Congenial-speak #23

Dare to Impeach

James Comey never had a chance. His abrupt termination was yesterday's news the next day. As the POTUS seem to be doing all he can to make America bad, treasonous, untrustworthy, civilly disobedient, and generally seen as a crazy evil superpower, core Republicans try to play house. I hear they a losing their patience with Don.

Evidently Trump, as a businessman, trod a thin line between his world and the one of litigation. He skirted it as a combination con-man and modern day Al Capone. Mob bosses don't aspire to the highest political office in America though. There are some similarities, some common threads private citizens pull. Capone went down for tax evasion. Trump has paid the least amount of taxes legally permissible. He refuses to release his returns, so no one can know exactly how much he's dodged. Now he has put himself in a position to reap millions from foreign investors in America. He is conducting business, buying, selling, trading, subletting, real estate, wile he is president. No middle man. He is the house. No lucky men in the casino.

• Not divesting business holdings
• Violation of emoluments clause by accepting money from foreign governments
• Obstruction of justice
• Treason

If I follow correctly, these are the items on which impeachment will be based. It always seems to be Senator John McCain who is the first domino to fall in the Republican line. It is shy of four month but seems like a year that the circus has been in the White House. It must be drawn to scale—like global warming—to accurately judge the Republican meltdown, the surfacing of their sense of morality, submarined by a man they ultimately see as an idiot who is useful to the party base.

From the beginning, that day in January when massive crowds flooded Pennsylvania Avenue to glimpse the new Don, personal wealth and business were not cleanly and completely put aside. He vowed to not take the salary of the office of president. He said he'd put his business ties in a “blind trust.” He said his sons will run the business. It is customary to do so, to divest, but not legally required. So, as he has for decades in civilian life, he found a loophole as POTUS. In theory the trust is blind, but Trump is far from blind to his assets or holdings.

Trump has towers. He is building towers “in IstanbUl I have a tower. It is two, not the usual one.” Forget the Freudian hallway this echoes, it is riddled with conflicts of interest. Internationally people are staying at his hotels. Heads of countries come here to jimmy intelligence out of Trump and stay at his hotels. The president of India comes to the US. He stays at a Trump hotel to curry favor with him. Emoluments breeches are committed each time this happens.

Obstruction of justice speaks for itself. What if he is doing showy, poorly thought-out stunts, like striking not 60, but 59 missals at Syria in part to divert focus on the Russia investigation, thinking if Putin retaliates it will be lost in the shuffle? Firing Yates was a nail in obstruction's coffin. Shades of The Apprentice. Not playing the game correctly—you're fired. And Comey, the noble FBI director who was the opposite of a G. Liddy, desperately searched for the truth in an insane asylum. Firing your investigator—its impediment to justice is redundant.

Sharing classified secrets with the Russians, the ones who send spies here to get intelligence, is likely the most treasonous thing an American can do. With the era of Reagan, Gorby, Glasnost and the tearing down of walls still not ancient history, Trump brags, bolsters what little of history—theirs and ours—and becomes the WH snitch. He puts the country he pledged, with his stupid red hats, to make great again at mortal risk. News travels much, much faster today than it did when Nixon and Kissinger were trading secrets for a war on the other side of the world. America will not be trusted with intelligence that can thwart another 9/11 situation.

I think the jig is up, we saw the last straws in recent days. Democrats, for the most part, were there long ago. Republicans see now that he is too dangerous and, if left to himself, could do irreparable damage to America. In short, there would be no political base. There would not be a government to politicize, and investigations and the arc of the money's trajectory, the long arms of corruption would be permanently disabled. No Republican wants that. So, when you see McConnell's blow-fish facade stuck with a pin, impeachment proceedings are in the cards. Let us pray.

Shuffling Through London

Fuckface grimaces with subtle nuance. Her face crunches up like a bagpipe poorly played. She inches a snifter of port under her tiny dog's wincing black nose, wet as the walk outside the pub. Mrs. Alerton is a three-time widow. She is also an eccentric to whom life has been cruel. They tell me she comes in a tries to blend in the shadows thrown by the front windows everyday at 4 p.m. She makes faces at the people going by and lifts Bambi's paw to wave. I move away, disturbed by this dyed- in-the-home English eccentric who reminds me of the woman in drag on Monty Python.

Our pint-stop tour of England and Scottish climbs has reached an end. The past week was spent riding the rails, pissing away our stay in local pubs, sleeping in car parks, and meeting locals. What we did not see was Nessie in Inverness, but we saw the pumice stains from the White Cliffs of Dover. We saw everything in between. If a town or a city had a castle or a pub it was randomly found. Waterloo train station was our end, with Nigel, a bloke in a tweed overcoat who went up a down an escalator bellowing “All loos have some water.”

It is 1990 and the final months of HW's war incline me to do some polling. Locals tell of their approval for Stormin' Norman. A good friend is on some sort of work program and is working at a now deduct pub in a suburb of London the Shucks-borough Arms. I sit and watch fuckface and hope I don't look like that in 70 years, that alone, feeding a small dog booze. On our trip I was usually drunk—or at least I did not hold back in the many, many public houses we visited to get a taste of the provincial pallor. Never was I stopped, questioned, called a cheeky lad (story in Finding me—and Them: Stories of Assimilation) or given any indication that anyone cared the slightest bit of my physical state. Even in Earlstown—southwest of Manchester—where we were welcomed into the home of a couple with a lovely looking sister was I thought to be drunk. I was, however, a few nights when I came back to sleep. I finish my last pint at the Shucks-borough Arms before I leave my friend. Bambi is wiggling her nose, sniffing out more ports and fuck strokes her. It wanders in my mind, annoyingly, how Bambi is treated when she leaves the pub, out of the arm of the bar staff that know her and her owner and indulge their eccentricities. I gulp my ale quietly and leave enough not to look too much in need or want of beer, like it was just a memento, a toast to our trip.

“You alright?” A bobby asks from a police car.

“Sure, I guess. Thanks for asking. I'm fine,” I wave.

A distance of a city block of broken sidewalk has elapsed since I went out of the door of the pub. The sun is working over-time to come out, to prevail over the permanent cloud cover, to come out and be queen for a day. It is what we in America call a sun shower, and I guess that England must have them so often that the term loses its cache as slowly as the clouds lose their rain.

“You haven't been drinking?”

“Yes, but not a lot.”

“Well then,” the two smile, suddenly very interested, “how much?”

“Oh, I guess maybe half a pint.”

“That's not much, still you appear to be walking in a pattern on a man under the influence of alcohol.”

I tell them why it looks this way. I even show them the medic alert tag I wear for just such an occasion. The tag has gotten three times the exposure my ID or passport ever have, at least. It states that I am physically disabled and have an “awkward gait.” They look at each other with that clandestine body language only policemen know.

“I just left a friend at a pub back about a block. He'll tell you the story.”

They're disinterested in any testimony from friends.

“Why don't you come with us to the station. We want to make sure you're alright.”

I see the passenger door open as if I've been hitching the last block. Imagine my luck! The sun has won now and bounces of the silver door handle. I shove my pack in and sit down. Shades of Scotland creep into my head offering their empathy. I was going to play it right from the start.

“What the fuck do you think is wrong? You've got a lot of fucking nerve picking me up!”

I smiled, figuring I was in the driver's seat. Again, as in Scotland 2 years ago, my welfare was considered. How nice and warmly fuzzy is the feeling I get each time I visit in the UK.

“Sir, forget oh fuck. We don't care for it.”

“Pardon me. Don't I have a right to be angry. Shit, if a few fucking expletive fly by your jug ears, well I guess you should have thought of that before you picked me up. You just gave e every reason in the book to make you sorry you ever crossed my path!”

I am gone. An abyss of vindictive furry has been opened. I vow to make the London booby hatch pay for their good deed.

We pull up to a brick building with a few Union Jacks waving limply on poles. The uniform men escort me arm in arm inside to busy office.

“Name please?”

An older man, who I assumed was the head booby, asks me a series of questions, each stupider than the last. They wanted to know where I was going.

“It's none of your fucking business. Is this how you treat all Americans? I bet 100 tourist pass this road everyday. They go back o the states without an encounter with the police in their memories. Why me, why should I have to put up with this shit!”

They congregate. They confer in some sort of police huddle. As they come up for air, they turn toward me. I see that same look as the jogging suited constable in Scotland who quipped that I was a cheeky lad. It was, though, this time a speechless look of constipation, like the words wanted to be conferred upon me.

“Well, we're done here. Can we do anything for you?”

Wow, I think. This is nice. Actually I will accept their reparations, their contrition for the egregious injustice they have witlessly committed without hearing the story of a witness I offered.

“Yes, thank you, I am on my way to a youth hostel for the remainder of my stay in your charming borough. Sure, you can give me a lift. Boy, my own police escort,” I say, putting my feet on the chief's desk,” like our president would get.”

They frown at me, sensing it is the hour of retribution. We walk to the car. The task is assigned to a lower ranking booby then the two who arrested me for my own well-being. I figure he is twice the booby and tell him the hostel is on the far end of town. He drives me 30 kilometers to the outer limits of London, looking at the while for the hostel on a map. I sit in back trying not to burst out laughing.

“Wait, I think it is actually closer to where those other two fine officers apprehended me. I'm sorry, now you have to drive all the way back into town.”

I stretch out on the seat and rest my eyes, keeping one on the boob. He finally pulls up to the hostel three blocks from the Shucks-borough Arms.

Congenial-speak #22

The Last Dance

I might have made a life-changing decision. The street rancor justified my priggishness. I disappeared into to crowd as just another stuffed shirt who, by Bill Clinton's word, would learn that it's okay not to inhale. Frankfurters seemed to clear a path for me though, anyways, like I was Moses with my cane as a staff. I was also Jesus, carrying my backpack, staggering under the assumed suspicion, or possession, of the drugs I had rejected.

Safe in my terminal world I knew the end was coming soon. My fix was coming and I had that feeling of euphoric anticipation I imagine those kids in Zurich got daily. I was going home and y nightmare trip to Europe would be over. I thought about what my friends would want to hear. They'd think I was lame for not going with those granola heads with the hacky-sac, for passing up the opportunity for soft (or hard) drugs, booze, women, nudity, sex. If my trip were good, if I'd seen Rome's best ruins, if I ate a fluffy croissant in France, been the toast of the Hoffbrau Haus in Munich, I probably would have gone with those young travelers. I would have gone with them and possibly had a bad trip on LSD or some kind of mushroom that was procured somewhere in college,, in Duluth. I could have easily been talked into ruining a perfectly good trip I'd remember for years with one I'd forget in hours. I limped to my cell at the airport, my perch where I nested and watched for y plane to land. I fell asleep wrestling with my situational paradox.

“Has flight 743 left yet?” I asked breathlessly, having run to the counter.

The gruff SS woman's shift was in its final lap. She did not answer. She just sternly pointed to the board above. They amazed me. Unlike the monitors in America that convey departures and arrivals, train stations and airports in the European countries I'd been to had huge 40 foot boards hanging from the ceiling. The board was sequinned and flipped panels upon arrival and departure time. I sat hours listening to intermittent shuffles. I looked up on time and it reminded me of a warmer place. It looked like how lily pads all flip up when a sudden wind gusts or a storm stirs a Minnesota lake.

“Dammit!” I said, holding back tears.

It is 5 p.m. The familiar smell of poorly tendered airport food threatens to invade the smoky air. The woman at the counter wraps my misfortune in the tight bun she wears as a hat. It is sucked in through her vacuous eyes and she never blinks. It is old hat. There is nothing to do but wait for the next one. At 22 hours away I fear I will miss it if I leave the airport. I could be picked up by the Gestapo for suspicion, I could get lost and patronized, I could be asked the 100 Mark question I fear “bist du betrunken?,” so I man up, accept my predicament, and go back to my nest.

It's déjà vu the next night. Dogs sniff the tarry floor again. Their noses are in sync with those of semi-automatic weapons. The dogs, however, have likely been fed, maybe even massaged. I feel safe and scared at once. Tonight I am there again seen by the same Flughafen Polezi with green hats the have lack and white checkered bands. I fear they will question me now, tonight, November 18, 1991. I will have a record in Germany. I likely have one in Scotland (“Cheeky Lad” in my book Finding me—and Them: Stories of Assimilation). Scenarios of the worst humility pass by me and I try to keep a stiff upper trip. I settle my bill, extemporaneously figuring in my head using my 10^th grade math skills. I try to convince myself that my 1,200$ to go round in vain was an ample investment. I was young, working, fresh out of college and had an ample sum of money in the bank. I could afford a sustainable level of wreckless abandon, of dropping swaths of dough with little happiness—much less paradise—found.

The Final Night

A red ball shadows the tarmac. A few distant planes are run-way models. Like a blood orange squeezed, the interior of the terminal is painted. From my nest, in T-minus 8 hours, I am expecting to fly. Nothing can impede me now. I vow to stay strong, to resist drug trippers, hostile youths, arrested adolescents or Hare Krishnas. A license to embellish y European experience is waiting at the counter 30 yards from me. For a number of reasons I never bother to walk over and get it. My pack has been waiting in some storage area, undoubtedly searched multiple times by now. I have my ticket and I will use the bathroom on the plane. Wild dogs can't drag me from my spot near the gate.

“Northwest/KLM flight 743 to Amsterdam now pre-borading at gate D-23.”

This announcement follows in at least three languages. I peel myself off the seat, the blood rushes upward and my balance is momentarily compromised. No one that I see notices.

“My bags are checked through to Minneapolis, right?”

“Is that what you did? Is that your final destination?”

“Oh yeah,” I enunciate.

The agent makes a few calls and assures me the bags are checked to Minneapolis. I take her word and board the plane.

Congenial-Speak #21

The Seminal Vessels of Speech

People like Sally Yates are catalysts in dishonest governments. She is, in her case, a whistle blower, a despoiler of conspiracy. She's a hallmark to what's right and decent in an administration that was corrupt at least 18 days before it began. She was a profile in courage and refused to endorse an unconstitutional order even if it meant her own termination. She plays by the rules, follows the book, takes oaths at someplace more than hyperbole.. If not for her, I have little doubt that today Muslims from 7 countries would be banned from America. Either that or it would be more of an uphill battle to reverse it. Sally was Rosa. She was in the right place at the right time doing the necessary thing. If Sessions had been AG then, Trump very likely would have succeeded in putting “a temporary ban on Muslims...until we can figure out WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON.” That suspended suspicion always troubled me. Is there a gray area, a chance that whatever element he wants “temporarily” removed my be up to something that is not illicit? Well the courts, and Sally Yates, boiled it down and found the scaly white residue of racism.

Monday May 8, 2017 a senate hearing convened. On the block was the head of the man who, if you read your history, really flouted the parameters of the circle he chose to be in more than Benedict Arnold. Michael Flynn is like an annoying insect, a mosquito who lays eggs in the tall wet grass. Obama warned Trump not to hire him. Flynn did not ave good character. He had accepted money from foreign governments something, apparently, as a military personnel he was forbidden to do. He was caught in a lie to the vice president and, after 24 days (following Bannon's sudden departure from the position) was removed by Trump himself as national security advisor. Are these functionary government wanna-bees stupid or is there a method to the madness. Do the knights at King Arthur's round table tweet irredactible codes that in some convoluted way will in their vision “make America great again?” Indeed, it is a fantastical, mystical dystopia, but perhaps also a parable that will be remembered as when America hit rock bottom. It may be a time to take a look at the grand scheme, the hyperbolic memoir maxim that once coined the phrase “government for,” and maybe even, “by the people.”

From Vietnam to the Challenger disaster, from Watergate to Lewinsky the government has tendered the way it disseminates information to its constituents. Yates played to the benefit of the rules. She was a player, not a dissident, and was true to her oath. But when does playing become dissension and being a player become playing along with dissension? Too much classification prevents honest people from doing entirely the right thing. Why is it classified in the first place? Is our government, composed of our elected officials, legislators who in recent times have had to touch base with their grass root more than any time in history, a bunch of fraternities with secret handshakes? Two reasons for such sequestration, for such thorough gestation, of tempered incubation of information come to mind. 1), and most likely, the government wants to maintain the upper-hand in its relationship with America. 2), I cite just to give them a benefit of a doubt, raw data is too erroneous, alarming or bombastic for constituents to digest. The former deeply disgruntles me. It flys in the face of and denies its very reason for being. It is like the entire mechanical operation of a typewriter somehow working, producing text, without a ribbon.

When Rex Tillerson says “no comment,” or consistently evades journalists, leaving his dealings with our world subject to speculation I am angered. I want my money back. He works, in the end for us, for America and has a implied commitment to be as transparent as those sheets our teachers put on the opaque projectors. There should not, or need not, be any “SCIF” rooms. The clandestine cloak Washington insists on wearing creates a hostile, partisan, debatable environment fertile for dishonesty to take root. It creates the necessary lieing down to truth atmosphere that allows a Michael Flynn to go unnoticed until he has shared his influence on the counter-culture that, in a bizarre irony, is the Trump administration. However most administrations have smesome degree of distrust, some element of conspiracy, of making hiding the facts so common-place that an interloper blends in sublimely. By LBJ's final year in office an interloper was as camouflaged as Charlie in tall grass. Simple arithmetic, the dissection of human conscience, the basest human need for acceptance among peers leads to subverting and deception. In 1968, a week before the general election, is an example of the end justifying depict. LBJ knew Nixon was a peace manipulator. He discouraged North Vietnam's president from making a deal to end the war. Nixon insisted he could do better as president. Johnson chose not to share this outright treason with America. Nixon likely would have lost and Humphrey would certainly have ended the war and saved thousands. All of Johnson's cabinet, including Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, found a story written in the Christian Science monitor detailing the sabotage to be too “inflammatory” for the American people. They thought that the idea that a presidential candidate would play games with a war (the least supported war in history) would shatter any future trust in government, in their guardianship.

Every once in a while a voice, a conscience, someone with courage to play the right game, comes along. But when they do they can't say everything. Therein lies the problem, the enticement to be “problematic.” Yates should be bound by nothing, free to tell everything as she saw it, free to not have to declassify anything. A game player, a truth teller among a POTUS who tells untruths or alternative facts with the placidity with which he lies in bed at night. Many more than the presidents men, those four who went singing into infamy, went to jail for Watergate crimes. They went for purger y or obstruction of justice. It is ironic that Flynn first, at the RNC last year, led the crowd pleaser “lock her up.” Flynn, Kushner, Page, Nunez, Bannon, probably even straight faced Pence should all be tossed in the jug. That has not changed since 1974. What is long overdue to change, and technology that allows people to surveil 10 ways, to create tweets and indelible dossiers only makes matters worse, is the concept of classified. The communication between, to begin very simply, the POTUS and the people that he swore to serve should not be subject to anyone, least of all Sean Spicer. Did FDR have press secretaries lie for him over the radio? I doubt it. You have to go back 80 frickin years to find a time when the government was what it is, what makes it work as an institution. My god, back to the fire-side chats by which—I guess—some people listened to to know if their next meal was going to come. But then there's Edgar Bergen doing ventriloquism on the radio, undoubtedly making a clear path for the future of double-speak and the man behind the curtain.

Congenial-speak #20

Reality's Elusiveness

Is our objective clear? What are the ends of the left's means, the Resistance (I love the Star Wars ring tone of this). Over 70% of America is resisting traveling back in time to the 1950s, to a cold war, Russian espionage as they meddle next with France, try to break up the EU and NATO, and look for their inland waterway. It is objectionable, right? Everyone is agreed and no on is trying to “work with” this joke of a president who makes W. look great, who makes Nixon look a lot less corrupt. Are we going to go back to having to fear the specter of a mushroom cloud? Will Generation Z grow up under their desks?

The mission should be clear, we are all on the same page. History can throw this one out. Maybe it might merit a footnote of a time that showed America how liberty can backfire. It will show how anyone, with the right line of BS, the right celebrity, the right money, can slip through our electoral process. The note will also say how during this quizzical period America's system of checks and balances was given a through inspection. It will reflect a call to the streets, how for the first time since Vietnam the freedom to assemble was not exercised routinely. But even that war took time to lose support. Inklings of underground opposition began as early as 1962. But it wasn't until 1968 and the Tet Offensive that, in response to marches, protests and demonstrations, 80% of America had lost support for LBJ and his war. With DJT it happened less than 48 hours after the fact. More than half of the country needed no time to see the need to either dump the president or fight him every step of the way. The day after he was sworn as number 45, took the hypocritical oath, tens of thousands were assembled with pink pussy hats. Every ill-contrived, liberty-sucking, money-marked order is pounced on with every freedom the constitution affords.

But, what galls me, what makes me wonder whether someone thinks this silver spoon-fed idiot (useful to someone) is going to someday become a kinder, gentler DJT who has a grasp of any kind of politics, is that people accept him as the POTUS, give him respect, like he is to be taken seriously. He is a dangerous man—comical, tragically pathetic—but nonetheless dangerous. The constitution, which he does not defend or respect, allowed him to ascend to a position which requires quick thinking, careful thinking, decisive reasoning, thinking of someone else (ie. The American People), none of which he has any ability to do.

Fingering fibers

Last night I watched the 2^nd part of the documentary “OJ: Made in America.” I'm thinking here is a very gifted athlete, a celebrity, an ego-centric personality. But he seemed to “juice” his way out of being black. He contrived a world in Brentwood and surrounded himself with white celebrities. He snowed himself and everyone and latched on to a good-looking blonde waitress—Nicole Brown. In my opinion he sold out, he was a traitor and turned his back on his friends, his community, his roots. OJ Simpson was smooth, charming, gained college football fame at USC and rarely looked back. He transcended race, even snowing the LAPD. His apprehension was their redemption. After the dramatic low-speed Bronco chase, when this ghostly black local hero, All-American trans-racial favorite son was beaten down, brought to a blubbering 6'2” shell of a man, a trial unfolded. Right there in Simpson's Rockingham driveway the police negotiated with him to give himself up, to admit defeat as the prime suspect of the murders of Brown and Ron Goldman. He had no alibi, but it is America, and as such he is innocent until proven guilty by a jury of his peers. He was not Rodney King. He was not....too many mattering to mention. He was Orenthal James Simpson, as black as Michael Jackson. As black as—any of those putrid embarrassments to a race who voted for DJT. That “African-American friend” who had his 2 minutes of fame at a whistle-up-ass campaign stop last year. When he was told how things could get no worse, how he was living in the dung-heap that had passed as black America all these years.

OJ and DJT share traits. Each has—or had—delusional realities of their respective world. Each used their celebrity to deceive the public, to buck the system. Each is happy, agreeable, negotiable, when the item in some way concerns them. Be it either a spoiled white-eyed black man getting away with double homicide or a spoiled billionaire “reality” star winning the Republican nomination, each duped America. They each tapped that vein, or capillary, the tiniest remote tributary in America that can't use sound judgment, that allows its own fears and need blind them to morality. They said, the 72% of black Americans then, in 1995, how can a celebrity like that, a grinning suave actor hurdling through airports, coldly murder two people he knew and loved. Enough votes to get to 1,237—44.9 percent—won Trump the Republican nomination. From there it was everything but popularity that put him in the WH. They both played America. They played politics and morality. They played on ethics, affluence, and race. That 72% of black population wanted to believe that their hero was innocent. The man who had easily sailed, cleanly, over the hurdles most black encounter could not be convicted. They bought the stage sham of trying to fit a glove over a latex glove as a reason to acquit. DJT promised to drain the swamp, to build a wall, to repeal and replace the monstrosity that is ____care. Enough of America believed him, seriously thought that he would make a better America than Clinton, or they did not vote at all.

Check his watch

Every now and then a reality check is useful, even beneficial. In the coloring, fasting lights of Rodney King, of every black or off-black life that matters, of every delusional greedy sickening Wharton Business School wash-out, there's a trace of a halo. It's a hallucinogenic pigmentation, a manifestation of chances for the scenarios that contradict morality. It's a fingering of the temperate pulsations of America, when the political or moral fiber has been stressed out to its most finite ends. Frayed and cauterized to the point at which that flamboyant A-A friend, or disenfranchised white friend of Jefferson Davis, cares enough to demand their owed 13 minutes.

prosaic interlude #8

The Sieve of hypocrisies and hyperbole

When did America become such a callous place to live? So uncaring, calculating and manipulative? These House Republicans, many of whom claim very Christian-based roots, just eradicated any charitable act they've ever done by voting yes on a bill that will put 24,000,000 off health care. Hand to their god, they will go straight to hell. They wrote The Book, they wrote the bill (and did not read it), and will celebrate both. Thankfully, as Schoolhouse Rock taught the generation Xers, Bill is a few steps from becoming law.

This scrap of success in an administration grasping at held lung-fulls of air for one of the many wins it was to have makes it so clear. Their well-rehearsed, lobbied, money-driven, pro-life balk is a giant load of crap. Is each child, as a barely consolable POTUS said after seeing sarin gas killing babies, deserving of a life or not? Pick one, it can't be both ways. Balk is balk and talk is talk, and you can't have either without the walk. How much legislative energy and taxpayer money has been spent over the decades as the right for an unborn baby to live is contested. Its worth may be weighed, its impact on society, society's impact on it, the ability of the mother and (hopefully) the father to raise it into a healthy child are all considered. Let's say that child is diagnosed with a genetic heart malady by the time they are two. A pre-existing condition. What if the child is not fortunate enough to be born to someone like Jimmy Kimmel who has insurance? Someone who could afford out-of-pocket fees? I hazard that their argument might be that God, in his infinite wisdom, has babies with per-existing conditions, or preemies needing care only to wealthy parents. What is wrong with this idea, even if it is conceived? A struggling family to begin with might not be well fed, so much so that the mother bares a malnourished baby that requires weeks of costly pre-natal care. How does it make sense to fight for the right to life but then when that life begins out of the womb suddenly it is devalued. What is this bullshitted double-speak? Are we talking about humans or cars?

I have never seen such hypocrisy. The US government now is a circuitous route. It is the T-4 they take. It runs from Wall Street past slums, projects, public hospitals, Planed Parenthood, NRA, middle-class America, straight into the pockets of the DeVosses, Trumps, et al. Al should really be ashamed. This diabolical fast-track to enriching the stitching of Armani suits is not the America anyone knew. I highly doubt it's the America those white middle-class back roads baby-makers saw. Some of them voted , negating crooked Hillary (who I can't imagine even thinking of taking merits of the ACA away) for a fraud who swore up and down that he'd make health care accessible to EVERYONE. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot—that parcel, those poor shlubs who felt “economically left behind” somehow see their station in life getting better with this guy? Not voting for Trump and voting for Clinton is the wisest thing I've ever done. It's the thing of which I can be the most proud. I can rest in peace. And, if I want to be a vindictive asshole, when I see a dying man who voted for Trump and had health care taken away, I'll say “I did not vote for the guy.” I'd rub it in if I were so inclined.

Back in the 15 minutes of Sarah Palin, when everyone right of Wall Street feared SOCIALISM, the term death panels was thrown around with a hyperbolic truthfulness. To me the scenario of a team of doctors conversing in the hall, determining your fate, was created. They were more sterile than sterile is, goosestepping like washed-up wanna-be Nazi eugenic medical personnel. It was medicine by the numbers. However yesterday those death panels were wide open, no bars held, no need to pull a plug. These thugs would not even allow a cancer to make it to the plug-pulling, decision of any anal stage.

Actually, in those death panel hyperbole days, I was buying insurance through an HMO. There was no goose dropping lining the walk but I did get the sense it was more of business than anything resembling a helpful, caring, efficient doctor visit. A decade later things have changed, and I am (or was) benefiting from the ACA. My experience has been much better. Smoother, more efficient, less waiting. Doctors do not work under a fat-cat CEO's gun. I know from working in medical records that a doctor is (was) supposed to spend a finite amount of time on each patient. Usually that was between 8 and 15 minuets. Working for the “man.” Clinics like the ACA. Hospitals like the ACA. Every association for any disease likes it. They still have at least an ounce of compassion. They believe the future of the first of the declaration of independence's inalienable right is not hyperbole.

Congenial-speak #19

Two Days of Living

I shook hard, trying to revive my initial enthusiasm for the trip. Maybe France was far from the place to recoup my lost steam. Rome had claimed my momentum and the ensuing pack search n the train secured it to the ground. It was then, as I was wagering my spontaneity, feeling my envelopes' impediments as I pushed, that I knew the tripping was over. Sophisticated twists of French spoke to me. They told me that I'd be sorry, that if I ignored my gut I might encounter a fate like that Italian fellow. The train schedule still looked at me with optimism,and I reciprocated. It was numerous opportunities knocking, challenges, quests, adventures, dares. I noodled with the idea of boarding a train to Nice, take in the sights and sounds of the Riviera. I stepped on the grated steps at the back of the car, looked down and let the ties settle in to tell me what to do. Young firm women hustled by in mountain boots. Backpackers wore down vests and bandannas on their heads. They were slim and hungry, content and complacent in their momentary station in life. They were the poster hikers singing “freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.” I climbed down and listened to my own defeat.

The train sped toward Germany. I decided I should leave from where I began. 'Click clack'. . . the sounds of the track until sleep fell from me. Frankfurt was the next stop. From there I could fly direct to my safe bed in Richfield, MN, USA. Yes, I'd allowed a deluge to fall on my parade. A two-week forage through Western Europe, with grand plans of maxing the mileage of my rail pass, was minimized to 48 hours in which Zurich was the only positive experience.

“One way to Minneapolis please.”

Recouping the money laid out for my original return trip was far from my mind. The airport Frankfurters were in on my little game. Going home was not going to be easy. Using the return portion of my ticket early was not an option told to me. The woman at the counter was gruff, like an SS guard. My heart sank when she told me there were no flights to Minneapolis for less than 24 hours. They ran one a day and I had missed it. It was at 1500 and I had arrived at the terminal at 1524. The Germans are prompt. I should know that.

I sat down on a bank of seats vacated recently by Minneapolis-bound travelers. I assessed my predicament and considered my options. Going out, anywhere, even in a cab to a hotel, was daunting. Ever since Rome the drug thing haunted me. Ever since Scotland (“A Cheeky Lad” from Finding me-and Them: Stories of Assimilation) well, long before then, the false accusation of being intoxicated has blistered my mind, often becoming a limiting passport. Rome had just put the fear of god in me. I was empty, scared, bared, fearful and aware. The sun sank on Frankfurt and cast crimson orange colors over the few waiting passengers. Lights began to go out down the line, behind the counter, and I saw the gruff SS woman leave. Yay! I hoped the shifts changed until my flight tomorrow, for her replacement had a far more pleasant demeanor. Again I plead my case to a younger, softer, more sympathetic ear.

“There is one flight to Minneapolis at three o'clock tomorrow afternoon. The is all I can offer you. I am sorry. Would you like me to recommend a hotel, restaurant, call a cab?

I looked at her like a desert man thrown some water. The other women had offered none of these and looked not nearly as sexy when she didn't. This women was a blonde hair blue eye German milkmaid, younger and likely more liberal in her thinking. The seats were adequate, and I settled down for the night, reluctant to leave for a growing number of reasons, they latest of which stood behind a counter 30 yards in front of me. I saw her. She saw me. I watched her and then smelled dinner. It was that precariously founded scent of food, the fake chicken pieces and frozen beef burritos gathering micro waves. I heard clamor, hard lived conversations in German, French and Dutch going on as I scanned faces of sparse passers-by. Those happy, confident, contentment bound disciples I had chosen not to be. Barking dogs upset my people-watching pulpit. Almost in synchronized time, when the caged fences were rolled down on airport restaurants the German ShephardsShepherds ran out of the corners. Their masters were full-geared polezi, tax paid, with green hats with black and white checkered bands. They brandished assault weapons, and I thought of the hub I was in from which a terrorist might leave. A safe feeling fell over me and I closed my eyes. I actually relaxed the voluntary muscles with a different vein of mind. It was eerie and two-pronged. On one hand I was intimidated and did not dare get up to walk now—well I was not inclined to—but knew I would have to before the night was through. I slept, I adjusted, Darwin-like, to the circumstances. In the wee hours—about 2 AM—I opened my eyes. A machine was going back and forth like a zamboni to make the filmy white tile floor shine. It never did. Nothing did. I guessed it was all the cigarette smoke. I found the restrooms. A janitor was half-asleep on his cart. My pack is fine, safe in the gun fields of the polezei and their canine compadres. In the absence of its weight my gait is not hindered. The men in green hats glance at me, although I think they conclude I am small potatoes.

A fresh day is waiting for opportunities. It sets in calendars like a steel trap for second guesses, roads to regrets, reasons for suppression. I was determined to catch that 3 PM flight but I did finally venture out of the airport. Almost immediately upon exit I regretted my decision. Lightning fast—blitz sprechen—German confounded my ears. The hint of drugs was there, I was warm. A grungy gang of youth—younger than me—sat cross-legged on a street corner. One had a guitar. Some had dread-locks, other sported cut-off jeans and thin skanky looking women bemused by them and their contents. They asked me to sit with them. I unburdened myself and sank down to the street level. They were the granola-head types, the “freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose” singers. However, something told me they injested things much stronger than granola and they risked losing more than their freedom. I sat with them, batted idiotically at their hack y-sac and fiddled in my hair now and then, sheepishly trying to dread it. We swapped stories. I really wanted their life-style at some level, just not what I feared could eventually be lethal. I did not want to go to jail either, and I don't think I was prepared to chuck it all and rely on the grace of god to avoid living on the streets. It wasn't a cult or even a commune, just a murder of hostile youths seeing Europe in a daze. I told them I had places to go and started walking towad the airport. I sensed them watching me walk, thinking “he needs us.” I needed them.