are specifically intended to address and appropriately rehabilitate certain prominently misused terms, relative to the subject of racial inequality. It is our thematic intention to clarify and rehabilitate these terms by furnishing their accurate context and appropriate use. The moral and societal justification for these ubiquitously misused expressions, as understood in their proper context, is, nevertheless, dependent upon the reader’s objective recognition of past American history, in sync with the conceptual intention of the particular, thematic terminology.

An instructive example of the phenomenon of tactical misuse of words is evident in the populist accusation of the reductive epithet of “Socialism.” Despite the willing acceptance of governmentally humanistic programs such as Social Security and disability programs, unemployment insurance, and the various humanistic programs of citizen assistance, the populist propagandist dissonantly chooses to condemn all empathic government programs as the dreaded “Socialism.” In contrast to the reductively ignorant epithet of “Socialism,” or “Socialist,” the term has an appropriate reference to a political system in which the government is the owner and proprietor of all national business enterprises. One would have an insurmountable difficulty in locating many American citizens who would ascribe to such a political-economic system.

We find it impossible to conceive of a more egregiously offensive example of cognitive dissonance than the societally accepted program of deprivation of the natural right to life of kidnapped human beings, with the simultaneous delusion of virtue and morality of freedom-loving. church-going morality. Yet as late as 1857, the assigned status of “Slave” as mere farm equipment was judicially confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court (J. Taney, Dred Scott case).

History (and current events) demonstrate that even the Reconstruction Amendments and much subsequent ameliorative legislation have proved to be insufficient to propel the nation’s population of African Americans to full equality.. Sadly, un-American proclivities seem to stubbornly endure..

Two illustrative instances of populistic transmogrification and misuse of objectively acceptable terms, relating to the goal of amelioration of racial prejudice, are seen in the tactical and reductive perversion of the terms “woke” and “DEI” to words that signify governmental repression.

In the pursuit of the Democratic Republic’s avowal of citizen equality, certain aspirational standards and related vocabulary have evolved to measure and ensure the attainment of such salubrious goals. We are desirous of expressing the intrinsic value and moral justice of the two most-heard statements tactically deprecated and employed by bigoted populism.

“WOKE”

The relative difficulty, in general, of black Americans to obtain financing, employment, home ownership, admission to country clubs, and the like, as compared with white Americans, is factually undeniable. The universal awareness of this societally skewed “White Privilege” is empirically observable and is referenced by the slang word “Woke,” meaning aware, or awakened to such inequity..

Notwithstanding the thematic misuse by the bigoted underbelly of the slang term as an epithet, purposely meaning ardently leftist, politically correct, and dogmatically liberal. Such propagandistic misuse of the true intention of such salutory word for “socially aware” has been anecdotally epitomized by the MAGA-inspired, bigoted Governor of Florida, who has proudly declared, “Woke comes to this State of Florida, to die.” Said tactically misinterpreted epithet has been ubiquitously employed by racists in reference to “woke military.” “woke ideology,” ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

“DEI”:

This acronym stands for the societally salubrious elements of ” Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” aimed at creating a welcoming environment for individuals, regardless of the nuance of their backgrounds. Despite the evident virtue and salubrious context of this expressed aspiration, the acronym “DEI” has been perversely and negatively utilized to envision a governmental program of intrusive attack on individual American liberty. and freedom of choice. This bizarre perversion of a clearly stated societal goal has irrationally and tactically been utilized as an intrusive impediment to the achievement of racial justice.

It appears that the level of ignorance requisit the reductive judgment of other American citizens by the degree of melanin in their skin is haplessly in sync with the lack of ability to independently and rationally evaluate matters of plain human justice.

-p.

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Not since the era of the classical Greek God Zeus has the world seen a more terrifying, arbitrary, and delusional sovereign than the orange Deity currently established at the Oval Office in Washington, D.C. His egocentric assertion of authoritative omnipotence definitively knows no mortal boundaries nor principled restraint. Said delusional egocentric, it now appears, was, in fact, deadly serious when he declared to a campaign audience. ” I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.”

Inspired by his reductive ignorance, multi-dumpsters-full aggregaiions of detritus of his aberrant behavior, notably unimpeded by the Nation’s Constitution, its Rule of Law, nor agreed concept of moral compass, the Orange Diety has arrogated to himself the ultimate franchise to do whatever his hubristically divine delusions may desire; Gods are omniscient and omnipresent; perhaps, it is conceivable that sucg devine entitlement extends as far as those whose Deities whose divine indulgences do not exceed the aesthetics of McDonald’s Hamburgers and M&Ms confectionary.

On the domestic scene, added to his publicaly declared boast of his singular authority to shoot people on Fifth Avenue, and get away with it,” “grab women by the ….”, he has a penchant for surrounding himself with shiny 14 carot gold bathrooms and gilded offices, illegally accepting huge gifts from self-interested corporate entities, retail marketing sundry consumer items from the White House, such as sneakers, cologne and vodka, while falsely skewing elections (to the pernicious degree of the incitement of violent insurrection), creation of an intimidating, masked, Gestapo-like private palace Army to wreak holocaust-style misery on upstanding Hispanic residents, illegally and fascisticly utilizing the military for private, non-military, purposes, unashamed pardoning of right-wing criminal members of anti-American militias, and magnificently enriching himself and family in exchange for favoritism to generous, miscreant donors.

Internationally, our thematic contemporary version of the Greek God, Zeus. in addition to his demonstrably arbitrary and self-indulgent rule, unilaterally and dramatically undertook to declare a State of War by his unauthorized, unilateral bombing of foreign-owned ocean-going vessels at high seas, discarding the Nation’s Environmental Treaties, brazenly declaring his intention to seize sovereign nations such as Canada and Greenland, rename the Nation’s southern Gulf, claim the treaty-established Panama Canal, extort Ukraine whose need for military supplies for defense against the invasioin of Putin’s Russia, his cruel elimination of programs of assistance providing existentially needed food and medecine to needy nations, his unprincipled acceptance of tactically donated gifts from foreign countries, including, remarkably and unashamerdly. a multi-million dollar Jumbo Jet.

Trump’s illusion of ersatz Zeus-like authority was recently inarguably demonstrated by his irresponsible and shocking, obscene, and illegal, Godzilla-style smashing down of the East Wing of the Nation’s White House to construct for himself a perceived Valhalla, as personally deemed appropriate to established religious deities

As an empirical result, to our everlasting chagrin, the prudent American principle of “Separation of Church and State” has, for the present, effectively and atavistically become an anachronism; the hapless elevation of the Orange Deity has resulted in the asserted unity of State and the Church.

However, we remain confident that the Nation’s succeeding President will preside, properly from the American (Constitutional) White House and not from some construed, delusional Orange-erzatz Zeus Olympus.

-p,

We recently sought the service of a Barber; this time in Kingston, New York. When our turn came, we carefully rose to our feet and, with the aid of our (now mandatory) walker, proceeded to the indicated Barber Chair. After exchanging pleasantries with the barber, we artfully performed our recently developed Cirque du Soleil-style maneuver from the walker and successfully sat, facing the usual large mirror. As usual, we gazed at our reflected face in the large mirror and sighed with a combination of nostalgia but also thankfulness at the reflected gray, aged, albeit still functional senior citizen. The image in the mirror appeared to be looking back in a measure of sardonic recognition, enjoying the rare opportunity for a “time-out” from the contemporary challenging vicissitudes.

On this occasion, we somehow found ourselves again ruminating on the respective political and societal challenges, variously occurring in tandem with the conduct of our haircut and the like state of our respective past self-examinations with the aid of the ubiquitously existing barbershop mirrors. Over the course of a lifetime of monthly haircuts, our respective thoughts and concerns have varied in sync with our awareness and comprehension of contemporary problems.

During the period of our early Brooklyn childhood, our haircuts were cutomarily performed by an Italian Barber who played Operatic Music in his shop and was a gentle and paternal elder citizen with a large white mustache. Even as a child, I his learned to love the Italian Opera as well as the pungency of his Bay Rum. The barbershop mirror reflected back the challenging concerns of World War II. somewhat attenuated by the lollypop customarily awarded to all child customers.

Barbershop mirrors viewed during haircuts in the 1950s reflected the fascistic, un-American activities of the Joseph McCarthy era, in which paranoid and unsupported accusations of affiliation with the Communist Party eventuated in a National program analogous to the medieval inquisitions, which tragically caused the destruction of many careers and lives of innocent citizens. This mirror took years to clear up, but not before the imposition of unjust suffering and reputational loss of innocent American citizens. The Nation, to its enduring credit, survived the evilly inspired Senator Joseph McCarthy and his legions of paranoid inquisitors.

Our barbershop’s mirrored image during the 20 years of the Nationally divisive Vietnam War was one of National roiling discord. The Nation was rocked with rebellion, discord, criminal behavior, and came close to being completely torn apart. The Nation survived, and our mirrored image returned to normal.

On September 11, 1920, the face in the barbershop mirror reflected shock and concern regarding the surprising attack and horrific loss of life and immense damage to the World Trade Center, which was a definitive demonstration of our vulnerability. It took considerable time before our image in a barbershop mirror was inclined to reflect our restored calm and assured confidence.

Our recent exposure to the barbershop mirror, above, in addition to its unremmiting candor regarding the advance of our age, worrisomely reflected extreme concern regarding the great danger to the existential existence of the American Democratic government under the Presidency of Donald J. Trump, the latter motivated by his declaration of intention to be a dictator, his hubristic disregard for the American Constitution and Rule of law, his fascist program of  “retribution” against his political opposition, his programmatic Gestapo-style attack on innocent Hispanic Citizens, his treasonous actions, including the purloining of top secret government documents, his bromance with Putin, his arrogation of the right to make war, his cruel deprivation og programs of assistance, viz., food, and medicine, both nationally and internationally, his unauthorized and sophomoric imposition of tariffs, inclusive of America’s trading partners, his unauthorized delusional chutzpah in the destruction of the East Wing of America’s Historic White House and his perverse support of the fossil fuel industry to “drill, baby drill,” his illegal and un-American use of the military for domestic purposes and as a public demostration of his delusional power.

It is our confident aspiration and expectation that in the very near future, the mirrors in the barber shops from which we dutifully request services will reflect a happier and historically appropriate, traditional image.

-p.

Our regular readers are undoubtedly familiar with our eternal penchant for the selection of words that singularly express the writer’s precise intention. We must sadly admit that, in the context of Donald Trump’s violent assertion of “chutzpa” or arrogant hubris, churlishly, illegally, and without appropriate authorization, asserting his neurotic perception of singular authority to devastate the White House, we were frustratingly unable to discern an appropriately judgmental expression. Adjectives such as “inappropriate,” “ignorant,” “tasteless,” “philistine,””hubristic,” ” impulsive,” “incomprehensible,” “atrocious,” irresponsible,” seem to be morally and dynamically insufficient to describe the distintitive nature of Trump’s uniquely pathological act; the closest we were able to arrive at an appropriately suitable word was word was “Rape;” with the admission that “inappropriate,” is far from satisfyingly descriptive of the primative act nof carnal rape.

We might consider the outrageous act of Trump’s unauthorized, assertive, and presumptuously hubristic act as an unintended public confession of his chronic, singular mental detachment from empirical reality.

The White House’s history (notably, outside the limited conception of Donald J. Trump) began in 1792, when the site was selected by George Washington. Following the completion of construction in the year 1800, John Adams was the first American President to live there. The venerated building was burned by the British in the Summer of 1872, later rebuilt and expanded under the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, who moved the offices to the West Wing. Harry Truman rebuilt certain structural weaknesses (1948- 1952). The White House has famously been the official residence and workplace for the entirety of the American Presidency.

For more than 200 years, the White House has stood as a symbol of the Presidency, Government, and the American People, and is officially (“legally”) owned by the National Park Service. Trump’s delusional hubris and act of incomparable shame, in devastating the east wing of the People’s house is revelatory of his innate perverse persona and reflects a singular mentality, as stated above, is selfishly primitive and horrific that we are unable to find a sufficiently critical adjective in the American-English lexicon.

-p.

We would be remiss in our attempts to portray the ubiquitous categories of multi-dumpster- full loads of foetid detritus accumulated by the present Trump Administration, should we choose to omit his hubristic and philistine damage to the Nation’s historically revered White House, notably consonant with his egocentric and reductively ignorant persona. To pictorially signify his monomanically skewed mindset and behavior, we would choose to exploit the popular phrase, “like a bull in a china shop.” The disastrous multitude of resultant irreparable porcelain shards symbolizes his reductively neurotic misperception of empirical reality, akin in empirical capability to the Emperor in the fable, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” In a notable exacerbation of the analogically skewed perception of the fabled Emperor, our orange-haired protagonist has, to his eternal credit, additionally merited t and rarefied status of demonstrable cognitive dissonance,

It is to be contextually recalled that Donald Trump, with the aid of his rich, impish idiot-savant, Elon Musk, saw to the negatively impactful firing of thousands of vitally utilitarian federal civil service employees, with the publicly proffered goal of the elimination of expensive “waste and abuse” from government (“DOGE”). This disastrous “economizing” policy included vitally needed air traffic controllers and public health research and policy agencies such as the NIH and the CDC. Trump’s deceitful policy boasted the accomplishment of a reduction in National expenses. However, such programs, in addition to their disastrous elimination of the jobs of federal specialized career employees, predictably resulted in tragic impact on their families, and the adverse dynamic effect of their discharge from duties, vital to the needs and dynamic operation of government.

Pursuant to Trump’s purported statement of concern relative to the National economy, he eliminated ubiquitous programs of humanistic domestic support, such as “SNAP,” school lunch programs for the children of the Nation’s poor, as well as the assistance of life-supporting programs of food and medicine to needy Nations. These are the acts of the Nation’s egregiously self-delusional and hubristic sitting President, who, despite neurotically utilizing gold toilets and ignoring the restraints of the Constitution’s “Emoluments Clause” to outrageously inflate his private wealth, has deceitfully, in the purported interest of avoiding governmental “fraud” and financial abuse, operated as a wrecking ball to demolish the Nation’s infrastructural dynamics.

It is ineluctably obvious that the incompetent, reductive, and deceitful Chief Executive, in truth, cares little about his deceitful statements of pragmatic economy in his hubristic efforts to bypass the historical norms of an American Chief Executive and assert his overblown assumptions of personally nuanced entitlement to limitless power..

The most telling and egregious evidence of his tactical deception and empirical display of cognitive dissonance by his philistine and oblivious crudeness in his inconsonant program and unauthorized alterations the “People’s” White House. In an obnoxious and hubristically insensitive manner, he has chosen to pave over the historically famous White House Garden and affix gold leaf to the Oval Office and elsewhere in the Nation’s most treasured monument. The self-aggrandizing addition of gold to the venerated institution happens to be notably inconsistent with the American Nation’s historically systemic rejection of the Monarchial Palaces, endemic to European Monarchy. The uncalled-for expense constitutes an inarguably obvious example of Trump’s cognitive dissonance. Most revealing of his uncooth and egocentric persona is revealed in his colossal ignorance by his failure to consult the official landmark agency, historically charged with the preservation and curation of the Nation’s premier symbol.

otwithstanding, tthe above recitation, the most telling example of Donald Trump’s gross deceit and egocentric ignorance is demonstrated by his churlishly obscene program to, without authorization, (materially) alter the historic landmark configuration of the White House (in addition to his act of insensitively paving of the historically hallowed, White House Rose Garden and the boorishly egocengtric and inappropriate installation of gold), his present unauthorized, egocentric project to destroy the extant East wing and construct a narcissistically acceptable ballroom. The same, notably entailing the expenditure of hundreds of millions of unnecessary dollars, irrefutably gives the lie to Trump’s public rationale for the tragic discharge of thousands of federal employees and his termination of vital National agencies on the purported grounds of financial prudence.

In a shameless, ubiquitous manner. Donald J. Trump s outrageous behavior has far exceeded the critical adage, “A bull in a china shop..” In empirical fact, Donald J. Trump carries an unlimited multitude of broken china shards with him wherever he goes.

-p.

As universally known, the U.S. Supreme Court (“SCOTUS”) is the highest in the federal judiciary. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal cases, as well as State Court cases which involve constitutional issues or Federal law.

Until recently, the venerable High Court was, creditably seen as an avatar of justice, interpreter of the Law and the Constitution, and the ultimate source of American Justice. With few exceptions, its judicial rulings shored up the legal context of the Nation, as intentionally authored by the Founders, and were a consistent guardian of the rights of its citizens. The Court’s high revered Justices included John Marshall, Oliver Wendal Holmes, William Brennan, Benjamin Cardozo, Earl Warren, Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and William Douglas. Where there anecdotally existed an ambiguity or inconsistency in the law, as between States, in the lower courts, or esoteric issues concerning appellants and institutions, such legal dilemmas were resolved and morphed into National legal precedent.

The wise, precedential decisions of SCOTUS were espoecially revered by us as idealistic law students, and, in our subsequent fifty-year- long, professional practice, they served, when relevant, as an ultimate guide. Many of the justices, in addition to their juridical acumen, were gifted enough to express their legal opinions in admirably aesthetic language, adding to the recognition of the Court’s erudition and our profound respect. It is our view that the written opinions of Justice Benjamin Cardozo, were authored in a style reminiscent of the great English novelists; this feature seemed to add significant persuasive impact to his brilliant judicial decisions.

By precedential law, an appellant desirous of having his case reviewed (and hopefully, overturned, or modified), as a mandatory prerequisite, had to file an application (motio denominated as a “Writ of Certiorari,” successfully demonstrating that no “political” issue, direct or indirect, was involved in the case. The intention of this salutary procedure was to avoid a violation of the “Separation of Powers.” The exclusion of politics ensured the objectivity of the Justices’ decisions, and with rare exception, SCOTUS was universally revered as the ultimate guardian of citizens’ rights and an existental keystone of our sadly Constitutional Democracy.

The year 2000, sadly, brought with it a democratically undesirable change; a gravely impactful transmogrification of SCOTUS, sadly evidenced by the acceptance and consideration of the inarguably, “political” case of Gore v. Bush. As an empirical concomitant, the precedentially appropriate objectivity of the High Court was suddenly and unexplainably transmogrified to an institution, inappropriately vulnerable, to the influence of outside interests.

Approximately a decade thereafter, the High Court unexplainably chose to exacerbate the democratic problem of money influence in government, by its aberrant ruling (Citizens’ United Taxpayer case) which tragically eschewed all previous,. salutary considerations of non-politically influenced jurisprudence by its elimination of statutory limits on campaign contribution. The effect on the individual voter was tautologically undemocratic, and, revealingly, the ludicrous written opinion was evident proof of its un-judicial, pro-large corporation intent. The exoticly strained rational, bizarrely recited, that since corporations are legally treated as “people,” any limitation on their campaign contributions would be a violation of “freedom of speech.”

Such a surprisingly ludicrous rationale would be (comically) rejected by any first-year law student and doubtless. most corporate businessmen. The fictional status of corporations as “persons” is a universally recognized “legal fiction” for the protection of a proprietor of (an incorporated) business from personal financial liability ande thereby encourage new business enterprise. No humanistic”personhood” was ever intended by this universal law. In fact the legal fiction of corporate “person” was first legislated in the Statutes of Elizabetrh, in an era when a debtor in England was subject to incarceration.

It has been frustratingly painful to observe the moral and professiional decline of impartial objectivity by the Court’s unprincipled four Justice, right-wing majority of the extant Supreme Court. It is our v iew that their venerable predecessors would be incredulously astonoshedv at the unprecedented decline of judicial morality and fiduciary responsiblity of the Court, exemplified by the four conservative Justices; Justice Samuel Alito has [publicaly shown himself to be partial to the religious lobby and a devotee of the White e Christian Malitias (viz,. flying militia style flag, unfaillingly rendering decisions in accordance with the interest of the Nation’s religious lobby. and Justice Clarence Thomas admission of being the tecipient of lavish gifts and vacations from rich conservative donors. The revealed level of the determinative right-wing majority is disappointingly incompatible with the vaunted history of SCOTUS up to twenty five years ago

It is the myriad acts of preferential dispositions, granted by such corrupt Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, that enables the cancer and morally bankrupt metastasis of the Trump-MAGA pandemic, ( viz., I.C.E., National Guard, Tariffs, etc.) amply delineated in prior writings, and, frustratingly leading to the impressive patrriotic participation of seven million American citizens at the “No Kings” demonstrations thoughout the Nation.

It is passing strange, to observe the lower Federal Courts, reliably ruling in accordance with the tenets of the U.S, Constitution and Rule of Law, while, bizarrely. America’s Highest Court, remains shamefully and unptrecedently ensnared in such a disappointing moral morass. Perhaps the dubious decisions of this aberrational iteration of SCOTUS should, in the salubrious interest of our precious but vulnerable, Democratic Republic, be usefully appealable to the lower Federal Courts.

-p.

”

Since the 19th Century, the Nation’s politics have been dominated by two competing major parties. The earliest were Alexander Hamilton’s “Federalist Party” and Thomas Jefferson’s “Democratic Republican Party.” The modern iteration of the traditional two-party system is seen in the competing “Democratic “and “Republican” parties. To hazard a generalized description of the fundamental differences between the two, we would identify the Democratic Party as traditionally favoring large government to ensure social welfare and citizen equality. By contrast, the Republican Party has favored smaller government, with a major emphasis on personal responsibility and free trade.

The Founders’ (optimistic) expectation was that the issues of the day would be dutifully debated by informed citizens, and that the result of such debates would inform the government, designated to be “by and for” the “People.” In empirical reality, differences in opinion led to rancor and divisiveness. Individuals would form groups of like opinion (“groupthink”), which were in a “Cold War” with other groups maintaining disparate views. The notably contested and divisive issues, more recently, have related to the Vietnam War, gun control, abortion rights, and immigration. In contrast to the Pollyannaish predictions of the venerable Founders of the salutary practice of responsible citizen debate, controversial issues led to hostility and social divisiveness. The notably contesrted and socially divisive issues, more recently, have been related to the Viet Nam War, gun control, abortioin rights and immigration.

The disastrous ascent of Donald J. Trump to the Oval Office served as a notable catalyst for the divisiveness and hostility between citizens of disparate opinions. Such toxic divisiveness was strategically encouraged and tactically promoted by Trump in aid of his perniciously declared intention to be a dictator. Trump took measures to further divide the Nation by the propagation of policies of ideational conspiracies, by maligning selected classes of citizens, and denigrating the institutional foundations of our nation’s democracy, including the Constitution and Rule of Law, its institutional media, its institutions of higher education, its utilitarian civil service, and its policies of humanistic empathy, domestic and international. Such malign actions were undertaken to the delight of the ignorant, grievance-ridden, reductive populists who helped him get elected.

Mainstream American citizens were systemically shocked and revolted at the dystopic, un-American policies of Donald Trump and entertained feelings of profound dismay and disbelief that so many American citizens appeared to support such a President whose empirical incapability was equal in degree to his demonstrated lack of moral compass and serial mendacity..

In earlier writings, we have recounted the multi-dumpster-full plethora of Trump’s egotistically driven, multitudinous misdemeanors, and presume that their present replication would be superfluous.

Incomprehensibly, the large, diverse Republican- MAGA population remained loyal and compliant despite Trump’s unprecedented miscreant and retrograde policy of destruction of the Democratic Republic, in service to his hubristic pursuit of autocratic rule. Especially bewildering was the irresponsible silence and apparent submissiveness of the entire Republican Congress. The singular objecting party in America’s traditional “two-party system” was limited to one party, the Democrats.

Donald Trump’s hubristic acts of neo-authoritarianism soon metastasized to the toxic degree of assembling a Gestapo-like private militia of masked and military-style dressed goons. charged with the nefarious duty of arresting, incarcerating, and banishing to foreign torture prisons, peaceful. productive, tax-paying, and military-serving Hispanic Americans, absent due process, founded upon the evidence consisting of their tan colored skin and use of Spanish. The silent acquiescence of the Republican Congress was deafening and inarguably articulated its demise, and the effective end of the Nation’s traditional two-party rule.

Trump, unfettered by law or reason, went on to enact, by his magic felt-tip pen, all manner of governmental policies. legal and illegal, unauthorized by Law and the Constitution, declaring war against Venezuela, Iran, and ubiquitously performing official acts constitutionally designated to Congress, including the misguided imposition of high tariffs on foreign trade, inclusive of our intimate trading partners, notably, without comment from the members of the theoretical existence of the Republican Congress or deterrance from the no longer, impartial, SCOTUS.

In our experience, all extreme actions, however temporarily successful, have an empirical limit, whether physical or doctrinal. Donald J Trump, swollen with delusional pride at his earlier autocratic successes, went completely beyond the pale in hubristically and illegally (“Posse Comitatus”) calling up the military (National Guard) to police selected (Democratic leaning, significantly, black citizen-populated) cities. This horrendous act of monarchial excess appears to have been the limit of citizen tolerance. even of most MAGA sycophants. The outlandishly un-American style of governance ultimately transmogrified the traditional two-party system to a new and impactful duality, that of pro-democracy and pro-authoritarianism.

Huge “NO KING” demonstrations of millions of Americans (Republicans and Democrats, as a temporal “duality,” are set to take place today, in National protest to the obscene and hubristicd autocratic presumption of the orange, “would-be dictator’ who in his “Caesar-like” dreams of unlimited power, has recently presumed to majestically use the nation’s military as his personal “Palace Army.” The coming elections will not feature the traditional contest between the Democratic Party program versus that of the Republican, but uniquely, American democracy versus atavistic tyranny.

The anticipated expression of American citizen concord, articulated by the “NO KING’S” demonstration, is emotionally and factually resonant with our profound memory of united, joyful Americans celebrating the victory over the Axis Powers, following the Second World War.

-p.

It is our unsettling view that the the toxic impact of Donald Trump’s Orwellian Presidency has potential sequelae far more profound and societally impactful than its present temporal appearance.

We have previously granted as a singular exception to our all-inclusive distaste for “aphorism ” the ubiquitously asserted chestnut: “One rotten Apple spoils the barrel,” (i.e., of Apples). We have observed, as have other mainstream American citizens, that the aberrant rule of Donald Trump as effectuating the temporal despoilment of the Constitutionally American way of life, the same, driven by his neurotically based, self-serving, and autocratic persona. As an illustrative and clinical typical example, Trump’s public avowal of “retribution” against his political opponents, for their purported acts of “weaponizing government,” is not only rationally inconsistent with the fundamental tenets of democracy, but constitutes a glaring example of Trump’s systemically ignorant, and impaired cognitive dissonance.

We have liberally used the receptacle of the garbage disposable “dumpster,” in the visual exploitation of its size and the aesthetics of its rank,odoriferous properties to describe the foul plethora of Trumpist policy. However, consistent with our occasional employment of the aphoristic “barrel,” we have utilized the latter form of container, analogically, as the execrable depository of President Trump’s failed, and odious policies. Our issue du jour, relates to the ultimate size and the extent of impact on society of the offensively “spoiled barrel.”

In our view, the temporal damage to individual rights and liberties, as assured by the American Constitution, as well as the absence of respect for the rule of law, is empirically temporal and can be salubriously restored by suitable policies and the dedicated renewal of normative polity. We are fearful, however, that the abnegation by the Trump-MAGA administration of certain societally existential mandates may, conceivably, portend chronic and fundamentally retrogressive sequelae.

Our perturbation relates to the potential extent of the toxic Trump-MAGA injury to the compliance with the fundamental “social compact,” underlying the basic dynamics requisite to Man’s living in society with others. The damage inflicted to the anthropological concept of ‘The Social Contract,” described by Rousseau and others, i.e., the voluntary surrender of certain liberty, in exchange for the mutual benefit of living in society, has been severely denigrated by the aberrant Trump administration, the latter, singularly lacking in societal moral compass. Political power, at the expense of moral humanism, has been the Trumpist standard of personal comportment, to the detriment of social conscience and empathy. Such matters, existential to the sustainment of society, are experiential and will necessarily require remedial education.

The most catastrophically harmful impact on the metaphysical existence of human society has been Trump’s egregiously immoral, toxic, anti-social attack upon the fundamental concept of “TRUTH.” The delusionally egocentric Donald J. Trump has threatened the entire “Barrel” of human society, with rank spoilation, by his doctrinal derogation of the existential societal element of “Truth,” and has perversely supported the neurotically dystopic franchise for the convenient assertion of “alternate facts,” and “fake news.”

This latter inclination, in our view, is, irrefutably, Donald Trump’s most egregiously harmful, anti-social, anti-civilizational social perversion. Without reliance on the North Star expectation of truth, there can exist no meaningful, useful interaction between individual Homo sapiens or the feasible existence of civilized society. The American citizen has recently and painfully learned that the venerated apple barrel of human freedom and democracy is large but alarmingly and regrettably, vulnerable.

-p.

Our deep concern for the endurance of the venerable Democratic Republic is creditably founded in the current state of National dystopia and divisiveness, brought about by the unprecedented rule of Donald J. Trump. After almost two centuries as the universally recognized avatar of equality and justice, the American Nation has been tragically transmogrified into a reprise of a third-world autocracy.

The traditional American citizen, with recognizable cause, has been alarmingly disconcerted at such bizarre transmogrification of the Nation, to one, unprecedently eschewing respect for the Nation’s Constitution and Rule of Law, and morphing into an atavistically perverse and morally repulsive morass of autocratic misrule.

The venerable Founders’ creation of the radically new National polity, singularly dedicated to governance by, and for the “People,” as a proximate consequence of the populist election of Donald Trump, has shamefully been transmogrified to an unprecedented state of autocracy; one, singularly and existing for the egocentric and hubristic inclinations of its autocratic ruler. The established constitutional architecture of governance, mandating three functionally separate and independent governmental branches, mutually imbued with the authority to deter any excess on the part of the other, has, of late, been reduced to the single authority of an autocratic leader solely neurotically motivated by his perception of his own interest.

As a consequence, the traditional American citizen has stunningly witnessed a full measure of tyrannical rule, including, a Gestapo-like utilization of a Ku Klux Klan-style, masked militia, to arrest, incarcerate, and banish peaceful Hispanic Americans to foreign torture prisons, without due process, and startlingly contrary to established federal law, (“posse comitatus”), the illegal deployment of the military against America’s own sovereign states; allegedly to fight crime, but in perverse cempirical reality, to weild unlimited,. monarchial power. The troubled American citizen has also witnessed Donald Trump’s derogation of educational institutions, the media, and, bizarrely, the metaphysical existence of “truth, itself.

Such a heinous impact is horrifically universal, affecting every aspect of governmental function and of individual life. The present dismal state of the Nation has prompted fear and despair among traditional American citizens. Despite such nightmarish developments, we, in previous writings, have confidently predicted that the freedom-loving American Nation will soon prevail over such fearsome, ubiquitous tyranny.

In the interim, we are factually justified in the conveyance of some cheer to mitigate the contextual conglomerate morass of political misery by happily taking note of a heartening societal development, a “shiny object” of inarguably precious value has been recently uncovered to assuage the dire concern of our multi-troubled fellow citizens, which, indeed, may ultimately be more fundamentally significant than the thematic, temporal political dystopia.

As our regular readers are doubtless aware, we have been severely critical of the unwholesome substitution of natural conversation, viz., person-to-person or telephonic, by the facile, but socially inhibiting interaction of “smartphones.” The impact on the young has been especially negative; viz., the absence of personal, intimate, and identifiable interaction, among its other myriad of detrimental effects, results in a significant developmental handicap to the young by its empirical denial of the salubrious impact of the enlightening nuance of personal response; the latter, existentially necessary in the development of an individual sense of personhood and referable self-image. Studies report a significant increase in anxiety and depression among the younger generation who seem to exclusively communicate by smartphone, thereby stultifying the universally dynamic responsible for the development of personal identity and a referable self-image.

Despite, as recounted above, being troubled by the present political state of affairs of the Nation, we are nevertheless simultaneously heartened by the media-reported advent of the long awaited recognition of the psychological impact of smartphone communication and its consequent, salubrious limitation of their use by the young at school; the same is hoped to portend the advent of the apporopriate full recognition of the etiology of a longstanding societal inter-active impediment.

The vital recognition and media reported initial steps at the amelioration of the deleterious social effect of smartphone interaction, by their recent proscription at schools, albeit contextually unrelated to the presented theme concerning the Nation’s political morass, are nevertheless encouraging and serve an analogical function to the finding of a valuable small shiny object in a pile of offensive rubble. Such good fortune, in addition to constituting an unforeseen surprise, may serve as a small measure of positive response and, hopefully, an encouraging omen of the advent of better (political) times.

-p.