In my publishing job today, a client asked me to confirm the number of fingers and toes on the average frog. And the research shows that the numbers are four and five. Meaning, four finger- or toe-like digits on the front feet, and five such digits on the back feet. That’s 18 total.
Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., a horde of Visigoths is dismantling the Federal government of the United States.
What should we call Trump, Musk, and their devoted acolytes? I’ve heard fascists, I’ve heard gangsters, I’ve heard Cruel and Evil Men. For the previous paragraph I like Visigoths, but feel free to revise for yourself as needed.
I suppose if you were living in the Middle Ages, you might wonder if times would ever improve. Those people faced a cavalcade of brutal plagues, brutal invaders, the whims of the weather, the dungeons of overlords, and day after day without electricity, plumbing, savings accounts, convenience stores, and souvenir bobbleheads of favorite ballplayers who didn’t exist. Thanks to advances in science, technology, economics, and some radical ideas like everyone deserves dignity and assorted other basic rights, we managed to proceed to modern times. We currently are taking giant, giant steps backward, and the innocent and guilty alike are going to suffer.
We are in shock, we are mourning, we are grieving, and…..we are fighting back however we can. The fighting back is important, and I feel I am doing at least a little by writing my essays. It is not enough to stop or reverse the damage that is and will be occurring. But the battle must be fought, for it is the only course of action in the face of Cruelty and Evil.
To the Trump supporters out there: Did you go to Sunday school? Did you learn the difference between right and wrong? Did you hear any lessons about treating the poor and unfortunate and the stranger in your midst? Or for another line of questioning, do you care at all about your jobs and livelihood, and those that your children will take on in the years to come? We all need clean air, clean water, unpolluted soil to raise the food we eat. Looks to me like all of those resources are in jeopardy.
“I’ll take the Ruin of America for $500, Alex.” Except Alex is dead buried, it’s Ken now.
At least today I am asked, professionally, to serve the truth. Amphibian anatomy does not seem likely to save the republic, but it’s a bit of fact and honesty that I’ll be pouring into the world. A small grain of lembas for some quest-taker of the future, out to destroy the Ring of Power that seeks to enslave us all.
I stumbled across some comedy routines from Andy Kaufman, who died in 1984 at the way-too young age of 35. Andy would play a recording of Old McDonald or Pop Goes the Weasel, and mouth along the words, sometimes accompanied by unsuspecting draftees from the audience. He would speak in high-pitched broken-English as a character known only as Foreign Man, later morphed into Latka Gravas on the sitcom Taxi. He wrestled women. He was friends with Laurie Anderson, who survives him.
When Trump was elected the first time, back in 2016, the neighbor family with their two girls gathered in our kitchen. I apologized to the two girls and my son for this disaster. I told them that the adults of the world had failed them. Almost a decade later, I feel that way even more strongly. We may go on continue failing, but we’re going to try. We shall fight and not surrender.
