Category: Uncategorized

In various earlier writings, we sought to convey the exotic, 1940s Ashkenazi immigrant ambience and singular ethnic milieu of Brooklyn’s East New York; the redolence of soup emanating from the ancient brick apartment buildings, the passing street vendors, some still using horses to pull their wagons, the young boys playing at marbles in the vacant lots, the shaky trolley cars, noisily moving on iron embedded tracks emitting large, noisy sparks from their overhead power lines, and of newly arrived USSR immigrants speaking exotic versions of the English language,

In this writing, we would recount a true and ultimately, telling event that took place in the 1960s, following our graduation from Law School, in the months following passage of the Bar Exam, during the period necessary to be officially admitted by the State as a New York Attorney.

It may be that the childhood ethnic stress imposed by family on the importance of being a good student motivated our subsequent success, viz., college, Phi Beta Kappa, and Law School Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review. At any rate, our recorded scholastic success presumably was the motivating basis for an unexpected solicitation from the Pentagon, shortly after graduation, regarding a position as Federal Attorney for the New York Office of the United States Corps of Engineers. The offer was immediately accepted for practical, notably finance-related reasons.

Pending the completion of the routine administrative process of our official registration as a New York Attorney, we were designated the temporary title of “Legal Assistant” and assigned tasks appropriate to such status. One such, ultimately eye-opening, assignment ultimately provided the theme and intended message of this writing.

A legal claim for substantial damages had been asserted against the U.S. Department of the Army, Corps of Engineers, by the Hunter Machine Company, North Adams, Massachusetts, for asserted, extensive damages to their factory, allegedly caused by the constructed flood control facilities, installed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. We, a civil engineer and a photographer, were assigned as an investigating team to evaluate the bona fides of the claim. [As an unrelated observation, this occasion was our first experience of traveling by airplane.]

To summarize the results of two days of work, the engineer noted the century-old construction and the obviously deteriorated structural wear of the building, a machine factory and most relevant, its ancient and defective dry sandstone foundation, and empirically determined that the undermining of the factory which was (the basis of the damage claim) was factually unrelated to the nearby flood control construction. The photographer took copious black and white illustrative photographs of such evident and non-disputable indications of the natural deterioration of the building, in visual confirmation of the engineer’s conclusion that the claim against the Army Corps of Engineers was indisputably contrived.

To put icing on the revelatory cake, we undertook to do some local research and excitedly, found an Official “Hold Harmless Agreement” between the City of North Adams, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the U.S. Corps of Engineers, providing that in consideration of the beneficial construction of the locally needed flood control project, the Federal agency would be held entirely harmless from any claims relating to the relevant flood control facilities.

After returning to the office [by rail], we prepared a detailed report on the findings, including the engineering data, diagrams, pertinent photographs, and, most importantly, the official exculpating Agreement. Our determinative report was filed in the New York District Office of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, and a replica was sent to Washington, D.C.

At such time, we were obliged to leave regarding our six-month obligation of active duty in the Army, according to our participation in the RFA, a program of six years of National Guard Service, including such active duty period; the latter statutory procedure representing an permissible alternative to the then four-year draft.

Following the completion of our active service obligation, we returned (for a relatively short period) to our salaried federal position, as” Federal Attorney” (before entering the universe of private law practice). We thereupon learned to our shock and utter dismay that, notwithstanding the filed report, factually and conclusively demonstrating the spurious nature of the contrived claim, had been paid in full.

On later reflection, we evaluated the memorable experience as a utilitarian, principled lesson that rectitude and ultimate justice are empirically exotic and vulnerable phenomena.

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• Title borrowed from the Charles Dickens novel

The wise and prescient Founders of our Nation, mindful of the ubiquitous historic abuses of the “Established Church” throughout European history, took especial pains to definitively omit any reference to religion in the langauge of the Constitution; an examination of which will disclose no reference to a Deity but, rather a mandatory admonition against legislation relative to religious choice or belief. In the words of the prescient Founders, ” To include a Deity, would be to ‘exclude Man.”

In an earlier writing, # M.265, “CLEAN WINDOWS..,” we declared our empirically acquired understanding that mankind’s aspiration toward wisdom and self-realization is enhanced by his learning from empirical experience, notably, without prior conceptions or bias. Lest we appear radical, we would recite the affirmation of such view by such notable thinkers as Locke, Kant, Diderot, Mozart, Bacon, Voltaire, Priestley, Franklin, Hume, and Rousseau.

The American Nation, at various times, has failed to heed the wise admonition of the Founding Fathers, nor sufficiently render homage to the enlightened principle of objectivized learning. Religious belief, early on, based upon ignorance and fear of the seasonal changes and the environment’s presenting phenomena such as volcanoes, storms and loud thunder, reductively ascribed such phenomena to causative deities, who, existentially, had to be appeased. Religious belief developed, over time, to be less relevant to natural phenomena and generally, more comprehensive; nevertheless, has continued to be exclusively grounded upon fear and “faith; ” as opposed to Lockean objective empiricism. In a previous writing, we urged the beneficial facility of seeing through a clear lens or window, unsmudged (by bias or preconception), as the ultimate route to humanity’s acquisition of justice, peace, and mature and utilitarian perception.

Disappointingly, our Nation, has been less than beneficially consistent in its anecdotal compliance with the mandate of secular governmental as inscribed in its Constitution’s relevant “Establishment Clause,” and has, at times, afforded homage to interests promoting self-righteous faith, albeit, inconsistent with such relevant and salubrious proscription contained in the contextual Constitutional mandate.

It is conceivable that those whose emotional ties to their familiarly inherited religious dogma feel an overriding responsibl\ity to exalt their socially imbued religious faith above considerations of citizen equality and pragmatically rational governmental rule, Nevertheleess, despite such empathetic recognition, the pragmatically just and foundational ethics of our polity, such acquired assumptions, in pragmatic effect, are hubristically paternalistic and irrefutably undemocratic.

One instructional example is discerned in the existence of the Nation’s criminal “Sunday Blue Laws,” now generally obsolete. The first Bible Chapter, “Genesis,” recites that God created the Heavens and the Earth, together with its flora and fauna, in six days and then rested on the “seventh” (by extremely good fortune), Sunday, the established Christian Sabbath. It would be outside the scope of the intended context of this writing to question why a Deity ubiquitously attributed in the “Good Book,” as “Omnipotent,” would need to rest after six days of work, or to recite that recent science has dated Planet Earth as being 4,543 billion years old; “Faith” and empirical fact are, by consistent experience, concededly inapposite.

The relevant point is the reality of philosophical and unconstitutional legislation, contrary to the express mandate of the “Establishment Clause” of the Constitution, forbidding government legislation in the area of religious belief. The egregious trespass of this basic ingredient of our Democratic Republic has been overt and morally and legally disgraceful; in many instances, reductive belief in “faith”has bested liberty, often with disastrous results, accompanied by human tragedy. It is remarkable to observe that there persists, in many instances, an emotionally fearful reluctance to substitute empirically enlightened knowledge for atavistic faith in the existence of supernatural powers is ubiquitously prevalent, ranging from the simple neighborhood grocer to the exalted eminence of a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, such as John Scalia.

Since the Supreme Court’s unprecedented acceptance and determination of a “politically based case,” Bush v. Gore (2000), compounded with its disgracefully undemocratic decision in the “Citizens Taxpayer’s” case, the latter, removing all statutory and principled limits of corporations, SCOTUS has suffered a steep decline in its previous unassailable and venerated impartiality and reputational standing. Justices like Alito and Thomas have shockingly been discovered to be recipients of bribes from political lobbies, including, contextually, the religious lobby.

A concomitant and bizarre feature of religious adhesion is the apparent inability to objectivize reality. Despite the societal admonitions against official proselytization or support for religion, plainly set forth in the mandatory language of the Constitution, believers will, nevertheless, arrogate to themselves the right to publicly display the Ten Commandments or other Christian religious symbols at public schools. If the religious sect of Zoroasterians did the same regarding their religious beliefs, those self-same Christian zealots would avail themselves of the relevant provisions of the Constitution to seek to remove them. History demonstrates that militant, evangelical belief in New Testament Christianity has historically led to war and human tragedy. It appears that “true believers” have historically been driven by the felt, doctrinaire necessity to convert others to their personal beliefs, if required, by force of arms.

Among the wide panorama of humanistic disgrace, sanctimoniously dispensed by religious zealots, is the inhumane prosecution of the Nation’s societally challenged population of citizens who are gay, or born with such an array of genes and chromosomes as result in the inconclusive determination of gender. Such inherited phenomena have resulted in hurtful and ego-damaging results. For reasons, divorced from plain reason, such inherited conditions are a target for reductive bigots, and, contextually, Evangelical Christianity. The unprecedented and undemocratic incursion into the judiciary’s decisions is light-years distant from propriety.

Ineluctably, the most flagrant and dehumanizing, religious-based judicial decision is seen in the recent, autocratic criminalization of a woman’s private and personal right to abortion; bizarrely and inappropriately confirmed by the less than objective majority of Trump appointees to SCOTUS. The flagrantly abusive incursion into the private affairs of pregnant mothers is empirically attributable to religious autocracy. and productive of much suffering and mortal tragedy.

While personal and private cultural and ethnic beliefs have their beneficial place, the affirmation of empirically based enlightenment is the existential route to human advancement and, contextually, to a just, democratic, and rationally “sane” Democratic Republic.

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The traditional (“mainstream”) American citizen may be forgiven for his present feelings of confusion, betrayal, fear, and even anger regarding the contemporary dystopian and historically unprecedented empirical travesty of the Trump Administration. He and the world have witnessed an American presidential administration like none other; one that has blatantly put aside the Constitution, the rule of law, and the traditionally accepted principles of propriety, both governmental and societal. It is disheartening to observe the shocking and dystopic statements, policies, and autocratic actions of the Trump Administration, which have been responsible for a perceived decline in the status and dignity of America’s highest office, and by extension, of the Nation itself. It is frustratingly to contemplate that this dystopian polity has more than three and a half years until the end of its nightmarish term.

We, would, notwithstanding, emphatically declare, as a matter of logic and metaphysical dynamics, that the violation or abnegation of good principle does not alter, minimize, or eliminate the existence or proper applicability of relevant principle; rather, it is empirically limited to a demonstration of the perverse persona, or immoral character, of the violator.

We have been witnesses to understandable and justified lamentations and statements of frustration and sheer disappointment concerning the unprecedented, miscreant statements and actions of President Trump. The most common and ubiquitous statements of such sentiments seem to be, ” This is no longer America! “We have become a fascist State!” “This is not my America!” and the like, in response to the currently presiding, dystopian government,; resulting from the singular, egocentrism, unprincipled and despotic policy of the sitting Chief Executive and his menagerie of incapable, but Trump-loyal Cabinet Secretaries. President Trump has undeniably shown himself to be far more interested in his own purported sense of grandeur than the good and welfare of the Nation, and whose policies, accordingly, are not relevantly applicable to the responsible consideration of law, morality, or human decency.

As articulated in our previous declaration concerning the metaphysical existence of good principle, the Trump Administration’s irreverence for law and tradition is particularly shocking and discordant without any responsible fiduciary concern for the Nation, are his personally aberrant acts do not relevantly affect the established and enduring standards of right action.

Indeed, the traditional and historically principled America still exists; however, Trump has ineluctably proven himself to be morally unfit and neurotically incapable of its appropriate stewardship. The good principles of the Founding Fathers are, nonetheless, intact and enduringly existent.

The extant state of dystopia may be clinically analogized to a flu virus that attacks and sickens Man’s physical body. Like the temporal limitation of the malady on the human body, the American body politic will, predictably, soon recover from Trump’s toxic dystopia, and the salubrious dynamics of our traditional democratic polity will be restored.

Rather than feelings of abject resignation or despair, affirmative support in whatever manner is personally feasible, predictably followed by an expected election of an appropriate head of State, will clinically indicate the complete recovery and beneficial restoration of our enduring and unique Republican Democracy.

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We have defined the happy life as one that is dedicated to the understanding of the self and one’s present environment, characterized by an empirically derived, acceptably enduring self-image fully capable of the development of mature and rational perception. We have often opined that a successful life is not calibrated upon an arithmetic audit of physical assets, but rather, on the ultimate personal determination of a fulfilled life. The latter gold medal is achieved through personal growth, the mature understanding and acceptance of oneself, together with his human and physical environment.

John Locke and numerous other prominent thinkers declared that man is born with a “tabula rasa” (a clean slate) and that his knowledge is exclusively acquired, by empirical experience; it would then rationally follow that such knowledge, acquired by experience or obtained by contemplative reading, be objective, accurate and not subject to the limitations or bias of previous conception. As stated in our contextual title, seen through the view from a “clean” and unsoiled window, i.e., objectively and without the distorting impediment of preconception or bias.

To equip oneself for the acquisition of usefully objective information, one has to have developed a secure and confident self-image, developed, ultimately, from the accumulation of experienced interactive communication with other members of society. Experiential knowledge is also derivatively acquired by reading good literature (books and enlightening essays) with no fixed preconceptions. Good literature, aside from the pleasure of its reading, is enlightening in that it portrays classically eternal human experiences in the lives of its literary characters; a demonstrated extension or comparison with personally analogous experiences.

The non-contemplative individual is haplessly limited by his facile selection of reductive and limited experience of his own life, resulting in the limited extent of his capacity for perception. He is vulnerable to the influence of the stridently articulated views of Trump-like, snake oil demagogues, regardless of the degree of subjectivity or patent falsity of their overconfidently expressed views. He neither consults an objectively reflective mirror nor any other reliable source of information; thus, is fertile ground for the implanting and husbandry of abundant propagandic messages and conspiracy ideations.

By beneficial contrast, the objective and contemplative individual is not easily distracted by demagoguery or snake oil representations; he maintains a confident and rational perception grounded in his personal, and unsmudged (unbiased) mirror reflection of perceived, empirical reality. In addition, reading good literature lends notable sustenance to the contemplative reader and results in the abolition of feelings of utter despair, relevant in times of great political stress, such as exists contemporaneously due to the present governmental quagmire. Mature perception, notably, would have predictably averted such a quagmire.

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This week, the public media have been replete with reports of enormous crowds protesting the autocratic and unprecedented unconstitutional actions of our power-hungry President; most particularly, his fascistic treatment of foreign-born families residing and working peacefully in the United States.

Trump’s cruel and blatantly unconstitutional acts have included arrest, imprisonment, and banishment to foreign torture jails, based upon entirely unsupported, prejudicial accusations of criminality, without the semblance of constitutional due process. In outrageously unprecedented and illegal aggravation of such fascistic behavior, President Trump has, in violation of the fundamentally American, historic mandate of “passe comportatis,” ordered combat marines and National Guard to Los Angeles to enforce his draconian decrees. The desecration of the U.S. Constitution and the Rule of Law has been the ubiquitously uniform policy of this would-be monarch, whose demonstrated, neurotic lust for dictatorially unlimited power and wealth overrides any personal consideration of morality and humanism.

Like all mainstream Americans, we harbor unsettling feelings of shock, worry, and fear, relative to the endurance of our Democratic Republic and the American way of life. We are daily in receipt of reports of the pervasive and unconstitutional Presidential behavior of Donald Trump and his bizarre menagerie of Cabinet members, whose blind loyalty to the Orange-haired autocrat, rather than moral character or relevant capability, was the sole, albeit mandatory, prerequisite to appointment.

Trump’s asserted motivation to cut fraud, waste, and abuse in government evinced no such waste, fraud, and abuse, but did, nevertheless, succeed in decimating the Nation’s vital, utilitarian civil service, deprived Americans of needed financial relief, and eliminated funding for the Nation’s vital health research facilities. Trump shamefully terminated all empathetic and existential funding to relief agencies that furnish food and vital medicine to starving and needy nations.

In previous writings, we have made reference to the cruel and inhumane policies of the sitting President, which inarguably demonstrate a complete absence of professional or moral sense of responsibility, but rather a singular emphasis on the acquisition of autocratic power and limitless wealth. Donald Trump’s toxic need to demonstrate absolute power as well as material success summons to mind the instructional Greek myth of “King Midas.”

The reader may recall the myth of King Midas, which portrays its royal protagonist as neurotically obsessed with an insatiable desire to acquire gold and prays to the God Dionysus for the magical power to transform, by touch, ordinary items to gold. The fervent wish was, indeed, granted, but King Midas’ joy was transmogrified to grief when, upon intending to affectionately touch his little daughter, she was immediately changed from flesh-and-blood human to gold.

The presentation of this mythological reference is not intended to mitigate the reader’s justifiable concerns relative to Donald Trump’s aberrations by the assurance of some inevitable retribution. Our mythical reference is utilized as a beneficial reminder of the metaphysical failure of greed in the human aspiration for success so that the pain experienced during the Trump Presidency will entirely lack any conceivable value. The ancient myth is consistent in principle with our many enunciated declarations that the universal aspiration for the conclusion of having had a successful life, is not dependent upon the demonstrative acquisition of assets, but, rather, on a rewarding sense of ultimate personal self-fulfillment; a concept far outside of Donald J. Trump’s reductively limited and impenetrable bubble.

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The rich Spanish history of California is exemplified by its plethora of Hispanic names, viz., San Francisco, San Bernardino, San Diego, and others. The City of Los Angeles, as popularly known, translates to the “City of Angels.” With thematic reference to the latter, the American Nation has been witness to an unprecedented, anti-democratic (“Satanic)” attack launched against the City of Los Angeles.

Citizens the City of Los Angeles, like many other Americans, have publicly expressed their moral and legal opposition to the cruel and blatantly unconstitutional actions of the autocratic Trump administration practiced on immigrants, such as, breaking up families, imprisonment, deportation to foreign torture prisons, notably, without any semblance of due process.

Such fascistic policies are the preoccupation of our egocentric, delusional, and ignorant Chief Executive, spurred on by his pathologically cruel xenophobic advisor, Steven Miller, and officially implemented through his Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noam. The latter is an outstanding member of the Trump menagerie of Cabinet Secretaries, widely known for shooting her puppy dead, because he was a “slow learner,” and her demonstrated ignorance of the term “habeas corpus.”

The articulated expression of public opposition has been motivated by the reprehensible tactics practiced against immigrants, and according to the express franchise ( to petition for grievances) provided in the Constitution. It has been the reprehensible, cruel policy of the Trump Administration, notwithstanding the express provisions of the Constitution, to impose (through ICE) the stereotypically Gestapo menu of cruelties, as previously stated..

It is somewhat comforting to observe that the mainstream American citizenry has been expressing its ardent opposition to Trump’s illegal and barbaric immigration policy, in its systemic and articulated reprise of the 1930s”Kristallnacht.”

The xenith of Trump’s monarchical policy was shockingly realized yesterday when the soft-spoken, articulate, Senior Senator of Caslifornia, Alex Badilla was arrested, brutallythrown to the ground, and handcuffed for dutifully intending ( after identifying himself) on behalf of his constituency, to question the infamous Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noam, as to the unprecedented and legally unauthorized presence of combat marines and National Guard in response to the consequent, public expression of grievance.

The shock and opposition to this grotesque example of unAmerican-Nazi repressive misbehavior is in no way, appropriately, limited to a partisan concern. The cautionary warning provided by the historic 1930s Hitler coup should be the jarring nightmare of every sane American.

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The time-worn Anglo-French linguistic pun, “One man’s fish is another man’s poison” (“‘poissone”), is inarguably inapplicable and principally inappropriate to our clearly expressed, definitional word, “insurrection” ( also in the French vocabulary). It is to be dynamically noted that merely protesting and contextually engaging in acts of violence, as such, does not properly, or legally, constitute an insurrection, nor, notably, does an influx of undocumented immigrants constitute a rebellion.

Donald J. Trump’s hubristic maniacal aspiration to expand his personal power as Chief Executive by autocratically prosecuting and purging immigrants (with the sociopathic enthusiasm and aid of his Eichmann-like cheerleader, Steven Miller) has tactically and falsely invoked that designation relative to sundry instances of American citizens legally exercising their constitutionally assured franchise to petition the government regarding their grievances.

Trump, a systemic desecrator of empirically developed norms and statutory proscriptions, has grossly violated the foundational Federal Law known as “Posse Comitatus,” which prohibits a President from employing the military to enforce domestic policies. In a grossly autocratic manner, he has sent Marines and National Guard to the City of Los Angeles to quell demonstrators, constitonally engaged in protesting his draconian immigration policies of punishment, and banishment of foreign born American residents to torture prisons,in other countries, based upon unproven allegations and notably, without the exercise of due process.

One cannot fail to experience sheer frustration in the recollection that an undeniably patent and violent “insurrection,” against the American Government took place on January 6, 2021, at the D.C. Capitol Building, notably, at the express request and with the full support of Donald Trump; following his neuroticly, unbearable loss of the Presidential election. Capitol police suffered death and traumatic injury in their dutiful and dangerous attempts to quell the acts of violent rage expressed by the Trump-inspired rioters. Prominent among the thousands of insurgents were the members of the nefarious National White Christian Militias, “The Proud Boys,” and “The Oath Keepers.” In addition to the many Capitol police seriously injured or killed, property damages reportedly exceeded 2,17 million dollars; before Donald Trump, arbitrarily decided to turn off his television set and call the resurrection off. It may be contextually noted that the D.C. National Guard was never summoned for assistance during the violent insurrection..

It continues to painfully rankle us that Trump, the inspiration, producer, and choreographer of said invidious crime of insurrection, in which he was thus complicit, was, as President, constitutionally invested with the temporally unjust and bizarre power to fully pardon all of his inspired fellow criminal participants.

Donald Trump’s falsely reductionist charge that the citizens of Los Angeles, in their outrage at his atavistic Gestapo tactics respecting peaceful immigrants, are waging an “insurrection” rather than a constitutionally protected act of petition is, as not unusual in his case, tactically false and self-serving. The arbitrary pardon of the January 6th rioters, in rational contrast, is an irrefutable revelation that Trump’s falsely subjective charge of “insurrection” is empirically and legally false and self-serving; and, if, conceivably, rational, ideologically delusional.

The subjective inconsistency is consistent with Trump’s fundamental and systemic incapacity to discern empirical reality, due to his singular, monofocused, neurotic drive to acquire monarchical, unlimited power. This toxic hubris results in Trump’s toxic mental and spiritual catatonia, rendering him a clear and present danger to humanistic society. For this reason, we have often descriptively and dynamically referred to this grossly inappropriate occupant of the Oval Office as the “Orange Hazmat.”
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We will preface the present writing with profuse apologies regarding its title. The original, unexpurgated admonition, “The pen is mightier than the sword,” is an empirically wise declaration that the written word is more effective and endurable than violence as a means of social change. We humbly confess that presenting this theme does not, in any remote way, relate to the contextual meaning of the original statement; nevertheless, we have shamelessly utilized it, in its present conveniently changed form, for this writing, concerning the reversal in the relationship between Donald J. Trump, the egocentric afficionato of  the black, felt tip marker (the “sharpie”) as an emphatic show of determinative authority, and the the ludicrous act of brandishing a chainsaw by his formerly compliant troll, Elon Musk; the latter to symbolize the programmic demolition of the Nation’s vital system of civil services, shamefully inclusive of humanistic, empathic programs such as USAID, Social Security and Medicaid, as well as its health protective research and clinical resources viz., NIH, the CDC and other like vital human resources.

Musk, reportedly, the richest man in the world, had contributed millions of dollars to Trump’s re-election and, for an extensive period, functioned as if he were Donald Trump’s” unelected “co-President,” in the Administration’s represented and delusional aspiration to cut (unspecified) “waste and fraud” from the government. Notably, there were no ultimate showings of such waste and fraud, an absence of congressional hearings or findings; merely a summary application of the thoughtless administrative guillotine, decapitating scores of agencies and discharging thousands of hapless and dedicated civil servants.

There existed for a time, a publicly demonstrated “bro-mance” during which much high praise exchanged between the orange autocrat and his bizarre, troll-like “Sorcerer’s “Apprentice” affording sufficient time to wreak, conceivably, irreparable damage to the administrative functioning of federal government, before the dark storm clouds arrived, to deter the dual, cooperative imposition of further inane and disabling surgery to the body politic resulting in a predictable contested and rancorous divorce betwethe two co-Presidents, as we had often predicted,

Our early predictions of a break-up were based upon the following empirical observations: (a) Musk’s great wealth is, in large part, supported by his manufacture of electric vehicles in China. Trump has recently singled out China as an enemy and imposed massive tariffs on imports from that nation. (b) The elimination of toxic fuel pollution is the fundamental “raison d’être” for the development and use of electric automobiles, Yet, Trump has been an outspoken advocate for the program he emphatically articulates as, “drill, baby drill!” and perhaps the salient ground for divorcement fundamentally, is (c) the fact that both are inveterate egomaniacs, systemically unable to suffer disparate opinion. as thus, predictably vulnerable to mutual dispute.

Musk and his cadre of sophomoric young muskrats have now departed, leaving behind a wasteland of vital and utilitarian unfulfilled governmental facilities. The chainsaw, brandished by the performance-oriented idiot-savant, has been put back in the tool shed, but, regrettably, the thick hubristic assertions of the felt-tip black Sharpie are as notoriously hubristic and irresponsible as always.

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We have always faithfully subscribed to the equitable principle of “giving credit where credit is justly due.” The present writing, consistent with the exercise of such responsibility, recognizes the Trump Administration and its mandatorily loyal menagerie of flawed Cabinet Members, together with support furnished by his cultish lemmings, as responsible for the present ubiquitous abduction of American Constitutional liberty. The most conspicuous victims du jour appear to be the hapless members of two Trump-targeted categories, “immigrants” and “women.”

Donald Trump, in his systematically motivated self-interest, with the knee-jerk, vociferous approval of his populist horde of cultish followers, has ubiquitously perverted existing American law and tradition. In a Nation, populated, in the main, by former immigrants and their descendants, he has chosen to summarily visit unwarranted arrests, imprisonment, and atavistic banishment to foreign torture prisons, upon persons of foreign birth (many, peaceably living for years with family in the United States, working and paying tax,) on the purported grounds of gangland criminality; without a confirming scintilla of confirmation, and notably, contrary to the Constitution, and the system of American jurisprudence, as having been imposed without minimal due process.

In shameful addition, despite the express constitutional right of petition for grievances, many morally dedicated, patriotic American citizens have been arrested and charged with commission of felonious criminality for peacefully asserting their moral outrage at such inappropriate, Gestapo-like governmental travesty, notably, as well, without a semblance of Constitutional due process. The Trump administration has chosen to cynically utilize, as purported justification, the ample populist-reductionist lexicon of mythological ideation, such as the (non-existent) fear of criminality, xenophobic inferiority, and various other faux assertions, empirically catalyzed by Trump’s demagoguery to tactically disguise his true, insatiable desire for despotic power.

America, the traditionally recognized avatar of the humanistic welcoming of needy immigrants, expressively articulated by its prominent Statue of Liberty and its Statutory law, has historically determined immigration to be legal and appropriate.

Said exemplary, humanistic franchise has recently been perverted by Donald Trump, in his declared desire for autocratic power, by the perverse, tactical marshaling of support among his right-wing, xenophobic supporters in aid of his declared intention. Unlike such indoctrinated and reductively biased MAGA supporters, the notable issue, for Trump, is, factually, far less referable to his encouragement of xenophobia, as it is to his acquisition of unlimited power and public adulation. It may be interestingly noted that Trump’s wife and her two divorced predecessors, in fact, have been foreign-born immigrants.

The same sub-rosa dynamic exists regarding Trump’s opposition to the natural right of a pregnant mother to personally elect to undergo an abortion, either for health, economic, social, or psychological reasons. Again, the fundamental motivation of the egoistic, sociopathic, sitting President is relegated to the desire for autocratic power.

The un-American, Gestapo tactics employed regarding foreign-born individuals living peaceful, productive, and tax-paying lives in the Nation are analogously being utilized in the sub-rosa service of Trump’s power lust, in the intimate arena of a woman’s pregnancy and childbirth. Such analogous autocratic travesty constitutes an intrusive ban on the natural maternal authority of women respecting their rights relative to the personal subject of their pregnancy and childbirth.

In a rational and morally responsible world, the subject of childbirth and rearing would appropriately reside in the mother. However, this tautologically sound view, in the autocratic ambiance of power-hungry, Trump-land, is pervertedly otherwise. Our orange, hair-dyed, egoistic, and sociopathic Chief Executive has, in fact, often publicly and proudly claimed credit for the criminalization of the previously precedential, personal right of a mother, albeit for professionally determined, compelling reasons, or perforce, dire medical necessity, to obtain a needed abortion.

The intrusive legal impediment to abortion, in homage to certain atavistically inclined religious groups, in his desire for autocratic power, may be the most damaging and repulsive of Trump’s ample plethora of autocratic horribles. For example, even in situations of potential mortality, the new legal determination forbidding abortion renders physicians confused and hesitant to perform procedures, often in life-threatening cases, even when the offspring is medically determined to be not viable, for fear of losing their medical license and imprisonment for criminal behavior.

This scenario is indisputably not in keeping with the American context of appropriate National governance, nor with any rational interpretation of Republican Democracy. Our traditionally venerable Nation has been traumatized by the temporal kidnapping by the autocratic motivations of an egocentric sociopath and must be returned safely home to its natural state of definitional liberty and democracy as soon as the enlightened American citizenry has the (voting) opportunity, resoundingly to do so.

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Herman Melville is venerably included among the Nation’s best novelists and short story writers, universally known for his literary masterpiece, Moby Dick. However, we maintain an immeasurable degree of gratitude for the enlightenment subtly delivered in his novella, “Bartleby the Scrivener,” which has served to put to rest a presently confusing dilemma. We will elucidate.

We, and presumably, a great many fellow Americans, have been in a deeply confusing quandary as to the elevation of Donald J. Trump to the elevated and powerful Oval Office and the tolerated endurance of his amoral, grotesque and dystopic behavior. The dilemma has shocked and confused the rationality of the mainstream citizen, in its manifest miscreant behavior, inarguably contrary to, and in disregard of legal precedent, and moral expectation. We have, in previous writings, detailed many typical examples of the unprecedented plethora of his egregious behavior, domestic and international, ubiquitously ranging from unconstitutional and criminal to outright treasonous.

The contextual anomaly consists of his apparently singular teflon-like immunity from appropriate punishment and the endurance of his blemished acceptability by a Nation, which historically has avowed the foundational principle of ” equality under the law.” His exotic endurance challenges the very foundations of our Nation’s basic expectations concerning acceptable social behavior. It is irrefutable that other miscreant American citizens, evincing far less repetitive venality, have been, expectantly chastised and punished. Notably, it is to Mr. Herman Melville, specifically, in his novella, “Bartleby the Scrivener,” that we gratefully find the subtle explanation for our long-standing, disturbing dilemma.

In the novella the protagonist. Bartleby, employed in the law office of a prominent Wall Street lawyer as a document copier (“scrivener”), on a singularly significant occasion, when routinely requested by his employer to copy a particular document, surprisingly chose to reply, “I choose not to do so.” and persisted in his unprecedentedly societally aberrant and revolutionally refusal.

The fictional employer, experientially accustomed to stereotypical obedience from an employee concerning matters within the definitional scope of his job, was not only dismayed but profoundly nonplussed, regarding such unexpected and revolutionary refusal. Despite repeated requests, Bartleby persisted in his reply, “I choose not to do so,” including, ultimately, the acceptance of his firing and the strident demand to remove from the office. As we recall the narrative, the employer was, himself, ultimately required, in desperation, to move to another office.

The enlightening message of Melville is that there are certain fundamental, metaphysical expectations, hard-wired by our socialization into our psyche (here, the expected obedience of a servant to his master, or an employee to his employer) that are not only normalized, but existential to the effectuation of any cognizably appropriate response. Absent the hard-wired, societally predictable response, the reality of an appropriate reaction to a stimulus is empirically confused and disabled.

Our thematic conundrum is explicable in an analogous fashion to the exotic, unprecedented, and precedentially inconceivable behavior of Melville’s unique protagonist, Bartleby. The prodigiously remarkable, overflowing dumpster of wrongdoing, universal disregard of the law, and of the basic strictures of the societal moral compass, evinced by the exotically singular persona of Donald J. Trump, is far outside empirical experience and thus of sufficient comprehension to enable appropriate response, or empirical experience.

Like Bartleby, the metaphysical offense against human expectation and acceptability is, apparently, outside the empirical capacity of societally adjusted mainstream citizens to referentially comprehend, leading to their temporal humanistic amazement and responsive paralysis.

Donald Trump, however, is an ultimate societal lesson in the art of sociopathy and egoistic lack of humanism; an advancing understanding and rational acceptance of which, before long, will be succeeded by appropriate censure and legal retribution.

-p.