Category: Uncategorized

Our nation’s history is full of assassinated and wounded leaders by gunfire. We can list those killed by bullets: JFK, RFK, MLK, McKinley, Garfield, Lincoln.

Then there’s the lesser known yet much longer list of elected officials shot, some critically, but who survived an assassination attempt: from contemporaries like Gabby Giffords and Steve Scalise to further back in time Teddy Roosevelt and dozens more. Now joining that list is former President Donald Trump, shot while campaigning at a Republican rally in Pennsylvania.

In our supersonic social media age, supporters of Trump were quick to blame the Democrats, their presumed sworn enemy. More disconcerting, immediately after the shooting were their middle fingers shot at the mass media.

But no, the assassination attempt was not an enemy plot but just ‘the usual suspect’—spotted & killed almost as soon as the deadly shooting occurred—another troubled white young man, an American youth.

After bullets flew across the sky, killing one man in the crowd while critically injuring two others along with President Trump, the former President was quick to show a defiant fist and shout to his supporters “Fight! Fight! Fight!”—as if the assassination attempt was a long-awaited plot by his political foes to bring down our country.

No. Just another obscure white American man-child of 20. Essentially nothing is known about him as the FBI has interviewed not only his parents, relatives and neighbors but also his classmates from high school. He was a loner, never smiled, seemingly pathetic and friendless, neglected hygiene, no known mental illness or police record, didn’t leave a trail of rantings on social media or on paper but did have the makings of bombs in his home—a home with more than a dozen guns owned by his parent. A few hours before the Trump rally, this slim unassuming teen-age-looking male simply took one of his father’s AR-style rifles and lots of bullets. And because he knew nobody ever really noticed him, he was able to climb atop a nearby building, aim at Trump and took to shooting people.   

Why did he do it?

Isn’t it obvious? He was bullied all his life—like practically all the young white males in our country who foresee nothing but a grim future and believe shooting people, especially someone as famous as Donald Trump, will show up those who knew them. They’re not chicken. They’re men, damn it, and now everybody will know their names, maybe even respect them especially if they die in action.

The bullet that got away

Life is ironic sometimes. An assassin’s bullet that nicks an ear, totally missing the head and brain, brings thoughts if not assurances of ‘Someone up there’s watching out for me.’ Anyone who survived such a close call with death will often come to prayer or even start believing in a Supreme Being or Higher Power, maybe a higher purpose in their miraculously spared lives.

Then for others who count themselves in the lucky few, there’s the guilt of surviving such a deadly attempt when another died and others were severely injured with months of painful rehabilitation. Gunshot survivors will never be the same physically and emotionally. There’s a mass post traumatic stress disorder to cope with, too, when the shooting takes place in a crowd.

But a bullet to the ear is worth pondering. It’s as if Trump’s would-be assassin was trying to get through to someone who is known as a bully, someone who while serving as U.S. President was proud of coming across as a Tough Guy. Tough guys play on the weakness and politeness of everybody else in society, those who don’t speak up, those who don’t push back because it’s unbecoming.

That is likely what Trump’s would-be assassin learned from childhood that included lots of bullying as well as the tumultuous Trump presidency, if we’re being honest.

Someone that young, not even yet voting in a Presidential election, hasn’t lived long enough to decide his own politics. Apparently, he fell in line with everyone around him in his neck of the Pennsylvania woods and registered as a Republican. He just wanted to fit in, didn’t want to make waves, probably was never confrontational his entire life.

Yet he’ll go down in history as a murderer and attempted assassin of a former U.S. President.

This lone shooter, with no motive or political grudge against Trump or Republicans, got a gun and took to shooting people. Wonder if he gave a thought to the harm he would cause. Doubt it. Wonder if he thought he would really assassinate a former President. Perhaps. Wonder if he thought he’d live to tell why he did it, live the rest of his life in prison. Maybe. Did he think he’d be killed in the process? It happens all the time.

But … we and he know guns do a lot of damage in split seconds, death being the purpose of the weapon after all. Those, like President Trump, left with gunshot wounds and the surviving family of the man shot to death in the flurry of traveling bullets from a powerful rifle—where the shooter doesn’t really see his targets—along with all the rest of us Americans must deal with another sorry incident caused by a deeply troubled young man … who felt powerless … until holding a loaded gun.

Shootings are so common in America as to occur several times a day, causing more than 25,000 deaths a year by firearms and many more injuries. And … it’s never going to end, is it? It is the bold thick lengthy expanding red thread sewn into the tapestry of our nation’s history, tightly binding all us Americans together.

For years it seemed in my neck of the urban woods, only one beggar holding a sign for money stood at every major thoroughfare. ‘Clever-like-a-fox’ we drivers passing by would think, noting the beggars always choose the busiest intersections along highways. Lately, they’re accompanied by groomed and well-behaved dogs, usually pit bulls. It’s surprising how clean and calm those dogs are, given their days are spent breathing in auto exhaust fumes from millions of passing cars and hearing loud nerve-racking engines. Dogs I know would bark angrily at all that noise.

But since the pandemic I suppose, we’re seeing A LOT MORE homeless people who’ve taken to sleeping everywhere and anywhere along our busiest city streets. They hang quilts somehow beneath overpasses where they evidently live and certainly sleep. They roll all their stuff in shopping carts or suitcases, again along the busiest thoroughfares. So we’re bound to see them when driving to and from our work-a-day jobs. And now after the pandemic, the homeless population has EXPLODED along our city streets—witness all their stuff strewn for blocks.

My city is no different from other cities and even suburbs and rural towns across the U.S. Homelessness has multiplied and expanded into our country’s most perplexing, yet solvable, problem. And yes, Americans, we are the ones responsible for solving this problem.

King of the road?

Most Americans are a paycheck away from joining the homeless population. When driving past their clusters or solitary adults, we think the same thing: drugs and/or mental illness. And we’re accurate to a point. What kind of person would stand on a street corner begging for money? Their signs never say HELP! as much as NEED MONEY or just $. No amount of a month’s collection would cover rent. So the coins and bills must go for drugs and liquor, solace for addiction and street life.

But during the pandemic of 2019-2021, thousands of jobs were cut, meaning tens of thousands of families had no choice but to leave their housing immediately and figure out where they are going to go and how they are going to live. It would explain why our nation’s public schools have lost tens of thousands of students with no way of finding them. They’re not enrolled in private schools, other public schools across the country or home schooled. Where’d everybody go?

We expect government social workers to find and help perpetual beggars. Yet, it’s always the same guys and occasional gals individually pan handling at street corners and more and more at convenience store entryways, store parking lots and during winter inside professional office buildings.

Why aren’t the cops clearing beggars from dangerous street corners? Surely the police don’t need citizens calling 911 every time we see a beggar. Yet day after day, the same faces are seen begging for money and maybe food. Street beggars nowadays usually carry a water bottle with them.

There’s a whole underground of homeless folks who’ve banned together and deal with their situation as intelligently as possible. One may pay for mobile phone plans they all share. Another pays a monthly health club membership for restroom and shower access. Another knows the best times to pick through restaurant garbage bins. There’s a way to survive on the streets, sort of. It’s clever and probably organized by our growing number of homeless veterans given our two 20-year wars. If anyone knows how to survive on nothing, it would be a person with firsthand war experience.

Who are the homeless? Years ago newspaper reporters got to know a few who were willing to share their hard-luck stories and provide access to their lifestyles. One couple raked in lotsa dough begging on the streets. Beats working for ‘the man,’ they’d say. There were addicts admittedly who, if you can believe it, had not reached rock bottom, still able to move and groove and pan handle on the streets.

Left unsaid about our nation’s homeless problem are the ‘burnt bridges.’ Perhaps quite a number of homeless individuals crashed on couches of family members who after a respectable amount of time kicked the relative freeloader to the streets. This happens all the time in many families. It’s called tough love.  

Speaking of love, why haven’t the mega churches mounted a campaign to go out and help the homeless and stop the crisis? If I were homeless and had absolutely no family to turn to, the places from which I’d first seek help are the largest, most impressive-looking churches. That’s where the money is. And when a beggar asks me for money, I advise him or her to ask a big church. Seek help there. But I can tell when the smile turns upside down, my sage suggestion goes in one ear and out the other. I ain’t gonna give them any money.

I used to, for years, until the city banned citizens from giving to pan handlers standing along the streets. When I was much younger and idealistic, I volunteered at a city homeless shelter, one that took in families with kids instead of individual adults. The kids were taken by bus to school every day. Most parents had jobs, even junk cars parked in an adjacent lot. But … the families could not afford rent, groceries and utilities on a low-income job or even two or three jobs. They were on waiting lists for low-income housing. They were allowed one month to stay at the homeless shelter, then they’d have to pack all their stuff in trash bags and go out to find another shelter with their kids in tow. The families would make the rounds and return within a year. Their plight never ended. Meanwhile, the kids are growing up.

The mean streets of America

People who don’t have a home due to whatever reason still have one thing: freedom. It’s why addicts stay away from family who love them. It’s also why people from dysfunctional families would rather live on the streets than return to live with parents and siblings they know well. Family abuse was a big reason women told me why they refused to move in with the families who raised them. Hurt, anger and hatred are so deep, emotional wounds so fresh, living on the streets and staying high is preferable.

The issue of mental illness prohibits most people from reaching out and personally helping the homeless. There’s a story about a homeless woman in NYC. A businessman walked past her every day for ten years. She yelled obscenities and smelled bad. One day she was gone, the man noticed. A year later, she spotted the businessman, the one who always saw her and ignored her. She had been taken to a hospital where she stayed until the right medication made it possible for her to live a normal life. She went up to the man and bawled him out, telling him if she had been bleeding from a physical wound, he would have called an ambulance and tried to help her. But because she was filthy and yelling, obviously mentally ill, he left her alone.

Americans could ban together and end homelessness, at least reduce it. People should never have to resort to living on the streets. And the homeless are first human beings, second dealing with major problems THAT CAN BE FIXED. Austin’s building tiny houses for their homeless folks, and LA’s giving some homeless people $1,000 a month—trying something instead of doing nothing. Habitat for Humanity has been a nonprofit solution where the recipient family must contribute ‘sweat equity’ in the building of their new simple house as the rest is installed by volunteer carpenters and electricians—usually all in one day. But it requires a city’s blessing and private landowners to donate property for the cause.

Until we admit there’s an undeniable crisis in America with homelessness, the rows of one-man tents, hanging quilts and strewn clothing will continue to stretch from sea to shining sea.

I love a good protest, have spent a bit of my recent adult years joining causes I wholeheartedly believe in like gun control and women’s rights. But … I’m not so quick to join today’s college protest. I’m for a free Palestine yet won’t chant against Jewish students and Israel.

Maybe it’s a generation gap. If the protestors were shouting “End the Gaza War NOW,” I’d be right there with ’em. But if I’m hearing and reading and seeing them right, the purpose of all those somewhat organized protests on college campuses now spanning the U.S. are vehemently anti-Israel, anti-Jew and pro-Palestine only.

None of the college youth is shouting END WAR NOW. NO MORE WAR. That was a main feature of the anti-Vietnam War protests on colleges in the 1960s. Young men were being drafted into an endless war. Then the draft ended, and so did college protests. It took years for peace on campus to happen, but college life was, as the young kids would say, “boring” by the mid ’70s.

Yes, enough of the bloodshed and carnage and complete annihilation of the Gaza Strip. I agree. Tens of thousands of Palestinians, the great majority innocent women and children, are now dead, killed by Israeli military. And Israel isn’t stopping yet.

In fact, the U.S. college protests always make me think one thing: why Israel went to war with Hamas to begin with. There was no reason for Hamas to attack, capture, rape, burn and kill mostly women and young females in a barbaric act they proudly displayed online October 7, 2023.

And it seems young people of college age aren’t up on world history. Because of the Jewish Holocaust by the German Nazis of the 1930s and ’40s, Israelis are more than willing to go to war with any nation or terrorist group that comes calling.

Hamas came calling.

And Israel is kicking their ass.

Free the hostages already!

Why is no one replying to the pleas to stop the war by first telling Hamas: “Return the hostages, and all this stops right now?”

Rumor is the Israeli hostages along with a few Americans, held in God-knows where underground, are dead. Hamas recently set free a 4-year-old girl for some unknown reason. Where’s all the others?

Instead of backing out of the war they started, Hamas is proposing Israel first return thousands of their people captured or imprisoned by Israel for a few dozen hostages from Hamas’ October terrorist rape and death storm.

And way over here at U.S. universities, which are specifically sought after by families abroad with means including those in Arab nations, students have shouted vehemently for the destruction of Israel. No more Israel. Like that is gonna happen. Listen, kids, the world will never let that happen.

Political talking heads have tried to theorize the college anti-Jew protests, saying the world’s young people today simply have no knowledge of world history, the reason why Israel was established in 1948 – by world order. The history is the teeny tiny area that is now Israel (all of it, mind you, sans oil) has done nothing but cause an evil hate to spread yea all these many decades. But in truth, hate for the Jews goes way back many centuries to ancient times. In the Middle East, people hate Jews like whites in America hate Blacks. But in America, laws were established to ensure the races live together. Racially integrated schools taught us how to get along. Racial hatred still exists today in the U.S., but it’s a helluva lot less bitter and murderous as it was a century ago.

What will it take for Israel and Hamas to proclaim peace? Israel states peace can never be achieved as long as a terrorist organization maintains its ultimate goal is to erase Israel off the map.

So, Israel and Hamas feel the need to totally destroy each other. That premise hasn’t changed for Hamas or Israel.

War is stupid and always unnecessary in the eyes and minds of the naïve. And that is the adjective of youth today and yesterday. For grown-ups, war is almost always a last resort, a forced and costly no-good situation, unpopular by at least half the masses, but a necessary evil when the alternative is annihilation of a whole nation and people who in this case happen to be Jews.

What kind of idiot would have a problem with mail-in ballots for voting? Answer: American idiots. A Facebook meme listed countries that do not permit mail-in ballots in their elections—promoted like this is a good thing the U.S. should ban, too. Two countries that struck me as odd to include, if’n you wanna ban mail-in ballots, were Russia and war-torn Ukraine. What kinda idiot would tout Russia as a government we should emulate? My bet is someone who doesn’t remember American high school during the Cold War. Back then we were told, correctly, that the USSR held sham elections. And all these years later, the long-time Russian leader, who hails from the notorious if not pure evil KGB and laments the breakup of his dear USSR and losing the bleak and dreary Eastern Bloc nations it suppressed like a steel boot pressed tightly over the people’s throats, maintains nothing but sham elections especially when he’s on the ballot.

Other countries that indeed do not allow absentee voting, which would include mail-in ballots, are: Scandinavia, almost all the former Soviet Eastern Bloc nations now relishing Western politics and freedom, and some European nations like France, Portugal, Belgium and Italy, also Greece and Turkey.

Nations that allow mail-in voting alongside the USA include Great Britain, Germany, Poland, Iceland and Spain.

But over here, because former President Trump lied about mail-in ballots as a possible means of corrupting the national election, half the country believes it and wants it banned.

To them, I offer one word: disability.

And a second word: lawsuit.

What separates the U.S. from all the other nations on earth? Our inherent ‘right’ to sue anyone anywhere anytime for any reason. Psst. That’s how the Americans with Disabilities Act came to pass as law of the land. Someone sued, at the time for not being able to park his car close to a shopping center’s front door when he was paralyzed and could not walk from the parking lot.

Hindsight is blind

Remember when we thought we had only one day to vote every four years for President of the United States? And tough taters if you had to work, bub. Actually, early voting has been provided since our country’s founding.

I’ve voted since 1980 and have never heard of voter fraud—not in this country. A lot of it went on in banana republics south of the border.

I also remember our country having a problem with low voter turnout in elections. And that was a national disgrace that became a big concern to fix in the 1990s.

So to get more people to vote, to participate in our democracy that we’re trying to maintain here in the U.S., all kinds of conveniences were created or touted—again, not to create illegal voting (because hardly any Americans were going through the trouble of voting anyway—the problem was apathy not ballot stealing or voter fraud). The election goal was to provide opportunities for every eligible American citizen to cast a ballot and exercise the right to vote.

These measures included—within a certain timeframe—expanding mail-in ballots (generally, for people over 65, the disabled, pregnant, imprisoned, and even people who are overseas yet maintain U.S. citizenship like those in the military). And nowadays many states opt for no-excuse-necessary for a registered voter to receive an early ballot. Election officials think it’s still a good thing. Another convenience highly touted was early voting in person. Polls were open every day for two weeks or so whereby any registered voter could cast a ballot generally from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. This is the norm today.

There have been other helpful goings-on that apparently American soreheads perceive as an imagined potential problem, such as political party workers picking up voters living in certain neighborhoods to deliver them to the polls. You know, in this country your vote is still private. NO ONE WILL KNOW WHO YOU VOTED FOR, not unless you tell. You have no obligation to vote for anyone a transportation driver endorses.

American elections, when you really think about them or return to our nation’s history instead of chasing internet white rabbit holes into conspiracy theories, are sacred. I don’t know if other nations see voting as something spiritually relevant or uplifting.  

As for Americans with disabilities, that is and always will be a growing and equal-opportunity segment of our population. Any of us could join them, whether temporarily like a broken leg or cancer treatments and no ability to stand in person at a voting line or permanently like loss of limbs, sight, or hearing.

I’ll leave voter registration (Aha! Our nation and every single community in it has always maintained a way to keep tabs on all legal voters after all.) including determining who is eligible and ineligible to vote by mail to our thousands of duly elected county clerks. Psst. They handle every single election local, state and national. And for the know-nothings out there, like a former U.S. President who when running for the office in 2020 had voted only once in his life and otherwise was not a registered voter, county clerks take an oath to uphold all election laws and are well aware they risk prison if allowing anyone to vote who is not in truth eligible. That goes for the staff down at the county clerk’s office, too. The FBI also monitors voter fraud. What kinda idiot would have a problem with the FBI? Never mind.

All these years later, I still don’t get it: the continuous adulation by my fellow Americans of former President Donald Trump. It’s called Trumpism. They’re called Trumpers. They number a solid third of all Americans. Some speculate there’s a real possibility that half the country or slightly more will vote him back in office later this year.

Just about every person I know loves him still. He’s got their vote. But I live in Texas. He’s got our state, too.

For years I’ve pondered the Trump phenomena—why millions, maybe a hundred million, of Americans young and old believe in him. Believe is the right word. It’s an emotional (or rational) bond. His followers (and that’s the right word, too) especially the poor truly feel that Trump represents them. Did they all watch his show The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice and chuckle at his gruffness when saying his trademark line, “Yah fired?” Doubt it.

Weren’t we all aware of his once handsome looks; three marriages with children; constant celebrity; magazine covers; enviable wealth and success; and his name stamped on his plane, NYC golden tower, assorted buildings (hotels, casinos) and many other products (books, board game, business institute, bottled water, steaks) and even international projects (state-of-the-art golf courses)? Doubt it.

All of us who disapprove of Trump and a second Trump presidency—and we’re a comfortable majority of Americans—are on the same wavelength. We’re not all Democrats or liberals but also Independents (what Trump claimed to be during his earliest presidential attempt) and a number of real-deal Republicans like Mitt Romney—patriotic Americans who think about character, intelligence and ability when choosing a U.S. President.

Four years later, why Trump?

Knowing so many people in my life—I’d say 95% of all family, acquaintances, and colleagues—who absolutely will vote for Trump, I stand back and ponder, incredulously, “Why?” Why don’t others see Trump, the subject of serious jail-time felonies and defendant in assorted federal and state trials, as the other half of our country does? We think he should never be President of the United Stages again.

Is it really our media divide, deciding to hear only what we each accept as truth from ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ journalism? [Psst. There’s no such a-thing.] Perhaps that is part of the problem. I won’t watch Fox—not after all their shameful wrongdoing following the 2020 election. I won’t forget that dead serious judgement against Fox, just under a billion dollars. What they did—maintaining 24/7 that Trump won and our country’s election was rigged—will be the greatest media scam and sham of my lifetime. Then there’s the 90 or so lawsuits against the former president for alleged illegal activities, one by one going to court practically every week. And the verdicts are guilty so far.

Decency is a character trait we should consider when choosing a person to vote for as U.S. President. And yet decency does not matter to those who support Trump for President. From the moment he started making campaign speeches, Trump mouthed on about his assumption that our government, the USA, was as corrupt as all others—that no American has a right to say or think that we (our form of government) are better than other countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and North Korea.

AND millions of Americans said Amen.

Not able to capture the Independent voters, Trump, a lifelong Democrat, ran as a Republican in the last election. Back then the Republican convention had a knock-down drag-out fight over handing the party to Trump. Yet he won their wholehearted support. Then he won the national election, by electoral college not by popular vote. It was so shocking to half the country that network reporters wept on the air and a million or so women marched in DC to protest the election of Trump. They did this because of his misogynist attitude toward women (the p word tape) and that he intended to overturn Roe v Wade. And he surely did.

Next thing we knew, it was four years of happy-pappy Republicans and assorted daily domestic and foreign political chaos while the rest of us managed to live low key if not ashamed in Bizarro America.

And now a third to half of Americans want to go back to all that … drama?

Which brings me back to my ponderance: Why Trump? Why him? His own native city and state can’t stand him & won’t vote for him. That alone should tell the rest of us something. Don’t any of us know Trump. Nevertheless, it’s ignored by residents in the ‘fly-over’ states.

I’ve always thought people like Trump because he says what they wish they could say—without admonitions of shame due to political correctness or something called wokism. People that like Trump love first his big mouth, that he says whatever the hell he wants, and they’re entertained by his televised speeches.

Since the vast majority of his supporters are white and older white people, I always thought his fans (and that’s the right word) would like to go back to the old days in America’s history when whites freely called Blacks the n word and called Hispanics the s word and women the b word and w word and c word. And they think people who are offended by racial epithets are the ones with the problem. I know what I’m talking about here.

No, the folks who support Trump, warts and all the alleged illegal shenanigans, follow him in a way that is beyond what makes sense politically and culturally. But they do have something in common: a collective pessimism about politics in general. They think or have grown to believe that it really doesn’t matter who’s the U.S. President. They think, like Trump proclaims, our country is just as dirty and corrupt as our enemies—all nations that are not free societies. They have forgotten—because Trump isn’t about to remind them—that Democracy is messy … but compared to all the other governments on earth, it’s the best choice for all humanity.

Instead, the American pessimists maintain a “Get real” and “Grow up” cynicism that binds together followers of Trump. They’ve lost faith in America as the greatest country that has ever existed (ironic given their MAGA caps). And they no longer believe in what made the U.S. great: a nation of immigrants, a mix of cultures, a free public education, a country where a poor person could work up to a good-paying job and middle-class life, where free press and free speech and no sanctioned state religion were considered sacred, where more sects of our society have been provided equality through constitutional amendments, where the people rule and not the elected officials including the President himself—and accepting and fully understanding and supporting the Balance of Power.

The support of Trump is not just a practical choice by his flock. It’s much deeper and personal—more like a religious movement. Trump always reminded me of Jim Jones. Still does. And his opponents say his followers have ‘drunk the Kool Aid,’ referring to the mass suicide by Rev. Jones’ religious followers or fanatics. ‘Drinking the Kool Aid’ means the followers gave up thinking for themselves. For some reason, they want someone to lead them and do all their thinking for them.

And in this country, that’s very dangerous thinking.

In coming to terms with our nation’s political crisis whereby millions would choose to support Trump over anyone else, I know most of his supporters are at heart good moral people, even church-going Christians, who cast their vote for Trump after praying to God for guidance—the same God I pray to.