Trump’s Trolley Kills Five

Well, America … you have murdered the trolley workers. Their blood is now on your hands. Let me be clear; a minority of Americans can rest peacefully, albeit, fearfully. They at least tried to pull the lever. They just couldn’t get enough help from their fellow Americans who “voted their consciences” or didn’t vote at all.

Ok, I get the feeling your face is dressed in confusion. “What the hell trolley is he talking about? Who died?” Let me back up and explain.

The “trolley problem” is a well-known thought experiment in the field of ethics. You remember ethics? They used to be common in the halls of government in this country.  In the trolley problem, you are confronted with a serious dilemma.

A trolley car is out of control and careening down the tracks where five workers don’t see or hear it coming. If nothing is done, the five workers will assuredly die. You see this and happen to be standing by a large lever. If you quickly pull the lever, the trolley will be directed onto another track where you see one worker who will unquestionably be killed. Do you pull the lever to save five lives at the expense of one life?

If you pull the lever, you will be directly responsible for the death of one man. If you don’t pull the lever, you didn’t have a direct role in anyone’s death. There are those that will argue that you are responsible for five deaths, but you can legitimately say you did not personally take action that resulted in these tragic deaths. That’s the gist of the trolley problem. Kill one person or take no action and allow five to die.

After a few days of the Trump administration, sane people all around the world are shaking their heads. An increasing number of Trump supporters are shaking their heads. We’ve been subjected to a sequence of utterly insane actions from “The Donald”. It only promises to get worse.

Yet, in November past, huge numbers of Americans didn’t vote or they voted their consciences and wouldn’t vote for the viable alternative because they didn’t “like” her. They stood by the lever and watched as the trolley ran over America’s future. The magnitude of the slaughter is already immeasurable and it’s just getting started.

The trolley rolls on and some Americans still stand idly by staring at the lever. Some now deal with the lever by intentionally looking in the other direction. If you don’t watch the carnage, you can’t be responsible for it can you?

A seemingly intelligent friend is now dealing with the situation by not watching, listening or reading the news. An ostrich with its head in the sand can’t pull a lever. People that haven’t even heard about Trump’s completely nonsensical way of paying for his nonsensical “great wall,” can’t pull the lever. They – with intent – ignore the existence of the economic realities of how tariffs work (a tax on Mexican imports is paid by Americans, not Mexico) and aren’t going to be thrilled watching as their food choices dwindle and the prices increase on those remaining. After we get to that point, it’ll be too late to pull the lever.

Trump supporters and non-supporters alike are shaking their heads on the immigration ban. Immigrants from seven countries are barred, while immigrants from others such as Saudi Arabia, aren’t included in the ban. You remember Saudi Arabia don’t you? That’s the country at the center of the Wahhabi Sunni sect, the most radical and dangerous Muslim group in existence. The overwhelming majority of the World Trade Center terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. But they’re not on the list. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that Trump has extensive business dealings there. Wake up and pull the lever!

Trump fires the acting Attorney General because she gave him her best legal advice as she promised during her confirmation hearings. Pull the lever!

Trump removes the generals from the National Security Council and replaces them with a radical right wing pal. That kind of thing worked for some German leader in the 1930s didn’t it? Pull the damn lever!

Trump appoints someone to head the Department of Education that has absolutely no experience with public education. The lever! The lever! Pull the lever!

Trump puts a guy with a B.S. degree in Animal Husbandry in charge of our nation’s nuclear arms.

This insanity goes on without end and no one’s pulling the lever. Do you hear that sound? It’s the sound of the trolley car barreling out of control and screaming down the tracks. Whatcha gonna do? You can pull the lever or not. Either way, someone’s future is already bleak. Either way, you are responsible. But if no one pulls the stinkin’ lever, America’s going to be run over and it ain’t gonna be pretty. Do something or do nothing.

 

A Death in the Family

No one’s getting out alive. One of the few constants in the universe is that there is an ultimate end to everything. If we’re to believe all of the philosophical euphemisms surrounding death, we shouldn’t fear it. It comes to all things. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is inescapable. All things are ultimately buried, even if only metaphorically.

When the end comes, whether it be expected or a sudden and shocking event, the process of grieving begins.  People deal with their grief in different ways, some constructive, others not so much. In her landmark book, “On Death and Dying”, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross spoke of what she called the five stages of dying: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Although she directed her words to those who were dying, the five stages also apply to those forced to grieve the loss of a loved one.

As the “survivor”, I too am confronted with the five stages. I seem to be following the classic path, but having that knowledge doesn’t seem to mitigate the suffering. I remain intermittently distraught and withdrawn. Anyone who has gone through the five stages knows you can bounce back and forth as you move toward the inevitable “acceptance”.

When I first learned of the illness, my initial reaction was indeed denial. There was just no way it could be happening. As the months went by and evidence of the disease manifested itself more and more, I gradually replaced my denial with anger, at times, fairly extreme. I’m sure friends wondered why I wasn’t my usual jovial self. Occasionally, I was overtly unpleasant.

As a non-believer, I wasted little time in the bargaining phase. I’ll confess that I did contribute a substantial sum of money in the hope that it would be used to reverse the progress of this ugly ailment, but most of my time was spent in anger. I have moved on to the depression stage. My sense of humor has gone dormant, hopefully, not dead.

The only remaining stage is “acceptance”. I’m definitely not there yet. In some respects, I hope I don’t get there. To accept is to surrender. Submission has never been one of my finest attributes.

The funeral is scheduled for Friday, January 20^th. I truly hope it helps me get out of my current funk, but optimism is in short supply. The funeral takes place in Washington, D.C. as a new President is sworn into office. Together with many of my fellow citizens, I will mourn the death of civilization as we’ve known it for all my lifetime. It has been said that American democracy was an experiment. It appears that in the wake of our past election, that experiment has failed.

I mourn the death of civility in American politics. I lament the passing of a great country where people of all races, religions and lifestyles had nearly gained the respect of their fellow countrymen. I shed a tear at the departure of the era of truth where honesty mattered. I’m white, male, financially comfortable and in good health. By those measures, I should be celebrating. But I can’t bring myself to turn my back on others who face the loss of their hard earned freedoms. I don’t want to see the rise of hate, a new era of bigotry, the face of misogyny and a world of misology.

I’ve never liked funerals. I especially am not going to like this one. From dust to dust.

 

Making Amerika Great One Swastika at a Time

By Aunt Beulah

Aunt Beulah is a former comatose pseudonym who woke from her slumber when the country lobbed a grenade through her nursing home window.

Is it not refreshing to see America and its citizens finally paving The Path to the Moral High Ground? It’s about time we jumped on High Horse and galloped over the Constitution of the United States of America. Just between you and me, I feel the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, not to mention the Declaration of Independence, are pretty lame. After all, the Founding Fathers of this country couldn’t even be bothered to establish a State religion or mention Christianity at all in any of these documents. I’m almost positive that was an oversight, although I can’t be sure as I wasn’t there and there was no Twitter. Perhaps they were sidetracked while separating church from state and couldn’t find their way back to the pew to ask for guidance. Damn Deists. Horrifying Humanists. Sensible Secularists.  What were they thinking by leaving the construal of those documents to the commoners?!

I, for one, think we owe white nationalist groups, evangelicals and self-abused women a debt of gratitude for electing someone as our president with the fortitude to bypass the governing documents of this country so he can make America great again. Someone like Donald Trump. Or Donald Trump. His thin skin, tiny tweeting fingers, and keen grasp on reality was instrumental in illuminating the malignant tumor of hate festering under our noses in the dank swamp of America’s fringe. Putrefying long before political correctness drove it underground, that oozing tumor popped to the surface like a pus pocket, spraying the country with a sickly yellow infection that turned half of this country into a cesspool of hate-filled cholera. What a relief that the tumor is free at last. Now we can get on with bleaching the country.

Did I mention that a Big Thanks also goes out to those who “voted their conscience”? Not sure what lurks in the gray matter above those brain stems but their moral compasses tossed them Through the Looking Glass into the clutches of the charlatan Red King. At least they can bury the Bill of Rights with their scruples intact so all is right in their world. Without actually checking the Trump box on the ballot, they guaranteed their conservative values would remain mired in the medieval bogs of millennials past but can say without blinking, “Don’t look at me! I didn’t vote for him!”

Lastly, kudos to those who sat out the election in their living rooms watching The Price is Right or Let’s Make a Deal or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, because they didn’t like either candidate, or any candidate for that matter. They all had at least one dog in the fight but won’t realize it until the canine crawls bleeding onto the porch and dies at their feet. Guess what, you lost your right to lament the state of the country from this point forward so don’t even go there. Stick your head in the cat box and think about what you’ve done.

On a particularly low note, with the KKK on the loose again we should give serious consideration to repealing every civil rights act back to1866 beginning with 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The Republican power is there. Hell, we chose the right man for the job – Donald Trump has a 43-year head start in that arena (forgive my language, ladies. I don’t mean to make you swoon. You’ve probably run out of smelling salts by now what with the ribald, raucous rallies that swirled around The Elected One. But you shall overcome. Or be overcome by grabbing, trolling, vicious, self-entitled narcissists.)

I wonder… did we choose to erase fifty years of progress due to food additives? Or mind-numbing drugs? Perhaps we are simply waxing nostalgic and long for the Sundays when we packed our picnic baskets anticipating a bit of entertainment after church.  Still dressed in our Sunday best, we strolled to the town square to watch the torture and lynching of blacks while we ate lunch under the trees. The number of sub-humans and inferiors to choose from has grown exponentially to include all people of color and religious affiliations so there will be years of fun to be had after Sunday worship.

On Liberty Island stands a statue. Perhaps you know of it or have actually visited the site. Written on a bronze plaque attached to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty is a sonnet by Emma Lazarus titled, “The New Colossus”. A section of the sonnet reads:

                      Give me your tired, your poor,

                        Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

                        The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

                        Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:

                        I lift my lamp beside the golden door. 

 

With the current climate of this country being what it is we should add a caveat: As long as “these” are white Christians and speak English, preferably without an accent (forgive me First Lady Elect). On a side note, Emma Lazarus was a New York City-born Jew, and a woman, from an immigrant family with roots in America that predate the American Revolution.

 

All of that being said, I congratulate us all for putting our best foot forward as the country aspiring to lead the free world with what we like to label as our Christian ideals. Way to trip and fall off the Plane of Values. This country, America, land of the free and home of the brave, was once a shining beacon to the world with a “lamp beside the golden door”. Wait, what do you mean no one can see the beacon through the fog of hate? Is the light on? Oh, Martin Luther King-on-a-tree-branch. Who forgot the match?

 

Haunting Voices from the Holocaust

Most of my formative years were spent in a working class, Jewish neighborhood in Detroit. I went to a grade school that was overwhelmingly Jewish. I was immersed in the Jewish culture and knew it as my own. I’m a richer and better person for those experiences.

I vividly recall many discussions of the Holocaust. I can still close my eyes and see the number tattooed on the arm of Beverly Hearn’s mother that bore witness to her experience as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. I was aghast to see the pictures of the starving prisoners on their liberation day and of the trenches filled with the emaciated corpses that didn’t live to see the end of the war. We were told to never forget the horrors that had been perpetrated just a few years earlier. “It must be remembered so that it never happens again” we were instructed.

There was a very active group of Nazi war criminal hunters as I approached my adolescence. I still remember the publicity and excitement when, in 1960, Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann was captured in Argentina and taken to Israel to stand trial. He was hanged in 1962, but the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, continued to search for more war criminals. That search has continued well into this century.

The Tea Party’s Assault on the 1st Amendment

You really have to love these guys. Well, maybe that’s pushing it a bit. But you have to admit, if they weren’t so inept and dangerous to our nation’s wellbeing, members of the Tea Party would be fun to watch – sort of like a kid with a feather and honey. They’re drawing a lot of attention to themselves with some pretty nonsensical and destructive behavior. The problem is they’re dragging more rational, clear thinking people into the maelstrom they’re creating. Blinded by their anger and deafened by their din, they rail against one cause after another.

The latest bit of pure insanity involves the issue of “net neutrality”. Unfortunately, most Americans don’t fully comprehend the significance of the issue and many don’t care because they believe the issue doesn’t impact them directly. Believe me, it does. It is one of the biggest issues facing our nation today. It threatens to undermine our entire concept of freedom.

The Value of Faith?

A Google quote-of-the-day caught my eye this morning. It amounted to a backhanded slap to the arrogance of humanity. After all, we’re all so damned important or so we think.

The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.

The Creation Museum – Disneyland Revisited

I unapologetically acknowledge that I am trained as a scientist. My father was an engineer. My grandfather was an engineer. Logic was revered on the alter in the home of my youth. It has long intrigued me that a substantial percentage of Americans reject the concept of Darwinian evolution. At the risk of offending those who fall into that category, what the hell kind of Kool-Aid are you drinking? I can’t see how anyone with a touch of education and a hint of cerebral activity can believe otherwise. I can think of few things in the scientific world that are so incredibly self evident.