There Is No Conspiracy

Once again, fellow Trump haters, please stop with the 2024 election conspiracies.

Many Democrats and associated progressives an socialists are convinced that Donald Trump and Elon Musk cheated in the 2024 presidential election and insist that Kamala Harris is the rightful winner.  Musk, we are told, used his Starlink company to switch enough votes in all seven swing states to elect Trump.  The evidence, we are informed, is that Trump came right out and said it and that Musk said that he will go to jail for what he did for Trump if the Democrats regain control of Congress in November.  

Okay, Trump's comments can be easily discounted, because he's nothing but braggadocio.  No one takes seriously what he says.  As for Musk, he was likely referring to everything he's done for Trump since January 2025, not anything he might have done for him in October 2024.

But the biggest argument against this conspiracy theories is largely circumstantial.  I know of no voting machines that can be hacked by Starlink or by any other tech service.

So why do these theories persist?  Because these people cannot believe that people who stayed home on November 5, 2024 were not part of the problem (polls show that had those people voted, they would have been a bigger problem, Trump would have won by a larger margin).  Or because they can't believe that Harris was unpopular enough to lose every swing state.  Or maybe because these people simply cannot believe that 77 million of their fellow Americans cannot be so vile as to vote for Donald Trump.

They are.

So, please, folks, next time you want to say that Trump cheated to win . . . don't.  Please, don't. 

Out With a Whimper

The Supreme Court just ruled that Trump has the ability to fire and civil service agency director he wants to.

One hundred and forty-three years of the precedent of the Pendleton Civil Service Act - signed by President Chester Arthur, a one-time political hack - just went out the window.

But they did hold Trump accountable for raping Elizabeth Jean Carroll, even as they upheld birthright citizenship - by one vote! 

And so ends the 2025-26 U.S. Supreme Court term.

I can't comment any further, except to say that the only thing I like about the Supreme Court . . . 

. . . is the building.

Which, by the way, should have room for six more justices.

The Great American Cancel Culture

It's hard for any American of any race, creed or color to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States when there are so many Americans who have been trying to cancel important figures in American history.  I'm not talking about worthy initiatives like the 1619 Project to focus more on the evils of slavery or the effort to teach Americans that the greatest American leaders of the past - especially the Founding Fathers - were not as pure as Sir Galahad.  I'm talking about efforts to expunge historical figures - white men, mostly, of course - from the historical record.  It would be hard to find just one example of such cancelling that encapsulates the antipathy toward American historical figures that is a repudiation of the nation in general.  Nevertheless, I feel that the renaming and recontextualizing of Washington Park in Newark, New Jersey comes close . . .

After the brutal murder of George Floyd and the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement, which led to the painting of the slogan on city streets in big capital letters in cities across America (including Newark, where it was painted on Halsey Street), so that people would Get It, Newark's mayor, Ras Baraka, son of black nationalist literary figure Amiri Baraka, decided that it was hideously inappropriate for a black-majority city like his to have a downtown park named for George Washington, despite the park's proximity to where Washington appeared while traveling through Newark and despite his integral role in creating and defining the Presidency as our first President, because, well, Washington was a slaveowner, and while many of his slaves were freed when his wife Martha died in 1802, three years after George died, many of them remained in the "care" of Martha's in-laws from her first marriage to Daniel Custis, including her grandson George Washington Parke Custis, the father-in-law of . . . Robert E. Lee. 

After a period of consideration and reflection over the matter in which Mayor Baraka's preferred conclusion was likely foregone all long, the park was renamed Harriet Tubman Square, after the escaped slave who helped other slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad.  (Anything renamed for a black historical figure includes the individual's full name, as if no one will know who the thing was renamed for if just the surname is employed.)  That was actually find of funny, because the space is so large, it's really more of a park than a square.  Also, it's not even in the shape of a square - it's a triangle! 

The George Washington statue in the park's southern corner, installed in 1912, is still there, but, by one account, Mayor Baraka has allowed its foundation to decay from underneath, apparently to show his contempt for Washington's memory.  Nearby Washington Street is likely to be renamed soon, I suspect.

To compliment the newly renamed Harriet Tubman Square, Mayor Baraka commissioned a monument to the Moses of her people.  Good idea.  But then you actually see the monument . . . 

What the hell is this?

Well, I'll let Mayor Baraka explain it: 

"In a time when so many cities are choosing to topple statues that limit the scope of their people's story, we have chosen to erect a monument that spurs us into our future story of exemplary strength and solidity," Baraka said when the monument was unveiled.

Does that include a future that gives architects and sculptors an education in art in addition to training?

I mean, Harriet Tubman deserves a monument in a black-majority city - I can't emphasize this enough - but this is ugly.  I mean, really ugly.  But because it honors a black woman, was sculpted and designed by a black woman (Nina Cooke John), and features a recorded narration (that Disney influence again) by a black woman (the Newark-born rapper and actress legally known as Dana Owens),  no one dares criticize or object to this monstrosity.

I, on the other hand, live for that sort of thing.  Dangerously, I might add, as Bloomfield Avenue in Newark leads right up to where I live.  

I know that my insistence that I'm not opposed to a monument to Harriet Tubman, and that I only think the one that actually got put up is godawful, isn't going to shield me from criticism from its defenders.  But it is what it is.  And, given that the monument occupies only a small portion of the triangular public space formerly known as Washington Park, I have just one question: Why didn't the mayor and city council simply name the immediate square footage around the monument Harriet Tubman Square and leave the rest of the space as Washington Park, Washington being the Father of Our Country and all?

Because that would have involve compromise.  Anyone who knows anything about Ras Baraka and his dad is that a Baraka never compromises.  A Booker, yes.  A Baraka, no.   (Aside: Amiri Baraka successfully led an effort to have an elementary school named for Robert Treat - the whitey who founded Newark - renamed for black nationalist Marcus Garvey.  See what I mean?  The school has since been demolished.)

However, I would be remiss (there I go, using that flowery whitey language again) if I did not express of my approval of Mayor Baraka's decision to remove the public sculpture that was there before - a statue of Christopher Columbus. 

Mayor Baraka had the statue taken down and its pedestal removed because he felt it was even more hideously appropriate to have a statue of a promoter of colonialism and a genocidal maniac who killed most of the indigenous Caribbean peoples and introduced slavery to Spain's budding colonies in the region in a city populated by not just blacks but Puerto Ricans, whose Taino ancestors felt the brunt of Columbus's heinous crimes.  You know the cliché - having a statue of Columbus in a city heavily populated by blacks and Hispanics is like having a statue Adolf Hitler in a city heavily populated by Jews.  

Of course, when the statue was first erected, it honored the city's Italian-American population, which is now down to maybe a block in the Forest Hill neighborhood.  The inscription on the statue's base read:

TO CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

IMMORTAL GENOESE

ERECTED BY THE ITALIANS 

IN THIS LAND

PERCEIVED THROUGH HIS GENIUS

IN THE YEAR 1492

Attempts to remove Columbus statues in Newark suburbs have met with resistance from the state's many Italian-Americans, who consider Columbus a symbol of pride in their heritage and culture.

Gee, why don't we put up statues of Benito Mussolini while we're at it? 

As for my opposition to Columbus monuments, the fact that he was a genocidal maniac is only one of the reasons for my opposition.  Another reason is the fact - which I've mentioned here before - that the story that Columbus proved the world was round was invented by Washington Irving in his biography of Columbus.  (The ancient Greeks proved that the world was round because of how the earth casts a shadow on the moon.)  A third reason is that Columbus died thinking he had reached what we now called Indonesia, completely ignorant of the fact that he had reached a heretofore uncharted land.  But there's the fatal fourth reason - no one really knows what Columbus looked like.  Sculptors who create statues of him can only guess his features.

Mayor Baraka ran for governor of New Jersey in 2025 and made a strong showing in the primary, coming second behind Mikie Sherrill.  Had he been the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, he would certainly have lost to the Republican gubernatorial nominee, Giachino "Jack" Ciattarelli, who would have used Baraka's antipathy for the Italian Navigator as a cudgel against him.

That said, however, as someone who is part Italian, I'm glad that statue is gone.  But removing George Washington's name from the downtown park now named for Harriet Tubman and redesignated a square (it's a triangle!) is a bridge to far for me.  And I am not changing my mind about the Tubman monument - it's ugly.  Really ugly.  It's Newark's equivalent to the giant bust of Benjamin Franklin covered with pennies in Philadelphia.  The only way I could ever justify Washington's name removed from a park in Newark or anywhere in New Jersey is if the state secedes and becomes part of Canada or part of a new country that is ready to make history of its own.

That, of course, is my fondest hope.

The Great American Wet Blanket

If President Biden had planned a big celebration for the 250th anniversary of American independence, Donald Trump might not have ruined everything for everyone in this semiquincentennial year.   The plans would have already been in place, and Trump wouldn't have had to change them much - and I would argue that it would have been so far along that there would likely have been no way that Trump could have made the celebration about himself, especially if a world's fair had been in the offing.

Instead, Biden decided to wimp out.

Former President Biden had been against any celebration that would be deemed partisan or political  and opted for a celebration that would focus on the nation's democratic principles - fine - but he preferred a reflective, scaled-down, sober approach to the anniversary - not fine, especially when no one spends time thinking reflectively or contemplatively in the summer!  Trump, of course, is not a contemplative or reflective person (the only reflection he's ever had was looking in the mirror, which he does at least five times day), so Biden's decision to have a low-key observance left a great deal of room for Trump to work in.  Hence the Great American State Fair, Trump's honky-tonk party on the National Mall in a degraded Washington where the reflecting pool has become an algae farm and White House has become more ghetto than Anacostia.  The fair, already plagued by sporadic power outages and melting ice cream, has gotten worse since I commented on it the other day.  Robert Van Winkle (he's a rapper, Google his name to find out his rap name, because I never refer to rappers by their noms d'etage; I only refer to chosen names of people I respect!), the last performer who didn't cancel his appearance for Trump's semiquincentennial shindig, did just that and was a no-show.  One person who did attend the celebration got so bored, he put his passion out.  (That's a personal expression of mine to describe the act of something that rhymes with "mastication.")

It's all disheartening when you imagine what could have been - a big celebration that brought people together as well as one that allowed to people to contemplate our ideals toward liberty and democratic principles.  The 1976 Bicentennial may not have been marked with all of the pageantry it deserved  (*cough cough* Expo '76 canceled, *cough cough*), but, coming as it did after a decade of Vietnam, Watergate, and the Arab Oil Embargo, it was a fun time and it brought a sense of relief to the nation, which had been through so much strife in recent memory and was looking forward to a new beginning, having gotten rid of Nixon and having put the war in Southeast Asia behind us.   If Biden hadn't been such a Debbie Downer and hadn't been primarily focused on supporting community-level and state initiatives, as well as civic service projects, we could have had a memorable Independence Day this year that was something more than the annual parades and fireworks displays.  And I don't even want to contemplate what the semiquincentennial would have been like had Biden passed off his low-key observance plans to a President Kamala Harris, given that Harris' idea of fun is drinking chamomile tea in a velvet-upholstered chair.   To be honest, we don't know what sort of celebration Harris would have presided over.  But what's worse is that we do know what sort of celebration Trump is presiding over.

Perhaps a big celebration in 2026 with a world's fair and lots of fun was out of the question from the start.  Sure, we had problems in 1976 - decaying cities, stagflation, "Afternoon Delight" hitting number one - but we didn't have any problems we thought we couldn't handle.  But since July 4, 1976, we've had a half-century of downers - the Iran hostage crisis, the Moscow Olympics boycott, John Lennon becoming yet another New York City murder statistic, Reaganomics, MTV,  "Like a Virgin" cluttering the top of the Billboard charts for six weeks, AIDS, crack, right-wing talk radio, Clarence Thomas, Newt Gingrich, Kurt Cobain becoming yet another Washington State suicide statistic, the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the Clinton impeachment, 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, the war against the Islamic State, the war in Iran, a Target store opening in the historic Carson Pirie Scott department store building in downtown Chicago, the Tea Party, MAGA, COVID, Trump's first term as President . . . and for the past year in change we've had Trump's second term is President, and the second verse is worse than the first.  It seems that Trump has shoved a decade's worth of revolting developments into that short time frame.

In short, we've had fifty years of so many bad breaks that to celebrate this country and its history with a big party seems to have become a fool's errand . . . and some of the disregard for our history from both the left and the right warrants another post for later.

Anyway, the ultimate big party, a world's fair, was likely not going to happen this year even if Martin O'Malley were President now.  Because the last American world's fair in New Orleans in 1984 was underattended and a financial flop.  Perhaps the Great American State Fair, with its shanty pavilions and its big Ferris wheel, was Trump's attempt to produce a world's fair on the cheap.  Maybe he still has memories of the 1964-65 World's Fair that took place in his native Queens and "inspired" him.  But a real world's fair? In These States?  Not after so many world's fairs have been financial flops - that includes the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition - and not after Congress restricted government involvement in such events.  (We don't even have federally funded U.S. pavilions in foreign world's fairs, and the ones that get privately funded when corporate America feels like funding them are poorly executed.)  In addition, digital technology allowing exhibits of world's-fair-quality and the half-baked joke of a permanent world's fair that is EPCOT in Florida have rendered international exhibitions in the United States as obsolete as the Victrola.  

Why indeed have a big party in These States right now?

What's there to celebrate?

The Great American Ripoff

The one hundredth anniversary of American independence in 1876 had the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where Alexander Graham Bell debuted the telephone. The one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of American independence in 1926 had the Sesquicentennial Exposition, also in Philadelphia, where alcohol was not allowed. (Prohibition.) For the two hundredth anniversary of American independence in 1976 - the Bicentennial - there was nothing of the sort. A world's fair in Philadelphia or anywhere else in the United States was logistically and financially impossible because, well, he federal government pretty had much spent the money needed for a fair in Vietnam in the previous decade, community opposition in both Philadelphia and Boston to a fair made it beyond difficult to hold in either city, ,and the economic instability and oil shortages of the early 1970s turned public opinion against it.  (And yet, Expo '74 in Spokane, Washington, with environmental preservation as a theme, managed to get off the ground.  Go figure.)

As someone who has never been to a world's fair - there hasn't been one in the United States since 1984 - I was hoping, really hoping, that there would be a fair for the semiquincentennial of American independence this year.

I forgot that old adage - be careful what you wish for.

Trump's Great American State Fair is a "celebration" of the 250th anniversary of the United States, a gaudy carnival on the National Mall that is either a parody of a real world's fair or an exaggeration of the utter banality of state fairs.  Or a combination of both.  The fair opened with a Trump rally that replaced the big concert that every performer not named Robert by his mother, Van Winkle by his father, and Vanilla Ice by himself bowed out of, and the official kickoff featured patriotic music from a military band, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy delivered opening remarks saying that their music was better than anything the "libtards" who backed out could have provided, while his Down's Syndrome-affected daughter stood by his side.  Duffy has refused to apologize for using the word, though he probably forgot himself when he used it in the company of his daughter.  He probably uses the word "libtard" regularly when dealing with mass transit advocates and bullet-train supporters at the Transportation Department building.

As for the fair itself . . . well, as far as I can make out, it has hamburgers, ice cream and lemonade available, but the ice cream might a bit runny because of power issues involving the freezers.  There's a 110-foot Ferris wheel that looks cool, when it works - that broke down as a result of a power issue.

And on top of all that, Robert Van Winkle is scheduled to perform tonight.

Feeling patriotic yet?

It gets better - or worse.  The fair also includes a 250-foot (get it?) replica of the arch Trump plans to build at the end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge on the Virginia side, as seen above (a winged Statue of Liberty?  Well, if I were Lady Liberty, I'd want wings to fly back to France), as well as a rodeo.

With a clown.

The states have their own pavilions - which are about as big as phone booths, to be honest - displaying.  Displaying what?  Mostly displaying around.  Seriously, they have displays of what makes them so unique, an important theme considering how shopping malls, Wal-Marts, Home Depots, office parks, cookie-cutter housing developments, and  McDonald's eateries have sucked the the regional distinctions of this country and made every place in America look like no place in particular.  However, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts,  Connecticut, North Carolina and Illinois have refused to take part (why, New Jersey, why did you not join them?), but Trump is celebrating the land of Lincoln by having a Lincoln hologram on display.  (What is this, Disney World Lite?)  Too bad Illinois isn't taking part, a presentation on the man who made modern America - McDonald's founder Ray Kroc - would have been enlightening.

Including the McDonald's mascot - a clown.

It's a national fair, with state pavilions, not a world's fair with national pavilions, and it's just as well, too, because no self-respecting foreign country would want to be represented at this Trump psycho circus.  Which works out fine, since the United States hasn't taken part in a world's fair elsewhere in a meaningful way for decades. 

At that, I should end my comments about a fair I have no intention of going to - in fact, I will deliberately be in London this time next week, on Independence Day (oh, the irony!) - and thus cannot opine on from personal experience.  I was out of the country last July 4, spending a weekend in Montreal, where there's a permanent and much nicer Ferris wheel (and ninety feet taller!), and I plan to be out of the country for every July 4 to come until the end of time, which could be sooner than one might think.  But I can say this.  It's my personal experience that any patriotic celebration where the admission is free, especially one involving Trump, is way overpriced.

Music Video Of the Week - Hiatus

My Music Video Of the Week page is temporarily inactive as of today, June 26. It will resume on July 17.

Just Junk All Across the Horizon

Trump came back to Washington, D.C. last year and, once ensconced in the White House a second time, decided to remake the egalitarian architectural composition of Washington in his image.  First came the East Wing demolition for the ballroom.  Then came his appendage of his name on the Kennedy Center (the Third Reich architecture of which I already explained), though his name had to come off and he put tarps over where his name used to be.  Now, the algae in the reflecting pool.

Trump had the reflecting pool's floor painted the same shade of blue that's in the American flag because he through it would be - no doubt - "beautiful."  I'm sure it is.  Too bad you can't see it with all the algae.  Scientists explained that a dark color in the pool not only eliminates reflections but allows the sun to heat the water more thoroughly and create the conditions for algae to grow and bloom.  Scientists could have told Trump that would happen if he had the floor painted dark blue, but we all know Trump hates science.

Trump then arranged for the National Park Service add hydrogen peroxide to the water, which didn't do much to kill the algae but did break up the paint on the pool floor and brought it up in chunks of various sizes.  But I think the Trump brothers have a solution for that.

This is just a parody, but don't be surprised if it becomes something real.

But while it's an abomination to see what Trump is doing to Washington, one thing I cannot tolerate is how white bourgeois liberals complain about the desecration of the national capital's landscape but is totally unmoved by the desecration of the nation's landscape.  They have a lot of damn gall to complain about how Trump is making Washington D.C. ugly when they drive to the local big-box chain store, pass strip shopping centers, large, loud illuminated signs and cartoonish fast-food eateries, and probably pass through - or live in - a subdivision of bland houses and sidewalks that lead nowhere (assuming they have sidewalks) . . . and don't think twice of how ugly and degrading this all is.  They don't like what Trump is doing to Washington, D.C. yet they don't mind an America that has become one big Breezewood, Pennsylvania. 

You know, as problematic as "The Star-Spangled Banner" is, maybe "America the Beautiful" shouldn't be our national anthem.

Clive, We Hardly Knew Ye

Clive Davis, who died at 94, was one of the giants in the music business.  Many of the artists he supported were all about music, while he was the business.  He scored a fantastic deal with Neil Diamond at Columbia, he discovered Janis Joplin and signed Bruce Springsteen when he was at that label, developed Patti Smith's career, and resurrected the careers of Aretha Franklin and Graham Parker by signing them at Arista, the label he founded in the mid-seventies.

But while Clive Davis was a great man, he was not always a good man.  Black women - you know where this is going, right? - have taken to social media to set the record straight about how he handled the careers of artists of their race and their sex.  As the head of Arista, he tried to push Phyllis Hyman into recording more contemporary pop and disco in the late seventies when she insisted on remaining true to her jazz roots, and when he brought Angela Bofill to Arista, he promoted her at Hyman's expense, causing an immediate rift between the two women.  He had even more success with promoting Whitney Houston, but her own records were a disappointment to many critics who found her a formidable virtuoso who recorded the blandest, weakest songs ever conceived.  In Essex County, New Jersey, where Whitney Houston was born and raised (and where I was born and have lived for fifty of my sixty years, so I know a thing or two about this), the disappointment bordered on disgust, where black listeners familiar with Houston's gospel chops were incensed at how watered down her pop sound was.  

And the disgust many people felt with Davis goes beyond black women.  Kelly Clarkson called Davis a bully and said his handling of her recording career was toxic, and Kelly Clarkson is one of America's pop sweethearts, so her take on Davis ought to be taken more seriously.  One didn't need to be a music-business outsider to note Davis's commercial and artistic missteps throughout the years.  He signed Barry Manilow to Columbia in 1973, then brought him to Arista a year later when he and Columbia parted ways, and he chose to guide Manilow into a weird Tin Pan Alley-pop-rock bombast sound for much of Manilow's career.  He managed to sign the one supergroup of the eighties that had potential - the KBC Band, a band comprised of Jefferson Airplane alumni Paul Kantner, Marty Balin, and Jack Casady - only to give them inadequate promotion, leading to their swift dissolution, even as Davis signed the short-lived GTR, whose only album you already know about. 

Perhaps Davis's most egregious blunder, apart from promoting Sean Combs by giving him tons of money (and I prefer not to talk about what happened to him!), was issuing Milli Vanilli's only album on Arista in the United States at the end of 1988, which became the biggest selling-album of 1989 and probably the biggest-selling album of the 1980s apart from Michael Jackson's Thriller.  Milli Vanilli's LP sold ten million copies and spawned four huge hit singles.  When it turned out that Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan, the Vanilli boys in question, weren't the real singers on the record, Davis responded with a defense commonly used by President Ronald Reagan through the last years of his administration - he knew nothing about it.

But even if Pilatus and Morvan weren't the real singers - and I don't want to dump on the duo because they've been shamed enough already - the fact that Arista used all sorts of promotional hijinks to push ten million copies of a record with lifeless vocalizing and soulless performances suggests a real lack of ethics at the label, as well as disregard for a scandal which Davis, even if he didn't know about the deception, should have been on top of. 

The Reagan reference notwithstanding, Clive Davis may very well have been the Richard Nixon of the music business - he had the power to do good, he had the power to do evil, and he did both.  It's a complicated legacy, yes, but if the results of Davis's career include giving Graham Parker the opportunity to record Squeezing Out Sparks - an album I love and haven't written about on this blog yet - I'm not going to be too judgmental.   

Washington As the New St. Petersburg

Not St Petersburg, Florida. St. Petersburg, Russia.  Because like the Russian city, Washington was built on a fetid swamp with the sole intention of being a national capital.  But like its Russian antecedent, Washington, D.C. is fated to be a national capital no more.

I say this in part because I beleive that the United States is destined to split into separate countries, and as a secessionist, I am rooting for this outcome.  It is unlikely to be a capital city for whatever post-Union country assumes possession of it, because Trump has already rendered it tarnished beyond recognition.  Not only is he still trying to turn the White House into a Middle Atlantic Mar-a-Lago, with the ballroom and all that, he has had the floor of the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial a painted deep indigo blue, which absorbs daytime heart and causes algae to bloom.  When Trump had hydrogen peroxide poured into the water to fight the algae blooms, the paint came off, leaving a gunky blue and green mess.

And the triumphal arch for the western end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge is yet to come.

Washington should obviously lose its status as a national capital, given all of this.  Even if a future Democratic President theoretically tried to undo the damage - damage that possibly includes the UFC giant claw remaining in place on the White House South Lawn - the memory of the desecration would still linger.  And a Middle Atlantic republic that forms out of the states from the 36°30′ north line between Virginia and North Carolina to the farthest reaches of upstate new York will likely declare New York City to be its capital to take advantage of its large population and metropolitan area as well as its central location in the seven states that form the Middle Atlantic region. 

Therefore, Washington will likely become what St. Petersburg is today - a politically irrelevant and unimportant town with beautiful old government buildings that have long since outlived their purposes and have been repurposed for other uses.  I have addressed this topic in earlier posts; this post updates those ideas in light of Trump's recent attempts to beautify a city that didn't need much beautification in the first place.  

The various memorials and monuments will take on new meanings.  Presidential memorials honoring Presidents from different regions of the former United States will have their fates decided on a case-by-case basis.  The Jefferson Memorial, given Thomas Jefferson's inappropriate (to say the least) relationship with a female slave, will likely have its statue of Jefferson and its Jefferson quotes removed, becoming a mere granite gazebo.  The Lincoln Memorial might be enclosed possibly expanded to become a sculpture museum like the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia. 

The Capitol itself could become a grand new art museum, much in the way that Louvre in Paris was converted into an art museum after having been a royal palace.  It seems that the current Capitol building is actually too small for the number of House of Representatives members need to represent everyone in America adequately.  Therefore, as a government building, the Capitol is already antiquated.  And it would be too big for a successor state to the U.S. What is now called the National Gallery of Art would appreciate all the extra space.

The Supreme Court - the scene of many recent crimes against the common good - has a building that's actually much larger than it appears at the front.  Given that the Kennedy Center is an ugly piece of modernist Third Reich-inspired crap, the best solution would be to turn the Supreme Court building into a performing arts complex.  Given the current composition of the Court and its cavalier overturning of precedent, there are enough drama queens performing there already anyway. 

And the White House?  Uh, yeah, given how Trump has desecrated the executive mansion, the whole damn thing ought to be razed and have an apartment complex built on it.  

But the earth will have to be salted, given Trump's chronic inability to changed his Depends.

I had originally proposed expanding Lafayette park on the site of the White House, but you can;t plant flowers in salted earth. 

The Library of Congress?  It'll just be a library like any other, only it will have every book over written.  We can rename it the Robert Klein Library, after the stand-up comedian who parodied late-night television ads with his stand-up skit "Every Record Ever Recorded" (and the Library of Congress has every record ever recorded, too!)

Plus if you act now, you get an ice crusher.

("My name is Conrad Jarvis, and I’ve been dead for six years, but this idea is so brilliant, I had to come back to tell you about it.")

Almost any other remaining government building can be turned into a hotel.

And Washington's name?  Well, George Washington was the Father of Our Country, but without a country for Washington to be the father of, we can simply name it what it was when it was a little Maryland village absorbed into the District of Columbia - Georgetown.

And yes, it should be returned to Maryland.  What's it going to be a federal district of? 

Over time, Georgetown Maryland, the city formerly known as Washington, D.C., will become a splendid tourist attraction for its grand buildings and boulevards, the city being reimagined in its new role as a center of culture and historic preservation and, like St, Petersburg, it can still function as a naval hub thanks to its Navy yard.  It may even become more important as its own city than as a national capital entombed in a federal district where the locals have no representation in the national government.  But its role as a center of global power is pretty much gone, and it will in that respect be a shadow of its former self.

As for what to do with the Pentagon . . . I'd rather not let myself think about it. 

Music Video Of the Week - June 19, 2026

"Days We Left Behind" by Paul McCartney  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Iran Over It

Trump apparently signed a deal regarding fourteen points for peace with Iran to end what has been the shortest lost war in American history with consequences that will last a long time.  

Mr. Trump and his fourteen points bore me.  Even God Almighty has only ten.

Under the deal, Iran gets to keep its ballistic missiles, continues to enrich uranium, gets $300 million for reconstruction of areas destroyed in the war, and can close the Strait of Hormuz any time it wants.  Plus, it gets fees for its usage.  In the memo of "understand" that Trump endorsed, the issue of funding terrorism in Lebanon and Yemen remain unresolved.  These topics are for discussion later.

Much later.

To recap: 

Ladies and gentlemen, America is the latter-day Habsburg empire.

Time to break it up for good.  

Not Feeling It

I understand the U.S. men's national soccer team won its first game in the 2026 World Cup, defeating Paraguay 4-1 in spectacular fashion.  Yeah, I didn't see it.

I'm not really interested in to the World Cup this time around.  I haven't found the time to follow the tournament, mainly because I've been busy with other things.

Likewise, I barely got excited with schadenfreude when I saw that Trump's eightieth birthday party turned out to be a dud, with Trump falling asleep during the UFC fight on the White House lawn while the winner of the fight - executed in oppressive heat and humidity under a severe thunderstorm watch  - was calling Michelle Obama a man.  Maybe if there had been a severe thunderstorm that had struck the cage and electrocuted people who deserved it, I might have felt a spring in my step.  Instead, I was like, "whatever."

And the 250th anniversary of American independence?  No interest in celebrating it, which is why I'll be in London on the Fourth.  That's another post, though.

Trump has pretty much managed to suck the life out of everything in These States, and it's a wonder I can drum up enough enthusiasm to go to the supermarket.

As Van Morrison once said . . . 

Music Video Of the Week - June 12, 2026

"Another Rainy Day In New York City" by Chicago  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

World Flop

Am I going to watch the games of the World Cup, which commenced today?  Ahh . . . probably not.  

I used to like soccer - loved it, in fact.  I still love soccer.  But Trump has ruined the whole damn tournament by cheapening it with his incestuous relationship with FIFA chairman Gianni Infantino, and the big businesses who are pushing the tournament have been gouging the fans even as more and more foreigners are steering clear of the matches in the U.S.  And for good reason - numerous officials and referees have been barred entry because of tough entry requirements from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which are designed to keep a lot of brown people from even considering coming here.  Even white Europeans who have had the misfortune of traveling to the United States have gotten snagged in ICE's net/  The whole thing is going to be a joyless affair.

The good news?  The hotels and the stadiums charging top dollar for their rooms and their tickets, respectively, are going to lose their shirts, which means that their greedy efforts to fleece the fans will go unrewarded.  People outside the North American mainland are going to the Canadian and Mexican matches and ignoring the U.S. matches even as the teams playing in the States are establishing bases of operation right over the borders in Canada and Mexico.  Even Americans don't want to go to the American matches.  And why would Americans want to root for the home team?

Our team still sucks.  It sucks now, it has always sucked, and it will suck for eternity.

Our team sucks as if it can't suck enough.  It sucks so much, it didn't even qualify for the 2018 World Cup tournament in Russia.  Hmm, who was President then?

Everything Trump touches dies. 

El Ocho Vocho

I speculated earlier that the eighth-generation Volkswagen Golf, unavailable in base form in the United States and Canada and unavailable in any form in Mexico, might be available in base form in the New World once VW's Mexican factory in Puebla took over production of the venerable hatchback from the home factory in Wolfsburg.  Volkswagen of America president Kjell Gruner spoke on that possibility for the first time ever this past week.

Gruner has become aware that Americans have been asking for more variations of the Golf because the high-performance GTI and R editions are increasingly out of reach - a far cry from the more affordable Golf that Americans remember debuting in 1975 in the States as the Rabbit, when it only cost $2,999 - $18,564 in today's dollars.  The entry-level GTI currently starts at twice that much.  Americans who love Volkswagen still appreciate the practicality and versatility of a hatchback, and they - we - have always been VW's most loyal customers.  With only the Jetta and the Tiguan within reach for many if not most American VW customers, Gruner is certainly interested in reintroducing the base Golf here once production of the car commences in Puebla. The lower costs of production in Mexico - the whole reason the Mark 8 Golf is being made there in the first place - will make such a move possible.

Maybe.  Because right now, cars made in Mexico are subject to a 25 percent tariff, which would make it not impossible to offer the Golf here but would certainly make it difficult.  The profit margins on affordable cars are so thin that it's hard to make much money on them, given the costs that go into developing the cars have been rising thanks to more regulations and more tech.  And Volkswagen of America no longer has larger midsize cars like the Passat and probably not enough SUVs to offset losses on affordable-car sales.  So Gruner would undoubtedly like to see the Mexico tariff reduced to 15 percent, which would put it in line with the import taxes on cars imported from elsewhere.  Will that happen?  That's anyone's guess.

But, given Gruner's desire to keep the Golf and Jetta available in the United States as the souls of the brand, it seems like the base Golf could finally arrive here after all.

Would I buy one?  At this point, probably not.  I've invested lots of money to keep my sixth-generation Golf as new, and I'm wary of getting a new Golf that has more tech than I know what to do with.  I may not want a Mark 8 Golf, but I'd like the opportunity to buy one.  Or, as women always like to say about boyfriends, "I don't want to marry you, but I want you to ask me."  I want Volkswagen to offer me the chance to buy a 2027 Golf in base form, even if I ultimately decide against it.  

But if I can get an eTSI hybrid like the one I rented in Germany last summer, I might be tempted . . ..

And Of Course, There Will Be Sport

Trump meant it when he said their would be an Ultimate Fighting Championship mixed-martial arts event on the White House South Lawn for the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding, and he has gone one better by having the most vulgar arena on the lawn for people's enjoyment.

Trump loves the damn thing so much, he's thinking of making it permanent.  How could be possibly suggest making it permanent when no one else wants it, unless he's planning to stay for life?

Which hopefully won't be that long.

Trump looking forward to the UFC fights scheduled for this coming Sunday - his eightieth birthday - assuming he has something to look forward to.  The group Public Integrity Project has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration saying that Trump's approval of this UFC spectacle went against National Park Service regulations banning sporting events on federal parkland, which includes the White House itself.  This is unlikely to stop Trump any more than legal rulings against the planned White House ballroom, but UFC fighters might; some of them have vowed not to take part in the event, and even Joe Rogan questioned the logic of having a mixed-martial arts fight outdoors on a day that is expected to be 91 degrees Fahrenheit with high humidity - in short, a typical Washington, D.C. day in June. 

And as if all that weren't enough, Trump is attending, as I type, the New York Knicks basketball playoff game in Midtown Manhattan, even though he hasn't been welcome in New York City since he changed his legal residence to his one-time winter residence in Florida, ruining the game for ticket holders whether the Knicks win or not by creating the mother of all frozen zones, and he's likely to take advantage of the moment to fake another assassination attempt.

Having already desecrated the World Cup and having brought Dana White's UFC league to what should be now called the Dana White House, and having decided to ruin the National Basketball Association, Trump has me left to only wonder what he has in store for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.  I talked about that already.

Sweet Home Albania

While Trump wreaks havoc over what's left of our government (and making it that much easier to break up the country into smaller independent states, as there won't be much of a government left) and remodels and destroys the White House beyond recognition (another reason it will be easier to dissolve the Union), Ivanka Trump is making her own little investment in real estate (sorry, I have no parenthetical clause to offer here about breaking up the country).   

Ivanka came upon this marvelous little island, two square miles large, in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Albania.  Oops!  Correction: Contrary to Ivanka's insistence, this island is in the Adriatic Sea.  Anyway, she thought it would make a nice place to take up residence and build a grand luxury resort looking out on the Mediterranean - I mean, the Adriatic. 

While a lot of MAGA Republicans have nothing wrong with Ivanka buying an island off the coast of Albania in the Gulf of America near Mobile (see what I did there?) the Albanian people are livid, as the island, Sazan, is a former military installation in the Soviet satellite area, with many tunnels and pillboxes still intact, that is now a wildlife refuge.  The prime minister of Albania, elected on a promise to rid the government of corruption, approved the deal for this proposed resort, which is being spearheaded by Affinity Partners, the investment firm founded by . . . Jared Kushner. 

Ivanka vowed not to get involved in politics after her father set out to regain the White House, but her husband's deal with a corrupt leader, which has sparked demonstrations all across Albania, and her own enthusiasm for this project have landed her dead center in what has already become a global controversy.  Benito Mussolini may have actually caused less consternation when he invaded Albania in April 1939.   The resort is bound to cause a great deal of environmental destruction on Sazan Island, undermining its significance as a marine sanctuary, and the jobs it will create will mainly be jobs in which Albanian domestic workers tend to the whims of wealthy American real-estate con men, a third of which will be named Trump, a third of which will be named Kushner, and a third of which are likely to be an assortment of other names from the Epstein files.    

There's only one thing Ivanka and Jared can do to stop this controversy - give up the project.  Don't even scale it down to a respectable size.  Just give up on this Albania getaway.  The only way for them  to please Albanians is to just get down and leave and walk away.

Music Video Of the Week - June 5, 2026

"Twist and Shout" by the Beatles  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Time's Up

I stopped watching "60 Minutes over six months ago, when Norah O'Donnell interviewed Trump for the program and failed to challenge any of his lies, and I refused to watch that interview as well.  But I knew in the back of my mind that the program could always get worse.

It did, and in just the past several days.  After CNN's Anderson Cooper chose not to continued reporting for "60 Minutes" as a sideline - and, given that CNN is about to be acquired by the same power-hungry Zionist family that owns CBS, the Ellisons, he's not long for that network either - CBS reported that "60 Minutes" correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, whose story on the Salvadoran concentration camp for undocumented migrants apprehended in the U.S. was shelved by CBS News dominatrix Bari Weiss but then aired after massive protests against her decision, learned that management had rendered to nullify her contract after careful consideration of her state of employment.  In other words, she was sacked.  Then the last hired was the second fired - Cecilia Vega, the new girl on the "60 Minutes" on-air staff, was also let go, as was the program's producer, Tanya Simon, who had been on the job for only one year. 

The big surprise came when CBS veteran Scott Pelley went into a meeting with Weiss and Nick Bilton, Tanya Simon's successor as the producer "60 Minutes," who according to some sources, has less experience in television than Weiss.  Pelley accused Weiss and Bilton of "murdering" the news-magazine broadcast.  Bilton publicly and noisily dismissed Pelley for his attitude, which is extraordinary because no one knew that Pelley had an attitude.  Pelley likely knew it was a matter of time before he followed Alfonsi and Vega out the door, and he didn't give a twit because he had no more twits to give.  But he did have a couple of twits to tweak - namely, Bari Weiss and Nick Bilton.

I'd be happy to see Alfonsi, Vega and Pelley start a YouTube channel together and join the independent-media bandwagon, but if such a channel materializes, don't expect them to produce investigative journalism like they did on television.  Stories of the sort these three correspondents did on "60 Minutes" require deep pockets and a cadre of lawyers to back them up, and YouTube channels usually have neither.   Thanks to Trump and his oligarch allies, we won't see much in the way of news stories that calls out corruption and scandal, and outlets like ProPublica, which do that sort of work, will become more important.  But one must remember that legacy media, even CBS News, don't have a legacy that's always worth celebrating.  How far back do you want to go?  Bear in mind, that after Edward R. Murrow exposed Joe McCarthy as a fraud, CBS quietly reassigned him to "interview" celebrities on the chat show "Person to Person," which included an "interview" with Harpo Marx, in which the quiet Marx brother stayed in character and mimed his answers to Murrow's perfunctory questions.  And you don't have to go back to far at CNN to remember how the news channel fired Soledad O'Brien - who, being white, black and Hispanic, as well as a woman, was a walking DEI program - because she asked too many people too many tough questions.  Fired for doing one's job, what is the world coming to? She won the admiration of Stephen Colbert, but not much else.

Speaking of Colbert, his CBS late-night talk show just ended with a bang, and Bryon Allen's stand-up compilation show, which replaced Colbert, began with a whimper.  And even though late-night talk shows are going out of style like neighborhood bars and front porches, Colbert's show was the highest-rated of the late-night talk shows by a wide margin, and the two Jimmys, Fallon at NBC and Kimmel at ABC, still dull respectable ratings of their own.   Colbert was a dwindling return on investment due to falling ad revenue, to be sure, and he was allowed to remain on the air until the end of his contract, but it's becoming obvious that the only reason he's no longer on the air is because Trump wanted him off the air due to Colbert's anti-Trump political satire.  If dwindling revenue from advertisers were the only reason for Colbert to leave television, Fallon and Kimmel would have joined him in exile.  

And to those who find it unprecedented that a President forced a comedian off CBS, you can ask Dick Smothers about that, as he and his brother Tom (who died in 2023) saw their Sunday night variety show canceled because of their political satire against President Nixon.  Ask Dick Smothers how he and his brother had also lampooned President Johnson, but be sure to also ask him about the letter that Johnson sent the Smothers Brothers after he left office, which the brothers read aloud at the end of their final show in 1969, in which the thirty-sixth President lauded them for their clever satire and said that the right to make fun of political figures was necessary to preserve freedom of speech in America.  Nixon clearly didn't agree.

Though, Nixon did appear on CBS in October 1968 while campaigning for the Presidency to talk to a correspondent of this new CBS news magazine, on its second-ever episode, about his candidacy.  The correspondent was Mike Wallace.  The program was "60 Minutes."

"Let me make this one point.  Some public men are destined to be loved, and other public men are destined to be disliked, but the most important thing about a public man is not whether  he's loved or disliked but whether he's respected, and I hope to restore respect to the Presidency at all levels by my conduct." - Richard Nixon, on CBS's "60 Minutes," October 8, 1968

Free Dumb 250

It sounded good on paper.  The Trump regime planned to have a series of concerts to lead to the big quarter-millennial anniversary of American independence next month.  Except that the performers that Trump singed up were a bunch of undertalented, washed-up hasbeens from the early nineties.  And Martina McBride.

As it turned out, all of those performers (except for one Robert Van Winkle - Google the name to see who he is) slated for Freedom 250 have been backing out one by one, and McBride was the first one to withdraw, saying that she thought she was signing up for a concert to celebrate the country when in fact she came to realize - as did almost all of the other performers - that Freedom 250 was a celebration of Donald Trump.  The most recent dropout was Fabrice Morvan, one half of Milli Vanilli, the infamous Afro-German duo caught lip-syncing to someone else's voices.  (Robert Pilatus, the other performer in the group, died in 1997.)  Morvan, now a successful record producer in Germany, withdrew saying that a Trump celebration is not what he signed up for.

Dude, when you've lose Fabrice Morvan, you've lost the world.  (I could name all of the other performers who bailed out, but that's not important.)

Trump decided to cancel the whole damn thing, realizing that pretty soon, all he'd have left for the concerts were bands like Trippy the Hippie, the Freakouts, Chocolate Raspberry, Dummy Mummy, Mellow Monster Music, The Elders of Sandwich, and the Candy Cigarettes.  (I have just made those band names up.)  So, instead of Freedom 250, he's going to have - you guessed it! - a rally.

Of course.

Meanwhile, Trump has been making a big deal of how most people don't realize that there's a silent "b" at the end of "dumb."

Come on, Trump, even Dan Quayle knows that. 

Pax Texana

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Warren Kenneth Paxton.

Ken Paxton is the Attorney General of the not-so-great state of Texas.  He is best known for drastically reducing the sentence of an imprisoned pedophile and allowing him to go free, and he has used his office to enrich himself and his Big Oil donors in the Lone Star State.

And now he's the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.

That alone is scary enough.  He also has a chance of winning, because . . . it's Texas.

Texas hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988, and the last Democrat to occupy the seat Paxton has been nominated for was Lyndon Johnson.  Texans have learned to hate the Democrats for their policies and their positions, and Democrats have learned to hate them back, rarely winning any elections in the state beyond a few mayoralties and a few state and federal legislative seats.

But now Texas has a Democrat who could win the seat Paxton seeks to acquire.

He is State Representative James Talarico, thirty-seven years old, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.  He's running hard on the economy and on the stink of Paxton's corruption, which is pretty fetid.  Paxton is considered the most corrupt politician in Texas and the second most corrupt person in America after the Trumps, who are tied for first.  He is so laser-focused on the hard times Texans are going through and the cavalier disregard Paxton has for the people that he is on track to give Paxton a tough fight.

But is he on track to win?  Texas has moved from "solid Republican" to "lean Republican" in the Cook Political Report's analysis of U.S. Senate campaigns, meaning that he's not exactly winning now and he certainly hasn't won.  Because . . . it's Texas.  Democrats have spent the past thirty-odd years trying and failing to win a statewide election, and Talarico could end up being no more than another shooting star like the politically dead and unlamented Beto O'Rourke, but as long as he can avoid culture-war issues and identity-politics pitfalls, he might just make it.

I bring up identity politics because Talarico defeated U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett, who is black, in the primary election earlier this year.  Talarico has a head start, though, as Paxton and incumbent Senator John Cornyn had to slug it out in a runoff primary, which Paxton won last week thanks in part to Trump's endorsement of him.  But after he defeated Crockett, many black female voters in Texas were ticked off that a smart, progressive, accomplished black woman lost to a honky that they've vowed to boycott the general election and let Paxton win, even if it means the end of free and fair elections in Texas and beyond as we know it.

It's Texas.

Music Video Of the Week - May 29, 2026

"Kid Charlemagne" by Steely Dan  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Our Cup Doth Not Runneth Over

The 2026 World Cup in North America is in trouble before it's even begun.  People are refusing to come to the American matches as part of a tourism boycott of the United States.  FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who is in cahoots with Donald Trump, has tried to milk soccer fans for they're worth and overcharge them for tickets, and no one is buying them.  Far fewer people are reserving rooms in the hotels in the eleven U.S. cities hosting the matches.  People are describing the World Cup, according to MeidasTouch network Ben Meisalas, as a "non-event."

Hey, Donald, is America great again yet?

Infantino promised that the World Cup tournament would be an economic engine that would be the equivalent of 104 Super Bowls - 104 being the number of matches to be played in this tournament - but in the eleven U.S. host cities, that prediction has obviously turned out wrong.  Most foreigners don't want to come here because of the restrictions on travel to the United States (and when enough Americans get wise to MAGA, that's when we'll see Trump implement restrictions on travel from the United States!) and because of Trump's hostility toward every country in the world not named Russia or Israel and not located on the Arabian Peninsula.  

It gets worse.  Meisalas has reported that bookings are even behind a typical summer vacation season.  FIFA has even had trouble making a licensing deal with China and India, the two most populous nations in the world and about one-fourth of the world's population put together, to ensure World Cup broadcasts there.  And tickets are not only expensive for the American games, but also for games in Canada and Mexico, and almost no one in Mexico can afford them.  Here in These States, the U.S. men's team's opening match in Los Angeles, the U.S. men's national team versus Paraguay, can't have a sellout despite expectations of one.

Fortunately, that's not very serious.  After all, this is the U.S. men's soccer team, the Colorado Rockies of international soccer. 

Trump bragged about having the World Cup, the 250th anniversary of the United States' founding, and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics all under his watch after he forced Kamala Harris into early retirement.  But not only is the American semiquincentennial a meh-fest, the World Cup is collapsing before his and our eyes.  Because Trump and Infantino turned what should have been a celebration of the three major nations of North America into a corrupted cash cow.  And the Olympics?  Oh, honey, that is going to be another great disaster.   And the idea that Trump, not native Californian and Los Angeles resident Kamala Harris, will be presiding over the opening ceremonies with the governor of California of an Olympiad already redolent of Berlin 1936 is itself redolent.  

At least, whoever the governor is, it won't be Eric Swalwell.

The Los Angeles 2028 organizing committee is already dealing with its chair Casey Wasserman having ended up being mentioned in the Epstein files, and Trump's inevitable efforts to make the Games all about him will make it worse.  And yet the committee's chief athletics officer - a champion athlete you might have heard of, Janet Evans - is still convinced that these Games will turn out fine.

Uh, Janet?  Honey?  Can I see you in my office?  Because we need to seriously talk about the prospect of your resignation from the LA 28 organizing committee so that you do not go down with this ship.  

As for the rest of you reading this, I don't need to tell you again that the International Olympic Committee only awarded the 2028 Olympics to Los Angeles eleven years in advance because they apparently figured that Trump would be gone long before then; either he's be re-elected in 2020 and be an ex-President by 2025 at the latest or be voted out of office and not make a comeback, because no such thing had happened in American politics since 1892.  Yeah, you can ask John Cornyn how that calculation turned out for him!  (I'll have more on that later.)

Do I plan to watch any of the World Cup.  I don't know.  Maybe.  I can't root for the home team, of course, because being an American these days is nothing to take pride in, and of course, the home team sucks anyway.  Let's just say I plan to give the World Cup the same attention I gave to the Winter Olympics this past February. 

You can now draw your own conclusions.

Primary News

I never got back to this story before now, but as you likely already know, Analilia Mejia is my congresswoman.  She won the April 16 special election.

A Latina progressive who used to work for Bernie Sanders is now representing a centrist Republican-leaning district in the U.S. House of Representatives - whod'a thunk?

But the show's not over yet, this one's a double feature.  Representative Mejia has to go through another Democratic primary a week ago from today against, as far as I know, three competitors to stand in November for the full two-year term that starts in January.  And in November, is she wins the primary next week, she'll face the persistent Joe Hathaway on the Republican side once again, meaning I'll have to deal with more racist GOP flyers in the mail.

Meanwhile, the Texas Republican primary runoff to decide the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate is today, in which Republican voters have to choose between incumbent Senator John Cornyn and the Trump-backed, wholly corrupt state Attorney General Ken Paxton.  The winner faces James Talarico, who's competing to be the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas since . . . 1988.

Wake me when it's over.   

Faith and Flag?

One week after getting confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church, the church of my birth, I had a disturbing experience at Mass today.

The service began with the priest speaking about Memorial Day and asking that we show respect for those who have died in service of the United States.  That was fine by me, but a parishioner marked the moment by carrying a large American flag to the altar, where he placed into a flag stand where the very same flag always rests.

Although today as the observation of the Pentecost, the priest's homily linked the Pentecost to the values of patriotism and the celebration of freedom and liberty in America. Freedom and liberty in an America run by Donald Trump? Every Catholic homily in every parish in the world was devoted to the Pentecost, because homilies are always based on the same Scriptures on any given Sunday, but how many Pentecost homilies in other parts of the world were associated with patriotism and nationalism?  Not many, to be sure, since the association in my priest's homily was part of the Memorial Day theme, but even in countries observing national holidays in late May, would there be any nationalistic homilies?

The closing hymn at Mass in my parish was "America the Beautiful," which, despite the mention of God, is mostly a secular song celebrating the nation's natural beauty and is more national anthem material (and it's a pity it's not our national anthem) than a sacred song  Earlier, the vocalist sang "God Bless America," one of those songs that would have offended Jeremiah Wright. When I walked outside after Mass ended, I notices small banners on the lawn like the one below, celebrating America's 250th birthday and celebrating "faith, family and freedom" - and Trump has done an excellent job in severely damaging all three. And, of course there were manty miniature flags on display.  I was so upset about the nationalism in today's Mass that I bumped into a chain-link fence post backing my car out of the parking space. (Don't worry, both my car and I are fine.)

This all obviously made an impression on me.  Hey, why fib?  It may be true that Pope Leo XIV is an American and obviously cares about the moral turpitude and the hypocritical un-Christian behavior of MAGA supporters, some if not many of whom are Catholics, but Leo doesn't see the Church as being a personal dominion and a reflection of his own Americanism.  It's a universal church, which is what the word "catholic" means.  Unlike Leo, though, many of his forebears in the American Church have tried to guide the faithful in a uniquely American understanding of the Gospels to link the faith to American values.  This has been a tradition so longstanding and so disturbing that the previous Leo, Pope Leo XIII, who reigned in the late nineteenth century, complained to his American bishops about it. 

I recommitted myself to the Church not out of patriotism but to put my trust in God and honor the Holy Father and his agenda for the Church - help for the poor, support for life from cradle to grave, humility toward the Holy Trinity.  I did not recommit myself to the Church to worship at the altar of the United States of America.  If I wanted to devote myself to a faith that imagines Jesus as an embodiment of American values, I'd have become a Mormon.

I'm sure I mentioned this here on my blog before, but when I went to France and Germany, I could count the national flags in Catholic cathedrals there on zero fingers.   European Catholicism, given its history of integration with the state, is now dissociated from secular governments that run Catholic-majority countries like France, Ireland and Italy.  In France, as part of the need to separate church and state, the government owns the houses of worship and gives the Church the right to use the buildings for free - unlike in America, where the Church owns the houses of worship and gets tax exemptions.  Also, American Catholics, having fought hard for acceptance by the Protestant majority, have traditionally emphasized patriotism to demonstrate their devotion to this country.  But how can American Catholics continue to do so when a Christian nationalist dictatorship led by the least religious President in U.S. history is attempting to construct the most repressive society since the Third Reich?  While Leo continues to move the Church in a more humanistic direction and speak out against Trump's inhumane policies, many MAGA Catholics decry the pope's involvement in politics (he's a head of state, how can he not be involved in politics?) and denounce the Church's direction toward humility and acceptance since the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI.  (Noted MAGA Catholic Steve Bannon considered Pope Francis a disaster.)  The American Church should not be celebrating America as an extension of the faith, and certainly not in this semiquincentennial year of American independence.  The liberty that America supposedly represents cannot be seen as integral to or entwined in the Catholic faith when the United States has curtailed liberty under Trump.

In other words, the Church should be illuminating the lack of freedom and justice in America rather than celebrate the freedom and justice it only nominally represents today.  It should be resisting, not celebrating, the America that exists now.  And, given my secessionist views, the Church should be prepared for the fall of the United States as sure as the European empires it once consecrated dissolved.

Every Sunday after Mass, in addition to praying for my late mother, I'm always praying for the cancer in Washington to be removed and by any means that God deems necessary and just. As noted before in this space, I have already decided that my allegiance is to the Holy Father in Rome, not to the Antichrist in Washington.