Tag Archive: U.S. Constitution


Just like in a company, where the employees reflect the personality of the CEO, so goes a nation or country, IMO.
Hearing about more terrible acts of gun violence, antisemitism and racial intolerance in-general these days is directly related to the individual who is, unfortunately, the current “CEO” of our country, The United States of America, residing in our “White House”.

Every American should own one of these. Just call and they will send you one!

As a general rule, I intentionally steer clear of polity here, but my diary is exploding with the need to carry this cautionary educational message for our last post of 2019.

Like the late American President Ronald Reagan’s “trickle-down economics”, so goes the behavior of our country morally, socially, attitudinally and emotionally. Not saying all of us are so influenced – we who have education, independence and individuality enough to make our own decisions don’t quickly fall under the spell of the “soup-of-the-day” – but many people who erroneously feel their voices aren’t heard, do drink the (spiked with hate) cool-aid.

This individual of whom I speak has no shame; when he is wrong in thought, word or deed, always finds someone else to blame – like Adolph Hitler did. His absence of character staidness has filtered dangerously into pockets of our populace, similar to how a cult would.

His recreant attempts to somehow bend the traditional and established norms of the office he and his contrivers misinformed groupies into casting electoral votes for and acts in depredation of our Constitutional rules terrorize our very way of life over the six decades that I have been alive and beyond. It is as if the late Alabama Governor who stood in the doorway of educational institutions to deny black students entry in order to preserve segregation has been reincarnated into a slightly slicker, taller version! Without shame, lying and then lying again as a spoiled child would when caught red-handed time and time again, while querulous about the press (aka “media”) he is at the very least pernicious to our civil discourse among a diverse nation of people. He doesn’t know when to belt-up!

Fantasy: I wish I could run for president so I could beat him! Reality: Yet, I am too much an imperfect human being, and in this climate of looking up candidate’s assholes, those willing to take me down would find some shit they would try to wipe my face with. Therefore, I feel that something/someone else will have to happen to save us “normal” educated majority masses from this dictator wannabe. Denial never solves; it makes it worse. This guy plans to campaign for another term with soiled underwear showing through his pants, without compunction about his repulsive smell, because he refuses to wipe his own behind.

He can’t wipe enough!

The solution is to elect a leader who speaks not in 140-character “tweets”, but to us all with televised speeches and with the traditional “weekly radio address”, eloquently, teaching and uniting upon the civil manners, mores and etiquette-based values of yore. Too much contentious nonsense with this guy; time for a return to compromise and civility in America. Even with the few things that disappointed me about President Obama, I know that we were a happier country during his two terms and neither Bush, Clinton, Bush the Father, Reagan nor Carter and their predecessors trampled upon our sacred U.S. Constitution like this guy is!

And that brings me to my Word of The Year for 2019:

Every time I turned around this past year, from the time my Charleston, South Carolina Wando landlord sought to not renew my lease in early spring, for reasons which are still a mystery, I found myself thinking or uttering aloud, “TERRIBLE!”

*Relocating interstate into a falsely advertised house to find moldy, sickening air and an uncooperative property manager: “terrible!”
*Uncouth, embarrassing behavior by the so-called President alienating allies? “Terrible!”
*almost weekly reports of mass shootings of innocents and gun violence not seen in decades! “terrible!!”
*antisemitism rising to a level not seen since Hitler’s time. “Terrible!”
*Copy-cat violence and too many guns on city streets – “Terrible”
*Oh, did I mention the obstinate Property Manager? Yes, I did but he gets another “TERRIBLE”.
*Ageism making money hard to come by the longer you live? “Terrible”.
*Not being able to get back on the radio in the profession I loved and was very good at? “Terrible!”
*Watching senescent relatives aging and the breakdown of our human bodies with disease, is in many ways sad and…almost, ”terrible”.
*Corporate greed and the closing of brick and mortar stores: “terrible”.
*Increasing lack of human toll takers at bridges and tunnels and all those jobs lost? “Terrible!”
*Many loose nuts with mental illness running loose when they shouldn’t be, and causing harm to people? – “Terrible”
*Educational disconnect between generations born since 1999, which leads to the collective having to revisit atrocities we thought were settled and negative history repeating itself. “Terrible and tragic”.
*Housing construction codes so poor one can hear the flushed water of the tenant upstairs cascading inside the wall – gross and “Terrible!”
*People staying inside too much and watching too much video and television – especially the news – “terrible!”

We teeter on the edge of abysmal era where there is no punishment for obvious transgressions by an executive, if he can deny it long enough. – like Watergate in 1973. That would be truly terrible if it comes to pass. United we stand, divided we fall.

Please have a safe day and keep your head on a swivel while enjoying and having as much fun as possible, these troubled times due to a cheater who subverted our system to get into our White House.

I’ve made it a point to live in a few cities which were unkind to my black American slavery ancestors, partly due to my years as a radio disc jockey and lately, just because we can now. The latest was in Virginia, the state which, ironically, is the setting for the 2016 movie, “Loving”, which I recently rented from the public library after seeing the trailer prior to a different film.

Directed by Jeff Nichols, this isn’t just a romance story as its title might suggest. The Lovings and this “Commonwealth” state were the centerpiece for a landmark US Supreme Court case, Loving v Virginia and the 1967 decision which erased laws that made interracial marriages criminally illegal in the United States. I didn’t know this – or probably forgot the nuances of that high school American history lesson – until watching this movie revived those facts. This was going on while I was a young teen growing up in New York City where everybody went steady with anybody you liked! Wow. Scary.

“I’m pregnant” are the first words uttered by Mildred, played by Ruth Negga (interesting surname for this type of story, don’t you think?) to which Richard Loving, played by Joel Edgerton (famous for his role in “Black Mass”) replied, “Good. That’s real good.” The progress of the story tries your patience to get into, but is worth the wait. It could be categorized a docu-drama and used as a teaching tool!

All through the film, I kept asking, “who ratted them out?” Getting rousted out of bed in the middle of the night and offed to jail by the mean ole KKK-ish sheriff, played to the hilt by Marton Csokas (“Noah”, “The Equalizer”, “Aeon Flux”), cold southern drawl and all. “That’s no good here..” – pretty good for a New Zelander – just for being in love. They even threw Mildred in jail while pregnant and in her bath robe! One thing that hasn’t changed to this day is a woman getting pregnant out of wedlock, I noticed. Richard didn’t hesitate to ‘make an honest woman’ out of Ruth, however. You’ll see some slightly amusing “city-country-city” cultural moments among the uncomfortable heartbreak.

This is a reminder of many shameful episodes of America’s racial integration past, the vestiges of which some among us still struggle to eradicate. Watching it conjured emotions of anger, sadness and resolute hope deep inside. I couldn’t help wondering if this is why Virginia gives me a kind of weird vibe sometimes; like suppressed parsimony is in its soil.

During the end credits, they show photos of the original couple portrayed and I cheered the Casting Director, Francine Maisler.

I feel this film with four stars and can’t help wondering how the Supreme Court would have ruled if the man was a black American and the woman Caucasian; would it have even gotten the same attention and to the Chief Justices?

Pickhit: Thank you to WordPress for noticing that this is the date of my 10th anniversary here. Thank you, dear reader for reading my words!

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