My Blog Week: September 13 to September 19

A Word on the Week

The Good and the Bad

When the People-in-Charge manage to do good these days, they do it inadvertently, under ironic circumstances. Sometimes by being so bad that a background person feels compelled to come forward. We learned this week that the Trump administration wanted to use a heat ray on protestors in Lafayette Square, DC. Yes, this news is good to those of us concerned for some time by Directed Energy Weapons (DEW). It was not so long ago the Cuban Embassy staff were getting dismissed by “experts”, who seemed readier to believe in simultaneous group neurosis than our citizens being attacked and injured by…DEW. All the news outlets, every punditry show, even the late night comedians—one of the best sources for getting information to the young masses—have finally done their part to install this new firmware into the collective human brain. This is reality. Your government may well use these devices on you. At least you should have the right (especially in America, with our magical healthcare system) not to be bankrupted by medical bills, in searching for answers to what ails you.

As to the bad…maybe good…Republicans’ ghoulish eagerness to get another substandard judge on the Supreme Court might, for more reasons than the obvious, be unwise. What has the party got to raise money on, what sympathetic victim can they champion, other than the Unborn? They would like to overturn Roe vs Wade to please evangelicals, an un-Christian outgrowth of the Christian religion (and variably listed as a quarter, or less, of voters). Clever politicians don’t really want to solve problems. They want to be always working to solve problems.

The Republicans don’t like the environment…they don’t like the trees, the flowers, the birds and butterflies, the little animals. They don’t like equality in education; they don’t like public daycare. They don’t like the striving refugee…or most immigrants; they don’t like the neophyte business-owners of developing nations, either, and would like to cut foreign aid. They took money from soldiers to pay for the wall. They took money from foolish wall-donors to pay for boats. They want to give supporting funds to coal, and regulatory obstacles to renewable energy, which is more likely to be a new graduate’s source of employment. They haven’t done well trying to raise money on scaring people. They should think twice before “conquering” the only strong rallying point they have, for below the Mason-Dixon line states.

Rest in Peace, R.B.G. You stayed the course.