tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22092904777473331702024-03-18T21:13:27.682-07:00shawn drawnshawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.comBlogger542125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-10501841513898987872018-12-20T07:12:00.002-08:002018-12-20T18:48:35.142-08:00As promised (to myself, anyway), my last post<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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She was Pearly, but hardly ever <i>Pearly</i>. She was Pearly Girl, Funny Face, Fuzzy Face, Goofball, Goof Nugget, Old Girl, Old Puppy. What was her breed? It depended on who asked: TerriBull sometimes, but more often Arctic Pygmy Wolf.<br />
<br />
She was Sugar Booger, Sugar Butt, Chicken Butt, Punkin' Dolly, Pearly Boo and Pearly Boom Boom. Sweety Poppers and Kokomo Joe, the Eskimo. Grumpy Gus in her last months.<br />
<br />
Nancy called her Pur Pur, which is just silly.<br />
<br />
Pearly Ann (with an e?) Turner was her given name, supposedly. It never settled in me that she was another child of the family. "Owner" didn't seem right either because, most days, who owned whom? "Steward," is more like it. She came into our home, became part of our lives. Got fed, took walks, hung out. Win-win. <br />
<br />
Pearly passed away Sunday on one of her blankets, in a soft-lit room at the veterinarian's office. The drugs went into a catheter in her front leg, and soon she eased against Nancy, settling as if for one more morning nap, except her clouded eyes remained open, as the veterinarian had warned. Pearly looked as she did so many, many days, stretched across the hallway, her body a hair-trigger alarm, monitoring household traffic for the possibility of a meal.<br />
<br />
<i>[Bear with me. This is an ordinary story about an ordinary dog and ordinary people. You've probably been through this, but I — we — are new to it.]</i><br />
<br />
Our dog was a couple of weeks shy of her 17th birthday. After she passed, the veterinarian asked us just to knock on the inner door when we were done, and the staff would take care of the rest. Then she left. We tousled Pearly's warm stiff fur, trying not to say too much because it would only make us cry. The last I saw of our dog as the outer door swung closed was her front paws, having grown long and slender, somehow, in her last year. We composed ourselves for the walk out.<br />
<br />
<i>Are we waiting for her ... or are you waiting for us?</i> Nancy asked the vet the weekend before.<br />
<br />
<i>She has no quality of life anymore,</i> the vet said. A<i>nd I'm afraid she is only going to get worse. It's a decision you have to make.</i><br />
<br />
In that week it <i>was</i> getting worse. Her hind legs, stiff and straight, had become stiff and bent. Her front legs splayed out to hold her weight. In the last few months, she stood and mostly stared, at us, at the darkness outside the window. I think it hurt to sit. She leaned against the wall of the kitchen, the carpet giving her traction, watching dinner cook. Her desire to eat had by then been matched her dread of having to ice skate across the slick kitchen floor to her dish. When she slept, it came after the reluctant effort of falling to the floor.<br />
<br />
Her voice had gone. She barked hoarsely at the advent of her morning mixture of oatmeal and dry kibble. She whined, but no noise came. When we petted her, she shrank back with a start, unaware we were standing beside her. After a few seconds of petting, she snarled and snapped to be let alone.<br />
<br />
But she could eat! She could always eat. She could eat and get sick if we let her, and right away eat again. As our daughter memorialized, Pearly loved people but loved food more.<br />
<br />
The veterinarian made us understand it was the wrong barometer to measure her life.<br />
<br />
How fierce is youth and how fast it goes, is what Pearly taught me.<br />
<br />
We got her at the pound. She was Hope on the paperwork, but became Pearly because her puppy fur was bright, almost shimmery. The
fur on her tail braided like berber carpet nearly to its tip. <i>Hope</i> would still have been a good name for her, always hoping for food.<br />
<br />
The kids
wanted her, and I did not, mostly because it ended up just as I had
expected, with me caring and feeding. <br />
<br />
But as I suspect for most dogs, Pearly made the burden bearable. Even if she did chew the furniture.<br />
<br />
Pearly fit my lifestyle at the time, freelancing from home. We started the day with a long walk, sometimes driving to explore unfamiliar faraway neighborhoods. Her first walk was a disaster, though; after I took off her leash back home, it was another hour before I found her, scootched as far back as she could under our son's bed, afraid of the world. But the next day she was ready to venture again. I was so naive I didn't realize a big reason dogs like walks is so they can poop. A kitchen drawer is still filled with bags for the purpose.<br />
<br />
She napped in my office, then sprang up at my slightest movement, hopeful it meant a car ride. She was my errand/delivery sidekick, using every available space in the car to scout the route and bark at dogs. She stood on the back seat and leaned against me, heavy and powerful, to look out the front window. Most days she got soft-serve ice cream as reward for averting danger. <br />
<br />
We took her to obedience classes and she became a good girl, showing all the useful tricks. Except how to act with other dogs. The obedience instructor got sick and canceled the class before we got to that part.<br />
<br />
On what turned out to be the last class the dogs were let off their leashes for free time. The other dogs chased Pearly into the floor-level compartment of a cat tree, where she batted at their attacks with one free paw. I don't think she ever forgot it, and for the rest of her life, while she could still see and hear and expend energy, she never let another dog pass by without a good chewing out. The same went for dogs on TV. She'd rage against them, then run out to the backyard, where they must be, to give them some more. To annoy dog-less guests, we had only to say, "Doggy on TV!" and Pearly would pollute the air with anger.<br />
<br />
Her mortal enemies, though, were garbage trucks. She could hear them from two blocks away and protested nonstop until the trucks passed. And we live on a cul de sac, doubling her outrage. The worst was getting caught on a walk when the garbage truck slowly passed, roaring and squeaking and whining. Pearly was almost impossible to contain.<br />
<br />
Somehow she loved horses. She became a superfan, whining and wiggling and tap dancing in their presence. Once we walked near the state fairgrounds, where trainers were taking trotters through their paces. Pearly went wild and chittery in a way I had never seen before; if we could have gone down to the track, it would have been the greatest moment in her life.<br />
<br />
Play with her long enough, and eventually Pearly would begin sprinting in boundless glee through the house, up the hallway and back again into the living room, skidding and turning in one motion, gathering again to race across the kitchen floor to the family room, and back again, full speed, the whites of her eyes showing as she looked down her snout. Then stop, panting happily.<br />
<br />
Our son reminisces about trips to the beach, vast expanses of sand on which, in the absence of people or dogs, she could run and run and run. And dig and dig. She loved the beach, our son says, but hated the ocean. Hated all water, in fact, except to drink. <br />
<br />
Our daughter reminds us Pearly didn't understand fetch. She'd run after what was thrown, but wouldn't retrieve it. Or if she did, wouldn't give it back.<br />
<br />
Pearly once could leap from a standing start onto our high bed, and command position for the night. It was almost hard to believe in her last days, when she refrained from even getting into her doggy bed with its shallow stuffed border, and fell to the floor instead.<br />
<br />
About two years ago, she decided her walks were done. She'd allow us to attach her leash and lead her out the door, but would stop at the corner, look at the world ahead, then turn around for home.<br />
<br />
She stopped going out in the backyard, which meant she stopped leaving a trail of leaves in the house. Garbage trucks and dogs passed without notice, because she could no longer notice them. It was a sort of blessing for her, because the noise no longer tormented her. I think it was some noise or other that once in a while would cause her to burrow deep into Nancy's closet, where she hid, buried in shoes, until found at the end of the day. <br />
<br />
I had one other dog, Taffy, when I was a kid. She was sandy-haired too, in memory much like Pearly. We kids wanted her; I don't think my dad did. She was an outdoor dog, untrained; whenever the gate was opened too long, Taffy would dart out and run down the street, who knows where. Because a bully lived on the other side of the back fence, I was not keen to spend much time with her in the backyard. But for my sister, the backyard was her realm, a walled city, and Taffy her subject, her steed, her companion.<br />
<br />
Taffy got old and sick and had to be taken away and put to sleep. I found my dad in the backyard by the gate, weeping. I had never seen him cry like that. "She's just a dog! Just a dog!" he kept saying. Stupid me realized at that moment dad was Taffy's carer and feeder. The reason I was shocked the first time Pearly pooped is because I don't remember ever seeing Taffy's poop in the yard. Dad did it all, and never said a word about it. Maybe he thought it one more chore he was tired of trying to get me to do.<br />
<br />
I guess I tried to make up for that with Pearly.<br />
<br />
<i>[On the morning she would be put to sleep, I went for a cleansing swim. The lake temperature had dropped, 52 or 53, about right for the season, and the current was strong, even at the wide shallow starting point. Good. It would give my body an unrelenting fight while my mind poked at thoughts.</i><br />
<br />
<i>[How far could I go this morning? It was hard to say. The current suggested I wouldn't make it farther than the third bridge. At the rocky island downstream from the second bridge, where the channel narrowed and the current strengthened, I began to make my bid, preparing to zag to the opposite bank where the back eddies lived and I had a fighting chance. </i><br />
<br />
<i>[A noise came, and then again, rising. Someone was calling at me.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>[I fantasize about this. Occasionally a kayaker or fisher will ask me how the water is, and I say it's fine! </i>I don't know how you do it!<i> they say. </i>You get used to it, <i>I say</i>, you should try it!<i> Sometimes fishermen drifting by in their boats will tell me I'm crazy. I smile. It's no big deal; but come on: Cold, current, yeah, I have to remind myself it's a big deal.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>[This was not one of those fantasies. I scanned around for the source.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>[</i>Hey! Hey! HEEEEeeeeeYYYyy! Watch where you're going! What in the fuck do you think you're doing?!!<i> said the voice. It was coming out of a green and gray and tan shape against the green and gray and tan bank, distinguishable now by the flailing arms.</i><br />
<br />
<i>[</i>I'm, uh, swimming,<i> I wanted to say. </i><br />
<br />
<i>[</i>I'm trying to fish here!! You can't just come through here!<br />
<br />
<i>[I gave him a sarcastic A-OK gesture. I'm not sure how sarcastic it looked, drifting backward as I was in the current. </i><br />
<br />
<i>[He may have gone into a recitation of his preparation to fish this spot, or gnashed at the indignity of my blundering in (at the speed of a calendar) to ruin his reverie. I'm not sure: I had wax plugs in my ears, and I was zooming farther away.</i><br />
<br />
<i>[But I did recognize when the Angry Fisherman said, </i>Why don't you pay fucking attention next time?!<br />
<br />
<i>[</i>Next time?<i> I thought as I bobbed downstream. </i>You're coming back?!<br />
<br />
<i>[So many things I thought to say in response. All I managed was, </i>Calm down, Dude! <i>before swimming back, thinking of more I could have said. Such as, </i>I thought fishing was supposed to be a relaxing hobby!<i> Or, </i>What are you fishing with, gill nets?!<i> I wondered whether it would have done any good to explain that swimming in the cold current was hard enough without you fishing along the shore. Or how I swam this stretch of lake precisely because people like you aren't on these rocky shores; and if they are, they are most definitely not like you, but lift their lines and speak civilly so they don't scare away the fish. Or, </i>You know what, you're really angry!<br />
<br />
<i>[I dressed and drove up the road over the bridge to see where the Angry Fisherman was, thinking about talking to him, not knowing what to say. By the time I parked, I saw him walking back into the town, multiple poles in one hand, and decided to let it all go. Maybe he was having a bad day. As I would be.]</i><br />
<br />
Pearly barked as ever for her last meal Sunday, scooting excitedly in circles as best her body would allow. <i>Her last meal</i>, only she didn't know. I had just enough oatmeal left for it. Every other time I cooked up a new batch, put it in the bowl and the bowl back into the refrigerator. Sunday I put the bowl in the kitchen sink instead.<br />
<br />
Nearly a week has passed and we're still living by the rhythms Pearly created for us. We'll start to look for her when we get home, or expect her to show her head at the smell of dinner. This morning I scooted my feet on the carpet as I got up, unconsciously dreading the poop Pearly may left because she could no longer control herself to go outside. I reminded myself this morning I didn't have to wait for her to finish breakfast so she could go out front with me as I fetched the paper; I could just go get the paper.<br />
<br />
Her crate and water dishes are set aside in the garage for donation. The little rugs to give her traction are picked up and packed up. Her doggy beds are gone.<br />
<br />
The sliding glass door leading to the backyard, propped open most days all these years for her, is shut.<br />
<br />
Thank you for a good life, little dog. shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-86062833963622972032017-11-28T08:10:00.000-08:002017-11-28T18:37:05.197-08:00Ofrenda<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW5YdH0mR4cZK0ExghJQzaDJPeiBT7t_M7pVAl9C1M7i_d_Cf3M7nIYeJA0wr3aXwZfLxpVyXhjdgo2SzNyq2N0oqFa3v8iLPofeS0UdCRwbrLm9qc7xQJq8C-UicvBHOtDZ1c78MI8pw/s1600/24133666_10160296250630643_1710057466_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="774" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW5YdH0mR4cZK0ExghJQzaDJPeiBT7t_M7pVAl9C1M7i_d_Cf3M7nIYeJA0wr3aXwZfLxpVyXhjdgo2SzNyq2N0oqFa3v8iLPofeS0UdCRwbrLm9qc7xQJq8C-UicvBHOtDZ1c78MI8pw/s400/24133666_10160296250630643_1710057466_n.jpg" width="321" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>William D. Turner, remembered in </i>Coco<i>.</i></td></tr>
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Our daughter bestowed a lovely, lasting gesture, telling us this Thanksgiving shortly before showing us.<br />
<br />
Go see <i>Coco</i>, the new Pixar/Disney movie, and you'll see it too — if you know where to look.<br />
<br />
At the end of the movie, after the closing credits, Pixar created a virtual ofrenda — an altar in the Mexican holiday tradition of Dia de Muertos, honoring and remembering those who have passed away.<br />
<br />
On the black screen, surrounding the words, "To the people across time who supported and inspired us," spring dozens and dozens of images.<br />
<br />
Three rows below the words, to the left, is this photograph of my dad, William Turner, grandfather to our children, who called him "OomPapa."<br />
<br />
Dad passed away 14 years ago this week. <br />
<br />
<i>Coco</i> is a wonderful movie, as rich in story as in color, about remembering family and finding one's whole self in those who have gone before. Images placed on the ofrenda are crucial to the story because they allow the dead to visit the land of the living during this holiday, which coincides with All Soul's Day.<br />
<br />
By hard work, adherence to a plan she kept close to her heart, and great good fortune, our daughter got a job at Pixar Animation Studios. <i>Coco</i> was the first project Maura joined. She couldn't tell us anything about it at first. In time she got permission to tell us the name of the movie, but not much else for a while. In the nature of the business, our daughter has moved from project to project at Pixar, working in teams to help move each along to production. <i>Coco</i> has been like home to her.<br />
<br />
She got two screen credits! "Hey, there she is!" we said aloud in the theater as her name rolled by, and then again. Only one other group besides our family remained in the theater to have heard us. Staying for the credits is a lost art. Besides seeing someone you're related to, you get to hear music that inspired the movie makers. Pixar often uses what look like development sketches in the credits, and I like to look at the rough art that turned into the final ideas.<br />
<br />
It's hard for me to tell when and where the photo of my dad was taken. Well before me, at least. It's one of those photos from a time he seemed so different from my dad, with the look of a rakish charmer.<br />
<br />
<i>Coco</i>'s crew got to each choose one image for the onscreen ofrenda. It was hard for Maura to choose, I could tell, because as in the movie, all who have passed on in her life have shaped her and still shape her in their own way. Barry "Papa Bear" Lewis, her other grandpa. Grandma Bonnie, my mom. Her Uncle Stephen. She'd like to have another chance to talk with OomPapa, she says, and ask him about his life.<br />
<br />
You and me both, kid.<br />
<br />
<br />shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-53232702467319028842017-11-07T06:21:00.001-08:002017-11-07T06:21:32.791-08:00Goodbye, swim coach<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiayWEnAS1ja0EPtwpWPHBAiWJFJnZHS9TY8vyHpWy9lVidSzGNCgWU6FLtT8yYqKolHCgC9GfSPW2JE1l-roJsBU2uiuRZxDcIzS0TB755UNU4wdF-iRgkmKLmxJt7D7yNohoaFped8cY/s1600/IMG_2179.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="558" data-original-width="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiayWEnAS1ja0EPtwpWPHBAiWJFJnZHS9TY8vyHpWy9lVidSzGNCgWU6FLtT8yYqKolHCgC9GfSPW2JE1l-roJsBU2uiuRZxDcIzS0TB755UNU4wdF-iRgkmKLmxJt7D7yNohoaFped8cY/s1600/IMG_2179.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Some of my swim literature, Terry Laughlin's along with </i><br />
Lane Lines toShore Lines<i> by Gary Emich and Phil DiGirolamo, <br />which helped me swim from Alcatraz.</i></td></tr>
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Terry Laughlin has died. <br />
He taught me to swim.<br />
<br />
After my cousins Mike and Pat, that is, who on a summer vacation to their town long long ago, proved at their neighborhood pool that holding my breath while under water wouldn't kill me, and that knowing how to glide like a sea mammal far below the surface was worth the $1.50 to get in.<br />
<br />
And after a half dozen summer-program swim instructors at the old dank lung-burning indoor Municipal Pool, and the sunny warm pool at Cabrillo High School, where I once jumped off the high dive and lived to at least this moment to write about it.<br />
<br />
And after my dad encouraged me. I don't remember him ever swimming with me, though I admit to not always paying attention. I learned after his death he was what we now call an open-water swimmer.<br />
<br />
After all those, Terry Laughlin taught me.<br />
<br />
Laughlin died late last month from cancer. He promoted a struggle-free form of swimming he called Total Immersion, and taught through books, DVDs and swim camps — at his headquarters in New Paltz, New York, and in community pools across the country and exotic locales beyond. Licensed coaches of his technique abound.<br />
<br />
About 10 years ago, I decided to swim for exercise, because it would be good for — let's be honest — an old guy and his old joints. And somehow that plan has sustained, while all my other exercise resolutions before and since fizzled quickly.<br />
<br />
I found some old swim trunks in a dresser drawer, rejoined my wife's gym, and got in the pool, day after day, marveling at my ability to stretch two lengths into 72, and to keep up the mile swim regularly.<br />
<br />
Two things happened.<br />
<ol>
<li>My shoulders burned in pain.</li>
<li>I decided I had <i>always wanted</i> to swim from Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay. Why I told myself this lie, and convinced myself of it, I don't know. But this suddenly lifetime goal had no chance with those burning shoulders. </li>
</ol>
I must learn to swim. <br />
<br />
To the library I went, where I keep most of my books, and found a couple about swimming. One was Terry Laughlin's "Total Immersion: The Revolutionary Way to Swim Better, Faster and Easier." I don't remember the other book, because Laughlin's description of his method caught me right away, describing me and my struggles wholly, and offering to break down my lack of method into a new one — one that would rely on my hips, not my shoulders, for propulsion.<br />
<br />
I was hooked.<br />
<br />
I don't think Laughlin had any proprietary control over his technique. In the intervening years, I have seen similar techniques under different names, from people selling their own swim camps and media. Experienced swimmers may also call it "front-quadrant" swimming, in which one arm doesn't complete the backward stroke until the other arm enters the water, at the same time that side's hip drives down into the water.<br />
<br />
Total Immersion stresses a stress-free way of swimming, more efficient, using hips to move the body forward while it glides at a slant like the keel of a sailboat. Rather than kicking continuously, like you imagine swimmers in a race, Total Immersion swimmers kick only enough to turn over the hips.<br />
<br />
Many open water swimmers, I learn, swim in somewhat the same way, even if they don't call it Total Immersion.<br />
<br />
Laughlin, a frequent blogger, pointed to the record holding
long-distance swimmer, Sun Yang of China, as the epitome of his
technique. Watch him in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uncOBURz-6o" target="_blank">1,500 meter race</a>: Sun looks like he's taking a relaxing dip, and yet he is often several body lengths past his competition, which churns the water violently. Laughlin was quick to say he had nothing to do with teaching Sun this technique style.<br />
<br />
Racing swimmers also call it a recovery swim — I have seen Olympian swimmers cool down after races using this very same deliberate front-quadrant style, kicking only enough to turn their hips. <br />
<br />
The difference was: This is the book I happened to find, and Laughlin talked me through it well. I went through two editions of his book: One in which he denounced so-called "endless pools," which allow swimmers to swim in place through an artificial current; and the next edition in which he said such pools won't ruin your technique after all.<br />
<br />
I even stepped off a place in my backyard in the ridiculous wish I would one day have my own such pool. I schlepped off to the gym pool instead.<br />
<br />
At the same time I was learning how to be a schoolteacher — on the job, not recommended — I was learning how to swim. To the pool at 4:30 a.m., without witnesses, I would go through Laughlin's many steps of floating and gliding, up and down the pool, just tilting and kicking, then one arm extended and the other held out of the water, bent in the shape of a fin. Then plunging my fist into the water near the side of my face, as quietly as possible, no bubbles if possible, driving one hip down with one kick, then the other with another kick, sculling on my side. Finally, my open hand knifing in for a full stroke.<br />
<br />
Then I'd go off to school, endure the day, fall asleep at my desk writing responses to students' journals, go home, get up at 4 and repeat.<br />
<br />
In rare free time, I would watch YouTube® videos of Laughlin's instructors, who seemed to proliferate. One especially, named <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJpFVvho0o4" target="_blank">Shinji Takeuchi</a>, becomes the water he swam in, so languid in form but racing down the pool, the barest of ripples around him. They kept me going.<br />
<br />
It took a long time to practice and get used to Laughlin's steps, the length of that school year, until I could put it all together into the stroke he described. I could glide the length of a 25-yard pool in 10 strokes when it used to take me 21, and could swim a mile with ease. Leaving shoulders free of pain!<br />
<br />
Today the pool. Tomorrow, Alcatraz!<br />
<br />
Swimming open water was like learning to swim all over again. The logistics of finding water to swim in regularly, and swimmers to show me the way, consumed my time. I finally resigned to getting myself out of swim trunks and into body-squeezing jammers, and being OK in public about it.<br />
<br />
Then I had to apply all I re-learned in the pool to a cold murky lake, where lane lines don't exist and distances are hard to judge, and beasties may lurk below and the water isn't still. That took even more time.<br />
<br />
Having found a group of swimmers in the dead of winter, I also had to learn how to swim in cold water — which I have not regretted a whit. One fallout is that all the bilateral breathing I had learned in the pool atrophied. I'm guilty of the bad habit of breathing from one side after every two strokes; try though I might to breathe again from both sides, the cold water forces me to revert.<br />
<br />
I'm OK with it.<br />
<br />
And I'm OK where I am now. When I finally got the hang of Total Immersion in the open water, I resolved to join Masters swimming so I could qualify for races. I scratched that itch for a couple of years, then tired of it, realizing I have no desire or talent for racing, and I was spending money for something I could do for free, which is to swim in new waterways.<br />
<br />
I still love to take part in some dear swim events — not races, but moving communities of swimmers — such as the 24-hour swim relay at Aquatic Park in San Francisco, which Suzie Dods developed, and the Humboldt Bay Critter Crawl Sarah Green invented on the north coast. And I'd recommend the iconic Donner Lake swim to anyone; the lunch that awaits you after is worth the 2.7 mile trek across that mountain lake.<br />
<br />
And I swam Alcatraz! And I swam from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Bay Bridge (well, St. Francis Yacht Club to AT&T Park, about the same distance, because whiteout fog made it unsafe to get in under the Golden Gate).<br />
<br />
Along the way, I learned something surprising and disheartening — strangers who immediately deride and belittle Total Immersion. It blindsided me at first, when I'd be having a conversation about swimming with a fellow open water practitioner and unwittingly let slip I practice Total Immersion. The fellow swimmer would tell me right away how much they hate that technique, how no real swimmer would be caught doing it.<br />
<br />
At first I'd defend it, but after a while I just shut up. It seemed silly, like I was a convert to a secret religion, taking care who I talked to about it. Occasionally I'd meet another who practice Total Immersion, and maybe we'd talk.<br />
<br />
Now I don't even talk about it. I just swim. All I know is I can swim, and I can swim every day, and Total Immersion makes it possible.<br />
<br />
I swim alone these days, having abandoned the pool for open water years ago. Don't pity me, it just is. I was part of a regular group for a couple of years. We pushed each other to swim longer and longer distances of our home lake, and explore other venues. We'd go to coffee after; we even exchanged Christmas gifts one year. But members of the group moved away and moved on; I went to a nineish-to-fiveish job, so I have to swim as early as possible before work, and not many would join me at that hour and place.<br />
<br />
I see swimming groups on social media, and think how nice to be part of that; but in the rare event someone does join me early for a swim, it becomes a new thing to relearn, the stress of trying to keep up or keep track. I've gotten used to trekking alone up the lake. It's OK.<br />
<br />
After a while, I stopped posting on a facebook®™ group for swimmers, simply because I had run out of new things to day about my swims. It is always beautiful, always dotted with Canada geese and mergansers and mallards and the rare otter, but it was like Groundhog Day with each swim.<br />
<br />
I could have written about this year, the heavy rains filling Folsom Lake and forcing water managers to release huge amounts of water though Lake Natoma, where I swim, and down into the lower American River. For a couple of weeks this winter it was impossible to swim there, the tranquil waters having roiled into Class III rapids.<br />
<br />
Even when the current slowed a bit, swimming was a challenge. One winter morning I got in and stayed near shore, to prevent being swept away if I strayed to the center. The main bridge ahead was about 100 yards away.<br />
<br />
Against the current I crawled ahead, pebble width by pebble width (the water was unusually clear). I counted strokes: 2,450 strokes got me just past the main bridge. It took exactly 87 strokes to swim back to the boat landing.<br />
<br />
Another time, shortly after, I got kicked out of the lake.<br />
<br />
Getting in from the boat landing at the lower end of the lake — my ritual when I'm down there — I climbed up through strong muddy current. That was my mistake; I caught someone's attention and raised the alarm. A quarter-mile into my swim, I see a chase boat from the nearby aquatic center sidle up to me; it's one of those boats from which the coaches instruct the local rowing crews as they train on the lower lake. <br />
<br />
"The lake is closed," the pilot told me from his bullhorn. "These currents are dangerous. You have to get out."<br />
<br />
I was not gracious; I was angry. I wanted to say, "Where ya been? I do this all the time!" He just repeated his instructions.<br />
<br />
"I'm swimming back!" I shouted. "Just don't go near the dam," the pilot said. Gee, you think?! The boat circled back to the aquatic center. I swam a few more strokes upstream, but the pilot was watching and circled back to escort me out of the lake.<br />
<br />
I could have written about that. Or how the current only relented about two months ago to let me swim again to the Folsom Prison property, my favorite, a round trip of about three miles through a jagged ravine. Or how clear the water was all summer, the storm water having scoured the river bottom of the milfoil and water hyacinth that had choked the channel during drought years. I used to be lucky to see a fish a year when I begin swimming Lake Natoma. This summer I saw at least two fat trout a day, swimming along with me, just below.<br />
<br />
The water has clouded up again since, back to its green murk. <br />
<br />
Now I just swim. Though I haven't opened Terry Laughlin's book or looked at his DVDs in several years, I try to mind what he taught me. I try to dip my hands into the water quietly, without bubbles. I try to pick up the pace, to swim with easy speed. I have never figured out how this technique can make me swim fast, and I have my suspicions I would have to go to one of the swim camps to learn, and I wasn't in the position to do it.<br />
<br />
Lately I practice picking up my pace for long distances, just fast enough before I start making bubbles with my hands. I tell my hips to drive down; I tell my shoulders to let my hips do the work. I lean down, trying to keep my body straight, as if through a tube, as Terry Laughlin taught.<br />
<br />
And I swim and swim and swim. And I'm swimming still.<br />
<br />
And I thank Terry Laughlin for that. May he rest his shoulder in peace.shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-79164905073701302072017-10-10T06:05:00.002-07:002017-10-10T06:05:21.540-07:00Eviscerati<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>It's a hallowed, hollow anesthetized<br />"Save my own ass, screw these guys"<br />Smoke-and-mirror lockdown</i><br />
<br />
"Bad Day," REM</blockquote>
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The morning after the Supremely Lovely Day, one of the loveliest ever, <br />
I regarded the <br />
hollow orange.<br />
<br />
It lay in the backyard of the house we had rented, at the base of the tree from which it had fallen. Since then a critter had carefully and completely devoured its fruit.<br />
<br />
I'm guessing it was a possum. We had seen two of them slink along a concrete gutter at the back fence the morning of the Lovely Day. The homeowner noted in her rental instructions that it's OK to feed the gray neighborhood cat should it happen by. We joked that maybe the nearsighted homeowner only <i>thinks</i> they're a cat. <br />
<br />
The orange rind remained full and round, even with a flap across its middle clipped away, the shape of a rawhide flap on a baseball. Though the other baseball flap is all that remained, the rind held its shape.<br />
<br />
In this quiet moment, soft talking all around in the backyard, the rind made me think of my country, hollowed out steadily as I write. The thought of it dampened the afterglow of the Lovely Day, in which our son and his beautiful <span class="vmod">fiancée</span> got married.<br />
<br />
That Day overflowed with novel sensations. Useless as ever, I stayed off to the side and witnessed the pell-mell rush to complete the many last details, which had been dreamed and planned for more than a year.<br />
<ul>
<li>The groom and his men using the rented home as their base, adjusting their tuxes, sliding into their patent-leather shoes, pouring into the limousine that would take them hilly hither and yon.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Some of the bridesmaids readying themselves at the home too, in glories of makeup and gown.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The beautiful bride in the beautiful cathedral, her home, standing next to her soon-to-be husband, both of them crowned, in the Russian Orthodox tradition. We are at once somber and wondering, sneaking glances high into the church's uninterrupted space.</li>
</ul>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Unseen from high above in the cathedral, a choir burst forth, their intertwining harmonies filling the immense cube of space, and seeming to set fire to the gold leaf in the iconography, the Bible stories, that adorned every surface.</blockquote>
<ul>
<li>At the reception at a magnate son's mansion-turned-wedding-venue, the newlyweds embraced all of us who came to witness, embraced the moment they had yearned for, embraced long into the night. <br /><br />Lou Seal, the San Francisco Giants mascot, made a surprise appearance, an amazing how-did-she-do-it? arranged by my new daughter-in-law. Photographs prove our son went wild with glee.</li>
</ul>
It was joyful and bewildering, committed now to memory, bright and fierce.<br />
<br />
Much of the rest of this year, however, has been ashes. <br />
<br />
They are away now, the new wife and husband. They are out of the country, on a new chapter of their adventure together. It's not really a secret where, though I don't feel like disclosing. I feel in a way I have helped spirit them away. They are somewhere safe — safe from their own country, now being eaten away, like the orange, but looking somehow whole.<br />
<br />
Our other child is stateside, in the country. I wonder what our children think of this place now. I could not have imagined what it's become.<br />
<br />
In sixth grade I penned a school report about our country taken over by Russia or its simulacrum, of a transplanting of our representative government by a dictatorship, of our freedoms instantaneously removed, and how that world looked. But in my literary device it was all a dream, because the country in which I had grown up, by its very rightness, would not so much as brook a takeover.<br />
<br />
I have thought that way, more or less, through my life. Despite its egregious behavior at home and abroad — for all its many failings and sins — my country was still right, an experiment worth improving. Though it has faced threat and extinction many times, my country would hold and thrive. <br />
<br />
Ha.<br />
<br />
This is real, and this is worse. With the Trump administration, this is a daily dismantling from within, a taking away, a making less.<br />
<br />
I watch the daily creation and vilification of the Other. The Other are legion — women, blacks, Latinos, Muslims, Jews, immigrants, Dreamers, the poor, critics, opponents of their thoughts and actions, activists for constitutional rights. The environment. The world.<br />
<br />
I watch denizens of the Trump swamp take power, deliberate and swift, as if with orders to make whatever Is within their power, suddenly Not. Whatever Was, Will Not Be any more, for its own sake. Step by step, agency by agency. I watch them fly about the world needlessly at enormous taxpayer expense, then lecture us against fraud and waste.<br />
<br />
Hypocrisy made hip. <br />
<br />
I watch Puerto Rico drown in a hurricane and debt and denigration, and then see President Trump say he's doing a terrific job.<br />
<br />
It is not just blatant. It is the Age of Flagrancy.<br />
<br />
What is not on purpose is instead capricious, the stuff of unthinking, dangerous whim. <br />
<br />
I wake up each morning with a thought I hadn't entertained since I was an Air Force brat and lived in the Cold War's chill across the coastal valley from the missile base, and could see the rockets lift off, and knew it would be a first target in a nuclear strike:<br />
<br />
Is this the day nuclear war begins? Is this the day? Is this?<br />
<br />
Is this?<br />
<br />
Reflexively, I think of how our leaders can protect us from the brink, and snap back to the real dread that the man in charge is the one pulling us to the brink.<br />
<br />
I hit "angry" a lot on my facebook®™©, as if that will help. <br />
<br />
Ashes flow in the air as I write, ashes from fires all around. Uncontrolled fire has destroyed whole neighborhoods where close relatives live in Northern California. Fire swept close to my childhood home two weeks ago in Southern California, where my sister still lives. Storms laid waste to Texas and Louisiana and Florida and Puerto Rico. A man beyond any understanding shot to death nearly five dozen people and wounded hundreds of others in Las Vegas.<br />
<br />
But by all means, let us all denounce football players peacefully protesting racial injustice, and let the man who's supposed to lead us use is energy to confuse his followers that it's about disrespecting the flag.<br />
<br />
My beloved San Francisco Giants finished one of their worst seasons this year. Three years removed from their third World Series win in five years, the Giants won 64 games but lost 98, tied for the worst record in baseball this season. They finished the season 40 games behind the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers. The Giants battled hard not to lose 100 games. Lou Seal had little to cheer about. Our children's wedding, and not much else.<br />
<br />
Every team opens the season in first place, but the Giants looked good and strong, promising; fans could breathe easy with hope. In lightning speed just a few things happened here and there, and the talented team became a wheezing creature. Funny how little it really takes to derail a vaunted team.<br />
<br />
Or a country.shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-14366073340860760192017-01-26T08:14:00.002-08:002017-01-26T08:14:36.559-08:00Look over there!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
This is all going one of two ways — and either way, you lose. Unless you can do something about it.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrktwPooAPG5PJ7wBD7Ze761GpW90JXFypU6J7OLYRFTTqeSA2NqKJThFmUdF5WCeix7Dwo-g7X5PggZctYKlT2VBRMuqmJonO4GeNmAuKzlPbPaWtmD3nO0WNEjA9sN9nwX75RuqmwF0/s1600/Trump+hand+112417.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrktwPooAPG5PJ7wBD7Ze761GpW90JXFypU6J7OLYRFTTqeSA2NqKJThFmUdF5WCeix7Dwo-g7X5PggZctYKlT2VBRMuqmJonO4GeNmAuKzlPbPaWtmD3nO0WNEjA9sN9nwX75RuqmwF0/s1600/Trump+hand+112417.png" /></a>I still don't know what to do about it.<br />
<br />
But I'm on fire to find out.<br />
<br />
Either you believe:<br />
<ul>
<li>God stopped the rain right before Donald Trump delivered his inaugural address Friday</li>
<li>Three to five million illegal votes were cast in the general election, depriving Donald Trump of a just popular vote victory in addition to his Electoral College win</li>
<li>God resumed the rain as Donald Trump finished his address</li>
<li>The inauguration was most viewed, best attended inauguration in the history of the tradition. Period.</li>
<li>You and I suffer an American carnage</li>
</ul>
None of these is true. All are proven false, even semantically. All are lies, repeated by Dread Pirate Trump and his parrots.<br />
<br />
They are not even very important, though the continued lie about the illegal votes persists as much as it intrigues, because voter fraud hangs heavy in this election, but not in the way Trump declares.<br />
<br />
If you believe all this obvious why-even-try lying, and more (such a firehose of lies these days!), then you and I lose. You are a frog boiling, and you don't know your end is near. I do, and I'm watching, more frantic than I was nine paragraphs ago to find out how to fight this insanity.<br />
<br />
You are doing as egregious sycophant <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/25/politics/lamar-smith-donald-trump-news/" target="_blank">Lamar Smith </a>told you, that you should get your new from Donald Trump directly, rather than from the news media. Mr. Smith is a Republican Congressman from Texas, and someone who makes decisions about science and press policy in Congress.<br />
<br />
Your froggie life will have boiled away before you realize your lost jobs that Donald Trump said he'd rescue are not coming back, that they have already been lost to automation and shareholders' need for squeezing profits from your company.<br />
<br />
Creating a new economy and new opportunities? Not so much. Easier to sell you on the old economy that has already long gone. Too bad for you. <br />
<br />
Your health care will become tatters, not that it will matter to you, in your boiled state. But it matters to me and so many millions. Something really good is replacing Obamacare, you will have heard while dying. But nothing will replace it, nothing good anyway, not for you. Just as long as all traces of Obama are gone, that's what matters to Dread Pirate Donald and his Parrots, and everyone following him into the fallout shelter. They could rename it, erase Obama's credit, and fix the flaws while so many millions kept their coverage, and maybe it would even get better. But no. The powers that be don't care, and they hope you boil away before you get boiling mad about it.<br />
<br />
By coincidence, the top 1 percent will get tax breaks with the repeal! Imagine the odds! <br />
<br />
Either you believe this glorious fountain of the most obvious bullshit ever spewed — or you don't.<br />
<br />
You still lose.<br />
<br />
<i>The Washington Post </i>ran a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-first-days-inside-trumps-white-house-fury-tumult-and-a-reboot/2017/01/23/7ceef1b0-e191-11e6-ba11-63c4b4fb5a63_story.html?utm_term=.41f78e2c28c8" target="_blank"><i>postmortem</i> feature</a> on the White House Goings-On Saturday night, how Donald Trump returned from the last inaugural fete (probably a happy dance — for him, anyway — with his clearly distraught wife Melania), and was so enraged to see coverage of the women's marches across the globe, and the suggestion that his inaugural crowd didn't match up — so enraged he wasn't getting his due as the once and future king! — that he made his press secretary Sean Spicer rush out to the media in a cartoon suit and school them on what we now enshrine as "alternative facts."<br />
<br />
As much as I respect the <i>Post</i> for its unrelenting examination of Trump and his "presidency" (hey, Trump got to do it with "intelligence!"), I will offer that it is way off in this assessment.<br />
<br />
It's not the only medium calling out Donald Trump's narcissism, terrible temper, ego — even suggestions of mental illness — but I am suspicious.<br />
<br />
Donald Trump knows exactly what he's doing. More plausibly, forces behind the curtains and doors in the Oval Office know what they're doing, especially how to work Donald Trump like a lever for their fascist, authoritarian aims. Trump knows what they're up to, and may be in it for the big payoff somewhere down the road.<br />
<br />
A disarming opinion by a <a href="https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2017/01/20/culturejam/" target="_blank">writer for the <i>Caracas Chronicles</i></a> says Donald Trump is like Hugo Chavez, the late totalitarian ruler who left Venezuelans with the oil-poor chaos they live under now, where people stand in line all day in hopes of toilet paper, and catch whatever grain spills from relief trucks while the military profit from the rest on the black market. Come to think of it, Hugo Chavez also said he was giving back Venezuela to the people.<br />
<br />
So did supervillain Bane, in the Batman movie, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70hIxu4WCmM" target="_blank">The Dark Knight Rises</a>.<br />
<br />
Hugo Chavez was not stupid, writes Andrés Miguel Rondón, and belittling him and raging against him didn't take him down. Doing so just gave him room to mass-label his opponents, the people, as the enemy, and turn them into cartoons, and turn power against them.<br />
<br />
Or even better, to ignore them — as our Republican power elite are doing right now to you and me, even you boiling frogs. None of the Republican leaders meeting with Trump yesterday seemed particularly perturbed by Donald Trump's voter fraud claims or the use of alternative facts. Mitch McConnell, honorable servant of the people, said there could be other sides to any argument. Two plus two could mean just about anything, you see.<br />
<br />
Rondón suggested it's better that our leading opponents of Donald Trump use his weight against him, like a judo move, and be among the people, and be with the people, and truly know their concerns, and separate Donald Trump from the people in this way. To give America back to the people, truly, and not in some nationalist phrase that means its opposite.<br />
<br />
That's a patient play, and maybe it's right. But I don't think we have time. I have a feeling this cluster bombing of bullshit, this widespread deployment of clampdowns on government agency communication and removal of climate change information, this renewing of oil pipelines, this closing borders to refugees from Muslim countries and threats of Muslim registry — this whirling hurricane of the most ridiculous, cartoonish lies — are a weapon against us.<br />
<br />
All this is camouflaging some mad race Dread Pirate Donald and his puppet masters are embarking on, and they're frantic to get it done before we boiling frogs and their dry but doomed witnesses find out.<br />
<br />
Investigating massive voting fraud! And finding out whatever Donald Trump wants to find out, so he can suppress voting further, but call it free and fair! Maybe trademark it! Publish lists of crimes by immigrants, and use it to restrict Muslim Americans! And that's just what we know of! <br />
<br />
I will never forget John Steinbeck's opening line from <i>The Moon is Down</i>, a novelette of the Nazi capture of a Norwegian town. Never forget it since the day in 10th grade I first read it:<br />
<br />
"By ten forty-five it was all over."<br />
<br />
Watch the skies.shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-56925460267352373622017-01-05T08:10:00.001-08:002017-01-05T08:11:22.092-08:00"Wrong"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So, it's Thursday morning, and Donald Trump hasn't revealed to us what he knows that no one else knows, about alleged hacking and manipulation of the U.S. election. Like he said he would.<br />
<br />
"You'll find out Tuesday or Wednesday," Trump said Saturday at the New Year's Eve party he hosted at one of his resorts.<br />
<br />
That was yesterday. And that was two days ago.<br />
<br />
We still don't know. Because Trump doesn't know. He knows he doesn't know. Because Trump doesn't care. About anybody but Trump.<br />
<br />
In two weeks he'll be our president. In name only.<br />
<br />
"And I know a lot about hacking," Trump said at his party. "And hacking is a very hard thing to prove. So it could be somebody else."<br />
<br />
I thought, if nothing else, Trump would produce the guy from the bed in a bedroom somewhere — the guy Trump has repeatedly said could be as likely as Russia or China to have screwed with the election.<br />
<br />
But what he produced — as you and I and everybody else, including Trump, have known all along — was nothing else.<br />
<br />
Because is a liar. He is a liar and a manipulator, scaring hell out of citizens and corporations alike. Citizens united, indeed.<br />
<br />
What Trump is NOT is the thing, above all, we need in our president. Someone to trust.<br />
<br />
I can't believe anything he says.<br />
<br />
Trump's lies are how he has defrauded businesses and voters, how he has put the leader of a foreign power over the integrity of our own intelligence sources and the intelligence of the American people, how he makes money from the office he will hold.<br />
<br />
Mine isn't partisan griping; mine is a lament for human decency. <br />
<br />
No need to retrace his transgressions. They are legion, half-baked fresh every day.<br />
<br />
Which is why this transition looks like a takeover, looks like a takedown, smells like a breakdown.<br />
<br />
So many people I know bid bitter goodbye to 2016, that it sucked, that it took with it too many of our most cherished celebrities.<br />
<br />
Yes it did, but here comes 2017. The living are going to envy the dead.shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-79500429345197088762016-12-22T07:24:00.000-08:002016-12-22T07:36:56.723-08:00Missing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
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</div>
For all the daily sucker punches making America great today — the Kremlin collusion, the nepotism, the pay-for-play schemes from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the tweeted slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, all the blatant lies repeated into truths — I will miss a small noble thing most of all.<br />
<br />
I will miss the president being <i>presidential</i>.<br />
<br />
Barack Obama is <i>presidential. </i><br />
<br />
[This is not about his being president, which is another writing entirely. Though I fault President Obama for failings — notably public education — as I would any president as is my right as a citizen, I fault his foes far, far more, for their cruel hypocrisy against our president. They have twisted their blatant intransigence into something they think of as noble, and have managed to stick Obama with blame for their own failings.]<br />
<br />
At times of tragedy and times of wonder, Barack Obama is one who speaks for our shared grief and awe. He stands at the podium, as he has done far too many times than is fair or acceptable, for all those times of massive crushing violence against innocents, and reminds us we are united in these states, in these times. We are together; at least we feel, in this gathered moment, that we are, even if we aren't really.<br />
<br />
President Obama makes the words his own. Some are indeed his own, and some the eloquent choices of writers who know his voice, and he speaks them as if they and he are one fiber. He speaks his truth.<br />
<br />
President George W. Bush also — sometimes — spoke with eloquence, but so woodenly you knew the words weren't his. Good for him, being wise enough to speak them, to know the weight of the words carefully chosen for him. George W. Bush reached his acme after 9/11, when he spoke through a megaphone, his arm around a firefighter, amid a pile of rubble that used to be the World Trade Center.<br />
<br />
Bush let the firefighters and rescuers know that the nation stood with him. Had he also let the crowd know that his administration would soon use this horror as pretense to lead us into 15 years of misguided brutal war, that would have been refreshing and disarming in all meanings of the word.<br />
<br />
Bill Clinton was almost too presidential in this regard, so at ease with words that he often overacted them, hammed over them. He had precedence in Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, who not only had the choice of the choicest words, but knew how to deliver, a master propagandist.<br />
<br />
George H.W. Bush had a tough act to follow, and didn't very well. At least he read the words before him, stiff though they were, tumbling from his mouth.<br />
<br />
Donald Trump is not <i>presidential</i>. Not in any meaning of the word.<br />
<br />
Can you imagine him presiding at the next great national tragedy? Try to imagine Donald Trump speaking words of comfort and hope as we consider the aftermath.<br />
<br />
He will have none to give, nor would he know how to give them; nor will he care to give them. He will instead leverage the moment for some new loss of liberty, some new broad brush of blame against some new group. He'll vindicate himself as having been correct about this tragedy — pick any tragedy, which he can sell as an I-told-you-so — and froth his followers into some new course of extreme action. For our protection, of course.<br />
<br />
Trump will not speak with the poetry we will long to hear. He might have someone who can write that poetry, but he will not speak it. He will barely speak complete sentences, chopping them up with needless digressions, usually about his greatness and rightness.<br />
<br />
Donald Trump is "interested in two things and two things only: Making you afraid
of it and telling you who's to blame for it," as Aaron Sorkin's movie president, Andrew Shepherd, said of his conservative arch-rival, in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC2jhQ0KAAU" target="_blank"><i>The American President</i></a>. "That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections."<br />
<br />
Donald Trump will have made the country a slow-motion wreck by then, but I will miss the charitable important act of a president being presidential. It is gone. <br />
<br />
Now I tire of writing about Donald Trump, tire of drawing orange pieces of him, tire of paying attention to him, though I pay I must, to keep a wary eye.<br />
<br />
As palliative, I instead repeat, for this season, my favorite moment from Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," the instructive moment when <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh_fUMgFomk" target="_blank">Jacob Marley's ghost</a> appears before Ebenezer Scrooge.<span style="color: red;">*</span><br />
<br />
Weighted down by the chains and change-boxes that mark his own selfishness in life, the ghost of Scrooge's business partner has come to warn Scrooge of the horrible burdens he too will suffer in the afterlife. Scrooge will forever drag the "ponderous" chains he has forged in life, if he continues to hole up in their counting house, attending to business rather than charity.<br />
<br />
<div class="quoteText">
“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," Scrooge volunteered.<br />
<br />
"Business!'
cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business;
charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.
The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive
ocean of my business!” </div>
<div class="quoteText">
<br /></div>
<div class="quoteText">
Remember the good, which once was, and can be again. </div>
<div class="quoteText">
<br /></div>
<div class="quoteText">
<span style="color: red;">*<span style="color: black;">Watch Frank Finlay's version of Marley's ghost in the best version, with George C. Scott as Scrooge. Finlay's ghost is desperate and despairing, frighteningly frantic to make Scrooge see his errors.</span></span></div>
shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-36654251104252912082016-12-14T08:00:00.001-08:002016-12-14T08:00:31.701-08:00"With"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Forget "post-truth."<br />
<br />
Forget "xenophobia," or "fascism" or "kleptocracy" or "oligarchy" or "emoluments," or any of those candidates for Word of the Year, so strange and tangy with menace, that goosestep across your tongue these days.<br />
<br />
The true Word of the Year — and for more years than I may be able to stomach — is "with." <br />
<br />
Such a simple word, <i>with</i> — so familiar and modest, almost invisible. A preposition that in almost all cases denotes accompaniment, harmony. Togetherness.<br />
<br />
Except when it spurts from the mouth of Donald J. Trump. From Trump's mouth, <i>with</i> is a chilling weapon.<br />
<br />
In his use, <i>with</i> means opposition, as in this morsel you may have missed last week, when Trump was in Iowa, frothing up yet another thank-you rally, still running for president.<br />
<br />
You will be shocked to learn he was fuming over a new criticism, this time about how he'll supposedly drain the swamp by refilling his cabinet with millionaires and billionaires, crony corporate titans:<br />
<br />
"One newspaper criticized me: 'Why can't they have people of modest means?<span style="color: red;">*</span>'" he told his rally crowd. "Because I want people that made a fortune! Because now they're negotiating WITH you!"<br />
<br />
Not "negotiating <i>for</i> you," as I read so many — too many — media outlets quoting it, as if they assume Trump made a semantic mistake.<i> Fortune Magazine</i> substituted the word <i>for</i> in brackets, like a Band Aid™® over what he actually said. Or the media used "for" in desperate hope he misspoke, that these henhouse foxes are negotiating <i>for</i> you, on your behalf! With your welfare and interests in mind! That must be what Trump meant!<br />
<br />
But that's not what Trump said. Nor what he meant.<br />
<br />
He said, "Now they're negotiating <i>with</i> you." <i> </i><br />
<br />
<i>With</i>, as in "against."<br />
<br />
Trump didn't misspeak. He's the greatest businessman in the history of the world, of course — as he'll tell you. He's the zen master of the deal, everybody knows. Negotiating is his thing.<br />
<br />
How do I know Trump said what he meant? To quote our own glorious leader, "I know words. I have the best words."<br />
<br />
So President-elect Trump is amassing a cabinet of contrarians, who not only seem loathe to run the executive functions for which they have been appointed, but who have been chosen for that reason.<br />
<br />
We get, among others,<br />
<ul>
<li>An education secretary with no experience, but lots and lots of money, who is against education, unless you can afford it, and wants to pick and choose who gets educated.</li>
<li>An attorney general whose experience with civil rights is selective at best. Guess who it's selective for?</li>
<li>A housing and urban development secretary, with no experience, who ignores the breadth of social safety net that enabled his self-made self to get where he got.</li>
<li>An energy secretary who would lead the department he wanted to eliminate during his own bumbling run for presidency, even though he couldn't remember its name.</li>
<li>An Environmental Protection Agency administrator who has demonstrated he thinks his agency is a nuisance that impedes taking profitable resources.</li>
<li>A health and human resources secretary for whom health care is a choice if you can afford it.</li>
<li>A secretary of state who runs his own virtual state already, and smells of <strike>money</strike> oil.</li>
<li>A national security adviser who has disparaged Islam and helped disseminate the most ridiculous and reckless of fake news.</li>
</ul>
What aren't fatcats in Trump's stratosphere are retired generals, or presidential hopefuls who stumbled on the campaign trail when Trump tripped them, insulting them as they fell.<br />
<br />
It's Eisenhower's nightmare warning of the military-industrial complex, sitting around one table, holding their departments hostage, ready to negotiate <i>with</i> you.<br />
<br />
They'll have the butter, and the guns to guard them. What do you have in trade?<br />
<br />
Better education? Nah, we're thinking of going private with little accountability. We'll call you if we have a seat available for your kid, but probably not.<br />
<br />
Civil rights? What color are you? What gender? Who do you love? By the way, what religion?<br />
<br />
Health care? How long can you hold your breath?<br />
<br />
Fresh air, clean water? Do you own any mineral rights? That'd be helpful. Love those mineral rights. <br />
<br />
Freedom? Stand by. We might need them back. You know, to protect you.<br />
<br />
Frankly, you don't have much to interest Trump in a trade.<br />
<br />
Down continues to be up, and right wrong.<br />
<br />
I finally figured out what the Trump phenomenon is all about: To use vulgarity he'd recognize, Donald Trump is pissing on our backs and calling it rain.<br />
<br />
All our backs. Whether you're for him, against him, don't know, that's rain. <br />
<br />
His minions spend their waking hours in spin, telling us so.<br />
<br />
"Yes, that's rain!" says Vice President-elect Mike Pence, when he dismisses Trump's ridiculous statement that millions of people voted illegally, "I think one of the things that's refreshing about our President-elect, and it's one of the reasons why I think he made such an incredible connection with people all across this country, is because he tells you what's in his mind, tells you what's on his heart." Even it's untrue.<br />
<br />
(The popular vote has Hillary Clinton with 2.8 million more votes than Trump. Still counting.)<br />
<br />
"It's raining!" says Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, asked if Trump's lies, Twitter™® attacks on individuals and misogyny are presidential behavior. "Well," says Conway, "he is the President-elect, so that's presidential behavior."<br />
<br />
"It's raining!" says Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes, when she declares, "There's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore of (sic) facts. And
so Mr. Trump's tweet, amongst a certain crowd — a large part of the
population — are truth. When he says that millions of people illegally
voted, he has some — amongst him and his supporters, and people believe
they have facts to back that up. Those that do not like Mr. Trump, they
say that those are lies and that there are no facts to back it up."<br />
<br />
Whatever Donald Trump says, goes. What he believes is true.<br />
<br />
I'm not so innocent as to believe we don't already live among lies, elaborately made and disguised, around for so long we forget they're there. It's how we get by. It's how banking and finance works. It's how the haves have, how we fight wars, how we ignore atrocities at home and abroad, and still get to call ourselves exceptional.<br />
<br />
But now we've entered the Age of Blatancy, where even the hope of a better way, based on facts, becomes mere mist in this thing Trump calls rain.<br />
<br />
His cabinet, this would-be wrecking crew, these hostage negotiators. They're ready to negotiate with you.<br />
<br />
Don't worry, Donald Trump is with you. As long as you're with him.<br />
<br /><span style="color: red;">*</span>When Trump assumes the role of his critics, do you notice how he leans back, tucks in his chin, purses his lips and lowers the register of his voice, very much in the way Alec Baldwin impersonates Trump on Saturday Night Live. Maybe Baldwin should sue.shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-4721974542251476432016-11-24T09:56:00.003-08:002016-12-02T19:03:28.886-08:00Normal eyes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My mom is dead, which is good. These terrible days would have broken her heart all over again, so painfully.<br />
<br />
Hillary Clinton was her candidate. I seem to remember she called her "my Hillary" or "my girl." I understand she was sooooo upset when she lost the nomination in 2008 to Barack Obama. I don't understand quite why.<br />
<br />
We spoke once a week or so from afar, but about everyday stuff, not politics. At the time I was drowning in my attempt to become a teacher, and when I could crane my neck for a glimpse of the outside world, it was in fascination at the idea Obama could be president, so diametrically opposed from a presidency of questionable and brutal war.<br />
<br />
What goes around, comes around, with venom.<br />
<br />
My mom, Bonnie Jean, didn't like Obama. Again, I'm not sure why, or why she particularly liked Hillary Clinton. Maybe it was simply that she would be the first woman president, or she did not find Obama genuine.<br />
<br />
Nor am I sure what my mom would have thought of Obama's presidency. She died a week into his first term. I imagine that she would have admired his effort to wrest the country out of a recession, but would have rankled at continued war. There would be no pleasing her with him. I imagine she would have given him hell. Mom was at a time in her life when she had a mind to tell someone exactly what she thought, and plenty of time and a computer to do so.<br />
<br />
To me, she embodied the Jenny Joseph poem, "When I am old," the ode that inspired the loosely organized organization known as the Red Hat Society, to which she belonged. She was the woman in the poem who would "run my stick along the public railings/And make up for the sobriety of my youth."<br />
<br />
But as hard and as faithfully as Mom would have berated Obama, she would have harangued his enemies — the Republican leaders who stymied Obama's every effort, the Fox News pundits barking baseless propaganda at his ankles — so much harder.<br />
<br />
And Donald J. Trump — the president-elect should be glad my mom is dead. He'd be no match.<br />
<br />
For awhile anyway, then I imagine eventually she would despair at this surreal, unreal, untrue time. She would be so worked up she could hardly talk.<br />
<br />
She'd see what I see, the latest being the astounding "thank you" rally President-elect Trump staged last night in Cincinnati, one of several to take place in the swing states he won.<br />
<br />
He is truly still running for president, rather than getting ready to be president. He is running down "my Hillary" still, riling his rally crowd into the Pavlovian reaction of "Lock her up! Lock her up!" Still! He is amping his base over the new nonissue of flag burning, of radical Islamic terrorism, the utter bullshit of what he knows his followers want to hear. <br />
<br />
Trump is still describing his swing-state wins — while the popular vote stands at two-freaking-point-five million more votes for Hillary Clinton, and counting — and literally pointing to the "dishonest" press who said he couldn't win. We have heard all of this before. Many, many times.<br />
<br />
His rally came complete with a public humiliation of a protestor, who "doesn't vote. They never vote!" Trump pronounced. And the people believed! <br />
<br />
I will not be surprised today to hear new stories of crimes in the name of hate.<br />
<br />
Oh, and by the way, said Trump at the rally, we must come together as a nation.<br />
<br />
He has a funny way of showing it.<br />
<br />
My god, I can hear my mom saying, when she'd have found her tongue again, is he governing by Beer Hall Putsch? Is this our new presidency, staging rallies to whip up his base?! Can we not see how this rise of despotism, the measured steps, the grooming of we, the people, for this man's rule?!<br />
<br />
Hell would have to be paid, right about now, by my mom, in a flurry of letters, so many letters:<br />
<ul>
<li>To Steve Bannon, champion of the white nationalist movement, now Trump's adviser</li>
<li>To the proposed cabinet of Trump's billionaire beneficiaries, whose money won't cover their egregious inexperience and delight in making their world safe from us. They are draining the swamp by the girth of their fat bellies</li>
<li>To Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose plan to obstruct President Obama these last eight years worked too well, leaving us Trump</li>
<li>To Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who had hearings lined up to attack Hillary Clinton over her emails, but not a whit of consideration for Trump's staggering global conflicts of interest</li>
</ul>
And that would have been just a warmup. She'd have laid most of her unrelenting vengeance at Trump, who she'd have seen, as I do, that he's taking our country into danger as he speaks of safety, and separation has he talks of unity. <br />
<br />
No email server could have contained my mom's fury at all this hypocrisy, this new normal.<br />
<br />
Normalize. Normal eyes. Oligarchy. Gaslighting. Kleptocracy. Fascism. A lover of words, my mom would have rolled these, some new, others resurrected, over her tongue. And spat them out again. The new normal of words.<br />
<br />
Even with all this nonsense, what would have really crushed my mom is what's going on near where she grew up in North Dakota, the Standing Rock Sioux and supporters standing against the Dakota Access Pipeline.<br />
<br />
I wouldn't have been surprised if my mom had tried to join the encampment against the pipeline. She was raised on stories of the Mandan people near her hometown of Washburn, who sheltered Lewis & Clark and the Corps of Discovery during a terrible winter 114 years ago. She cultivated an affinity for native people, and drew away from the Catholic Church in which she grew up, upset at its complicity against native cultures.<br />
<br />
Energy Transfer Partners, Phillips 66 and law enforcement in North Dakota would know my mom's name, for all the missives she would have fired at them, full of choice words.<br />
<br />
She'd have stood with Standing Rock, wondering what has come to this country, people being driven again from their land for short-term profit.<br />
<br />
As do I.shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-62242933154785810392016-11-24T09:56:00.002-08:002016-11-27T06:41:03.436-08:00Rules don't apply<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Dear President-elect Tru–<br />
<br />
Sorry, still trying to ease into this odd concept. President-elect <i>Trump. </i>President-<i>elect. Trump.</i><br />
<br />
[Okay …]<br />
<br />
<i></i>Probably doesn't matter, anyway: You won't be reading this. I'm not really writing it to you. On this Thanksgiving morning, I'm not writing to anyone but myself<i> …</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Dear President-elect Trump,</i><br />
<br />
Are you still running for president? Because it seems like you're still running for president.<br />
<br />
It seemed like you were running when you met this week with editors and reporters of what you had called the "dishonest" and "failing"<i> New York Times</i>. You opened the meeting with a long recitation of your victory and how many people came to your rallies and how many speeches you gave in a day toward the end of the campaign. Maybe no one has given so many speeches in a day like that, you said in your superlative best/worst/highest/lowest way.<br />
<br />
You told the assembled news staff: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I think I’ve been treated very rough. It’s well out there that I’ve been
treated extremely unfairly in a sense, in a true sense. I wouldn’t only
complain about <i>The Times</i>. I would say <i>The Times</i> was about the roughest
of all. You could make the case <i>The Washington Post</i> was bad, but every
once in a while I’d actually get a good article."</blockquote>
I never thought I'd say this in a literal sense but — who died and made you king?<br />
<br />
Did your daddy never tell you he loves you? It's like all of this is about getting approval from someone, anyone, who isn't related to you, paid by you, using you or sponging off you.<br />
<br />
It's like you want <i>The Times</i> to run headlines like in cartoonist Jack Ohman's latest lampoon of your ideal newspaper, with a picture of you (natch!) pushing merchandise under stacked banner headlines:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
TRUMP ROCKS NEW BLUE AND WHITE STRIPED TIE!<br />
PRESIDENT-ELECT SHOOTS 78 IN GOLF: GOOD JOB!</blockquote>
You railed against TV news executives and anchors at a meeting before that, called them on the carpet for not being nice to you. As if.<br />
<br />
The meeting with <i>The Times</i> almost didn't happen. You tweeted®™— falsely! — that <i>The Times</i> changed the meeting rules on you, so you canceled. "Not nice," you tweeted.©®<br />
<br />
Then you met after all, and ended up calling the "failing" <i>Times</i> "a world jewel."<br />
<br />
You demonstrate two points here:<br />
<ul>
<li>You are the archetypal politician, telling people what they want to hear, when they want to hear it, for your own purposes</li>
<li>You are indeed, as CNN host Fareed Zakaria pointedly called you, a bullshit artist</li>
</ul>
You don't care about truth or facts and can't be held down by them. Whatever is, is what you say it is.<br />
<br />
Convenient for you, hell for the world.<br />
<br />
What does it tell you that you twice demanded an apology from the cast of the "overrated" (your tweet) Tony- and Pulitzer-prize winning musical "Hamilton," which urged Vice President-elect Mike Pence to govern the country for all Americans?<br />
<br />
Your bullshit tweet said the cast "harassed" Pence, when the world could easily see, by numerous furtive videos, that the cast stood together in a line and the actor playing Aaron Burr read from a statement, calmly and elegantly.<br />
<br />
It tells me you don't understand your new job in this republic. Not the governing part, anyway. The branding part, yes. So far, you seem to regard the presidency as another deal done, prime real estate snatched, the Trump brand elevated big league.<br />
<br />
What does it tell you that, while you blustered into the "Hamilton" issue on your own, <i>The Times</i> editors had to press you into denouncing the National Policy Institute, led by alt-right white supremacist leader Richard Spencer, which met in Washington D.C. to hail your victory, complete with Nazi salutes?<br />
<br />
You acted as if you didn't know about them, just as you did with white nationalist and perennial candidate David Duke: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I
don’t know where they were four years ago, and where they were for
Romney and McCain and all of the other people that ran, so I just don’t
know, I had nothing to compare it to. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="109" data-total-count="10840">
"But it’s not a group I want to energize, and if they are energized I want to look into it and find out why."</div>
</blockquote>
Yes, you had better investigate. Very complicated, this thing.<br />
<br />
This all tells me you are fear itself.<br />
<br />
And/or you don't know what you're doing. Making America great again, whatever manic and magical thinking that has ever meant.<br />
<br />
You've made this country unstable and uncertain, even among those who have voted for you. You don't seem to stand for something, so we fall for anything. Except the wall. Apparently you're still gonna build the wall, and Mexico will pay for it.<br />
<br />
Oh, and a tax plan. I read two credible sources on your simplified income tax, with fewer brackets. Married taxpayers with children and daycare costs get tax breaks, not much change for other groups. The biggest tax break would go to the wealthiest .1 percent of taxpayers.<br />
<br />
How's that for bullshit?<br />
<br />
You just named as your Secretary of Education a woman, Betsy DeVos, who is quoted in the book "Dark Money," that her family is the leading donor of soft money to the Republic Party, and expects influence with her millions, in order to achieve "honest government."<br />
<br />
Either that's startlingly refreshing or just plain Trumpian frightful.<br />
<br />
Drain the swamp, you say.<br />
<br />
Bull. Shit.<br />
<br />
Your chief administration strategist, Steve Bannon, champions the alt-right white supremacist movement as editor of Breitbart News, and has said he is a Leninist eager to destroy the state.<br />
<br />
Bannon?! You and your chief of staff Reince Priebus told <i>The Times</i>. He's never been anything but nice to us, never said a racist thing to us!<br />
<br />
Makes me think of words I came across this week, attributed to poet Michael Rosen:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: small;">"I sometimes fear that </span>
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">worn by grotesques and monsters </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">Fascism arrives as your friend. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">It will restore your honour, </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">make you feel proud, </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">protect your house, </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">give you a job, </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">clean up the neighbourhood, </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">remind you of how great you once were, </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">clear out the venal and the corrupt, </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">remove anything you feel is unlike you...</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">It doesn't walk in saying, </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">"Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution."</span></div>
</blockquote>
You don't seem to see a problem with being president <i>and</i> running your businesses — for which there doesn't seem to be any clear rule because there has never been, well, you.<br />
<br />
If someone wants to stay in your new Washington, D.C. hotel — great hotel by the way, built under budget, you never forget to say — because your name's on it, whaddaya gonna do about it, am I right? <br />
<br />
If you don't see a conflict with that, if you don't see the conflicts and compromises and limitations and blunders that can cause with this country's role in the world, you are alone. Except for those who are related to you, work for you, use you or sponge off you.<br />
<br />
You make children cry. Children who wonder if you, in your caprices, will decide they shouldn't live in this country anymore. Families who wonder if you will subjugate them solely by how they worship.<br />
<br />
Your chief of staff, Priebus, said you won't rule out a registry of Muslims, that there are some problems with Islam.<br />
<br />
What does it tell you that, at an interfaith Thanksgiving service I attended last week, a member of the Methodist church that hosted the service, stood from amid the congregation with the need to tell a leader of the Muslim community here, "We're with you, we're with you, we're with you?"<br />
<br />
What does it tell you?! <br />
<br />
You're not ruling anything out. You'll look into it. Deportation? Registry? Waterboarding. We'll see.<br />
<br />
President Obama suggested we wait, that the presidency has a way of maturing the president.<br />
<br />
Two weeks, wait's over. We joined the American Civil Liberties Union (you actually get a card!). I went to the interfaith service, an idea I've always approved of from afar, since the extreme application of our worship has often resulted in hate and war and suffering.<br />
<br />
<br />
The fight spreads to too many fronts now. Civil liberties. Freedom of speech. The environment, global warming. The economy. Civility.<br />
<br />
A Muslim woman at the interfaith service said, "Maybe some good can from this, in ways that we cannot now know."<br />
<br />
I'm awake now, Mr. President-elect. And I hope that's a good thing. I will do what I can to act as a citizen, for the good of this great nation.<br />
<i><br /></i>shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-72133333962405809542016-11-10T06:17:00.002-08:002016-11-10T08:14:21.060-08:00Sore winner<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-v6XpLQdXhkHwe5J41vBXkGCxDggjJkUpH4mT0Z97JSdwDCwWgpafYNZRzvDkMkHnfVMdvtmp33Q7ha7s-5o32PzTgYZG4JZSdH717swPc8S7cqK1RdyB0UqYQI3jPCpZS5lfylbUp9k/s1600/Trump+waist+111916.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-v6XpLQdXhkHwe5J41vBXkGCxDggjJkUpH4mT0Z97JSdwDCwWgpafYNZRzvDkMkHnfVMdvtmp33Q7ha7s-5o32PzTgYZG4JZSdH717swPc8S7cqK1RdyB0UqYQI3jPCpZS5lfylbUp9k/s1600/Trump+waist+111916.png" /></a></div>
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Should the new president of your country make you feel, "Uh oh!?"<br />
<br />
No, the president shouldn't.<br />
<br />
Yet holes have opened in me, the wind whistling through, and gravity has loosened its grip, unevenly, on my feet. I read the same sentence over and over yesterday afternoon. I rechecked meager tasks, just to feel like I was doing something until the day was over.<br />
<br />
The day needed to be over.<br />
<br />
I'm the last bastion in a new variation of the Martin Niemöller polemic against fascism, that begins, "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Socialist …" and ends, "Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me."<br />
<br />
I'm at the end of that line, in among the last they would come for, the only kind our new president has not insulted and mocked in his ascendancy: A white male. I don't think he's insulted Protestants specifically, or even Catholics, poor specimen though I am. Almost everyone else, though: Mexicans (Latinos by extension), <i>the</i> African-Americans, women, Muslims, Jews by tangential code in television commercials and retweets, immigrants. Almost everyone else he has invited others to scorn and deride and blame.<br />
<br />
Our new president.<br />
<br />
What he has said and done has now been endorsed and enshrined in the most powerful office in the land.<br />
<br />
I have escaped the scorn as a white male, but I can't escape this — this waiting. This feeling of … dread. For everyone.<br />
<br />
Nothing so global has felt like this in my adult life. Even the tragic events of Sept. 11. Holes went through me then too, but they filled, and the world moved forward. Forward into tragic war, still fought, but weirdly, 9/11 had a feeling of <i>ending</i>.<br />
<br />
A vlog by Luke Bland, an American expatriate in Finland, whom my son
and his fiancee followed and used in their decision to study there,
posted a video yesterday all about the election. At one point, Finnish
coworkers stood around an office TV screen, and when the new president
complimented Hillary Clinton on a hard-fought campaign, one of them
bowed toward the screen in sarcastic exaggeration. The world watches,
even more puzzled<br />
<br />
"I'm just waiting for what's coming," Bland told a coworker in yesterday's vlog. Waiting. From all the way in Finland.<br />
<br />
A swimmer from Ghana who corresponds with me on occasion expressed sadness and said, "We are hoping for the best." <br />
<br />
Before this, no presidential transition I can remember caused me to feel any worse than business as usual, life going on. Even President Obama's historic election did not hit me in any particular way until I took a job as a teacher and witnessed the untrammeled joy of this moment — posters, streamers — of the school administrative staff, most of them black. It made me think of the great personal devotion I've read that many Americans held for Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.<br />
<br />
This, though. This is "Uh oh!" This is What Will Happen? And When? And When Will It End? And none of it feels like hope.<br />
<br />
How much of this wall will be built, and at what cost in money and blood? When will the deportations begin? When the sanctioned attacks on immigrant communities, when the escalating war with a new or simmering enemy, in a show of the new president's self-proclaimed unpredictability?<br />
<br />
What's to become of our free press? Second Amendment, sacrosanct. First Amendment? Not worth the paper it's printed on. And justice for what's it worth to you?<br />
<br />
When will the many threats be carried out, the revenge come due?<br />
<br />
I know I'm not alone, which may feel like a sort of hope. Most of the people I "know" on facebook™®, my only real social media, for whatever reason feel the same. Yesterday the posts didn't even have to mention the election result, but the subject was clear. Swimmers were trying to rinse themselves clean. Some offered favorite songs as a kind of antidote, or puppy videos. Others posted lyrics without any context, such as:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Hey now, hey now</i><br />
<i>Don't dream it's over</i><br />
<i>Hey now, hey now</i><br />
<i>When the world comes in</i><br />
<i>They come, they come</i><br />
<i>To build a wall between us</i><br />
<i>We know they won't win</i><br />
— <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9gKyRmic20" target="_blank">Crowded House</a></blockquote>
But recipients knew.<br />
<br />
Donald Trump rose to office with few detailed plans, little apparent understanding of world affairs, but an intensely brilliant understanding of what would raise the ire of the already angry. I listened to Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, of all people, supposedly an expert at persuasive techniques, describe the new president's brilliance at this skill, of beta testing catchy insults before his supporters ("Heartless Hillary" or "Crooked Hillary?"), of evading facts with purpose and precision, and getting people to imprint those insults on their intended victim with each new actual or perceived misstep.<br />
<br />
I get that folks are angry and frustrated. I don't feel represented; I feel like I hand over my vote like allowance to an indifferent overseer, and I am ushered out through the side door until next time. I understand the angst that the government we have is not the government we should have; that it should serve us, not the other way around. I get that money and power flow to the few, and we live and work below.<br />
<br />
I get that change should come. This, though, this is not that change. This is not the eradication of entrenched elitism and favoritism and policies that benefit the few. The rigged economy is not going to unspool under the man who dances in its ratlines.<br />
<br />
This is not revolution. This is "Uh oh!"<br />
<br />
You say our president will be different in office than on the campaign trail, but his surrogates said time and again, "Why change what's working?" You say our new president will be held in check by our system of government. But the House and Senate remain Republican.<br />
<br />
You say the president is an outlier whom Republicans will suspect and rein. I believe our president is Republican ideas unmasked and unvarnished, finally spoken explicitly, ending decorum and restraint. <br />
<br />
But I have not been a participant in the process, either. My voting record is full and unbroken, but that's all I've done as a citizen. Even in this moment of great test, I voted and nothing more than donate some money. I did not think would be such a great test, but instead a wearying joke we could stop laughing at Nov. 8.<br />
<br />
(Even satire, that rich and voluminous corrective salve in our jewel of free speech, seems to have lost its punch in this new and strange time.) <br />
<br />
I need to be that participant now, even if, especially if, I'm late to the tea party. I have stood by, and now I can no longer. I dread the restrictions and limitations to come — which will no doubt happen in the name of liberty — and I want to be ready to work against them. I must stand with those under threat.<br />
<br />
Right now I can't listen to any more words from our new president. I tire of hearing his voice, and we'll have four more years of it. But I know I need to. I need to, in his words about something different and cruel, "figure out what the hell is going on."<br />
<br />
Damned if I know.shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-32531997751760823852016-11-08T06:45:00.000-08:002016-11-08T06:49:48.533-08:00Lefty rube randomly roams the right coast<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTdVXDMEsaAMr-n1ekVed5jtJQYGApwMSMKRNjfDjTL5ftsCQWV8_9jlGXXXuwDlDWXYWFoBdYQsmO7c9GgMJ8ZULAy9dEhuQPAbzXBMcurBYJXmldA7MAPXKSFIB1BwPktNUPIdNiNQA/s1600/New+England+111716.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTdVXDMEsaAMr-n1ekVed5jtJQYGApwMSMKRNjfDjTL5ftsCQWV8_9jlGXXXuwDlDWXYWFoBdYQsmO7c9GgMJ8ZULAy9dEhuQPAbzXBMcurBYJXmldA7MAPXKSFIB1BwPktNUPIdNiNQA/s1600/New+England+111716.png" /></a></div>
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<ul>
<li>Bostonians, we read on the plane east, don't like you calling their city "Beantown."</li>
<li>Without planning to, Nancy and I drive through Salem, Massachusetts, on Halloween Day. More than 200,000 people, we hear on public radio, will converge on Salem this day. The center of town is literally a carnival, with rides and booths. We drive past the Salem Witch Museum, with a bronze statue of Roger Conant, founder of Salem. His flowing robes and pilgrim hat, so close to the museum, make visitors mistake him for a witch, apparently. The night before, a drunk driver killed a women and two children during the weeks-long Halloween celebration. We already resolve not to stick around.</li>
<li>Hampton, New Hampshire, is shut down for the year. Not getting around much, as we do, we had not conceived of a town battening itself from lack of use. But Hampton is a beach town, dependent on those beaches filling with people and staying in their ocean-view hotels and eating their hot dogs and fro-yos, and buying their sunglasses and souvenir beach towels. When the beach is empty the "vacancy" signs shut off, and the hotels stand as ghosts in the windy fall mist, and the vendors' markets are clamped down with plywood or iron accordion fences. A few people walked the beach. Who knows where they stayed?</li>
<li>After the 26th sighting, we finally succumbed to Dunkin' Donuts. Also at the 27th, 32nd, 36th and 42nd Dunkin' Donuts. Also maybe the 43rd. Dunkin' Donuts is (are?) more prevalent by far than church spires in this coastal New England to which we ventured. We avoided Dunkin' Donuts for about a day, resolving (1) we'd buy local (whatever that means) and (2) I'd had Dunkin' Donuts coffee, made from grounds I had bought at a grocery story a couple of years before; it was awful, the worst I'd ever drunk. At the 27th Dunkin' Donuts, it turns out, the coffee is not awful. The place is clean and cheerful and orange and magenta. A Dunkin' Donuts "old fashioned" is not what I'm used to, the heavy glazed pastry that looks like it was fried in mid explosion, but a plain cake doughnut. We did not dunk.</li>
<li>"My son says you must have superpowers," says a mom at Kalmus Beach with her two boys. They are collecting the cast-off armor of horseshoe crabs, with their menacing spike tails, from the beach. I have just finished swimming along the beach, named for a president of the Technicolor company. The water is clear, and below me, parallel to the shore, it looks like someone has furnished an aquarium but forgot the fish. Grasses sprinkled with clam shells sway below me. The water is 51 degrees. It is foggy and I'm leery about swimming. The ferries heading to Nantucket are rumbling and coughing invisibly offshore, shaking the water it seems, and though I think I'm safe from them if I swim very close to the beach, I am not entirely sure. I swim anyway. My friend Doug said that I could have swum past the Kennedy family's house. I didn't get very far, though, happy enough for the swim.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</li>
<li>On the stone obelisk marking the grave of William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Colony, is a Hebrew inscription, translated as "Jehovah is our help."</li>
<li>The State Station stop on the Orange T line subway literally opens to the street from the Old Statehouse building, where All the Trouble Started. Subway riders are just steps away from the Boston Massacre, just a floor below where Colonial governors were being hated and plotted against. Forgive me for filtering history through pop culture, but I couldn't help feeling like we had entered Diagon Alley.</li>
<li>Two people were selling Allagash Beer, made in Portland, Maine, while we ate at a pub in Hyannis on Cape Cod. By that, I mean they weren't servers, but sales reps moving from table to table pouring samples of their beer and touting its flavor; but also approving of our choices of beer that did not include Allagash. We told the sellers we were out from California on our first trip to New England. "What part of Cali?" They asked at separate times. They read in our eyes that we didn't like them calling it "Cali."</li>
<li>"Welcome! Welcome!" said two women eating at a sidewalk table in front of Coffee Time Bake Shop in Salem. We felt welcomed, and cheerful when they recommended real cream-filled Bismarks, whatever they are. They are delightful fist-sized mounds of heavy whipped cream between bar sugar doughnuts. As in most things last week, we rationalized our wolfing them down by saying we were on vacation. One of the women told us she is soooo glad to be retired.</li>
<li>First clear sign I wasn't home anymore: A kid walking through the airport with a hockey stick in hand and two extremely large equipment bags slung around his neck. </li>
<li>Finally I can tell people I went to Harvard. The Red T Line train takes you right to Harvard Square, where we betrayed ourselves as tourists, despite our casual wear, by reading every sign available. Lesser known William Dawes rode north past here to warn residents of the British Army's coming. We know this because brass hoofprints are embedded in the concrete, as are words proclaiming Dawes' ride. We know more about Paul Revere's ride, but not much more.</li>
<li>Does anyone in California call his/her state "Cali?"</li>
<li>Construction crews are repairing brick in the street in front of Paul Revere's home, a very old home sandwiched between buildings in Boston's North End. It is small and cozy, made cramped by all the people visiting while we did, and we wondered how chaotic this place is in the summer tourist season. Revere was but one of hundreds who lived in this 350-year-old house, we learn from one of the many signs posted. Guides in each room tried to tell us things too, but the plethora of signs competed full strength with the guides' narrative, and after a short time we just had to leave.</li>
<li>Useful tip: Don't climb the 294 steps to the top of the monument at Bunker Hill immediately after eating fish and chips at the Warren Tavern in Charlestown, or anywhere else for that matter. You'll make it, and the view of Boston's harbors will be as refreshing as the breeze shooting through the openings at the top, but you won't be very comfortable.</li>
<li>Warren Tavern's fish and chips: Second best among six fish and chips meals consumed this weeklong trip. We're on vacation, we resolved.</li>
<li>"We thought Bostonians didn't like people calling this Beantown," we tell the server at Beantown Pub near Boston Commons. She is from Colombia and had only been in Boston about eight months, and didn't really know of this controversy. Later she returned from the kitchen with the cook's story about why Boston is called Beantown.</li>
<li>Beantown Pub's fish and chips: The best of six fish and chips dinners during the week. Also, someone plays two Pearl Jam songs on the jukebox there, and someone else plays a great song we'd never heard, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cYRs2SReps" target="_blank">"The Sun is Shining Down,"</a> by J.J. Grey and Mofro It sounds like salvation, and we needed saving from a long day of walking through Boston, through the wet cobbled streets in anxious search of a tavern. We had seen Beantown Pub a couple of hours before, and made fun of it. We changed our minds seeing it the second time.</li>
<li>Did you know the Boston Bruins logo — A block B inside of an 8-spoked wagon wheel shape — refers to Boston as the Hub City, an idea promoted by Oliver Wendell Holmes who called this the "hub of the universe?" Do you care? I guess Boston has room to brag.</li>
<li>Succumbing to serendipity, the real theme of this trip (the officially stated reason was to see Boston), we drove past a pedestrian bridge that led to a peninsula created by a tidal pond corralled for the express purpose of making ice for cutting and selling. Of course we had to walk it and see where it led, which was through birchy woods. The tide was going out, and the water roared under the bridge out to sea. I'm sorry to say so much happened I can't tell you offhand where we were.</li>
<li>Evening ritual: Nancy would work her magic finding a place to stay, and we'd end up in a palace of riches — two TVs! Multiple rooms! Fully appointed kitchens! — for a quarter to a third of the usual summer rates. It was a bit ridiculous for one-night stays.</li>
<li>Petey's clam chowder was as good as our friend Doug promised, and just the stuff after a swim at Rye Beach in New Hampshire, which Doug also recommended. That was the second swim, the first being at Singing Beach (the sand "sings" under your feet) off Manchester-by-the-Sea, with Doug, my swim friend who abandoned me and returned to his native New England and his beer career, and Martha, whom I had met on facebook®™ but not yet in person. She opened her home as a staging area for the swim, where the clear water was 55 degrees and calm. Rye Beach was windier and a bit disconcerting, since I was swimming by myself with Nancy walking parallel to me. Gulls hovered and dove farther out in the water, and what little I knew about hovering and diving gulls suggested something else was in the water; I swam with long looks under the water back toward the starting point. Waves exploded the sand to little dust storms beneath me.</li>
<li>Old Orchard Beach defied the compass. Even with the Atlantic Ocean as our marker, we had a hard time finding the place, and then finding it again when we left the hotel for dinner. We couldn't even find the dinner place we were looking for, and settled for something close, which didn't help us after. Old Orchard Beach is another shuttered summertime playland, the skeleton of its Ferris wheel and roller coaster showing with the next sunrise.</li>
<li>We hardly saw one ugly house in a couple of hundred miles of driving. Maybe it was the coast; maybe we had seen a rarified sliver of New England. It was all becoming suspiciously storybook in how many beautiful homes were strung together.</li>
<li>Official beast of New England: The rider mower.</li>
<li>Useful tip: Plan a whole day to go through the museum for the U.S.S. Constitution in Charlestown, across the Charles River from Boston. It is so full of interactive devices and means of explaining a sailor's and shipwright's life that you need the day and fresh energy to take it on. We had neither the day nor energy, and we regretted not spending more time there.</li>
<li>After two days, we had walked 26 miles through Boston.</li>
<li>The Freedom Trail, taking you from Boston Commons to Bunker Hill (really Breed's Hill, carved with bunkers in the battle with British soldiers), is for the most part a brick line along the sidewalks leading you through revolutionary history. It took us an inordinately long time to figure that out.</li>
<li>We saw the flashing Citgo sign from a distance, marking the site of Fenway Park, from adirondack chairs on a dock on the chilly Charles River.</li>
<li>Streets and beaches where we meandered were amazingly clean! Don't mess with New England. </li>
<li>Plymouth Rock is a boulder, carved with the year 1620 (which is not the year the year was carved in it, but after the rock had been glued back together in the late 1800s after being split apart). The Rock is on beach sand, covered in footprints despite the famous boulder's enshrinement in its own fenced-off granite temple. Nancy said she thought Plymouth Rock was like Morro Rock, a mountainous formation marking Plymouth. But it's not like we had a conversation about what Plymouth Rock would be like; we didn't necessarily plan to be in Plymouth anyway, so the topic never came up. Now we were at the headwaters of all those coloring pages from first grade, all those lessons about how the Indians saved the pilgrims from starvation with a dinner or corn and squash, and showed them how to fertilize crops with fish. If the buildings and towns are very old, it's mostly because we have forgotten about the people who were here even before that, some of whose names remain on landmarks. Plymouth Rock landed on them.</li>
<li>We saw a bronze duck and her ducklings from the Robert McCloskey book "Make Way for Ducklings," celebrated in the Boston Public Garden.</li>
<li>We heard a flutist play hornpipes from the bridge over the pond in the park, which was fun until a couple dressed for the opera took up the flutist's time insisting he play songs that the couple hummed for him.</li>
<li>The pass for the T Line subway through Boston is called a CharlieTicket or CharlieCard. They're named after Charlie, memorialized in a 1949 protest song called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbtkL5_f6-4" target="_blank">"M.T.A."</a> satirizing subway fee increases at the time. Charlie, spending his dime to take the subway, learns he needs another nickel, which he doesn't have, to get off the train, and is doomed to ride the train forever. His wife throws a sandwich to him through the open window of the train each day from the Scollay Square Station (now Government Center) at a quarter past two.</li>
<li>Written for a mayoral candidate who protested the subway fee increases, the song didn't help the guy win. The Kingston Trio made it a hit, after changing the candidate's name because some Bostonians accused him of being a communist sympathizer.</li>
<li>The CharlieTicket day pass cost us $12 apiece. We're on vacation, we consoled each other.</li>
<li>Our little cocoon in California has nothing on New England for political campaigning. Signs proliferate, including a mile stretch along the New Hampshire shore of nothing but Trump signs. People stood on the overpasses on the Cape Cod freeway, waving signs for their candidates. I flipped off a Trump contingent as we passed underneath. One of them looked straight at me. Shortly after, I think the man said to his cohort, "You know, this just doesn't feel right," dropped his sign and went home to vote early for Hillary Clinton.</li>
<li>Despite having co-opted Charlie and angst over the nation's oldest subway system, the T Line is wonderful, especially for this rube who hates driving through cities, especially unfamiliar ones. It squeaks and makes horrible noises and writhes beneath the city — someone should make a symphony from its unnatural sounds — but the T Line gets you all over the area, and every train was crowded. Sacramento's Light Rail is a laughable imitation.</li>
<li>At Freeport, Maine, our turnaround point, we bypass the L.L. Bean headquarters (serendipity!) for a walk through a state park along Casco Bay. So many islands out in the water! Such calm water, and no swimmers! What a waste. A woman getting her puppy used to the water asks if we were from "away" (just like I'd read Mainers say!) and said we should go to Acadia National Park, two hours farther north. Damn this woman, enticing us away from our unplanned plans! We had yet to see Boston, our stated goal. We went south.</li>
<li>By serendipity, we saw were Paul Revere's family sat in the Old North Church. The floor of the church is penned off, sort of human corrals, and parishioners bought these pens. The walls of each pen are high, kind of like going to church in a modern rabbit warren of office cubicles. We also saw where Revere landed on reaching Charlestown at night to ride to Lexington. </li>
<li>A member of the Curley Community Center in South Boston hosts us for a swim in the harbor. Men convened on one side of the center, women the other, and they were generally not allowed on each other's beach or facilities, but they could swim together in the 50-degree water beyond the tall wooden fences that extend into the harbor. Our host was just your average Harvard neurobiology professor (he didn't say this; I found out later), cursing his forgetfulness having left his swimsuit back home.</li>
<li>"California Stop" my ass! Massachusetts residents are far more lax about stopping and looking before turning into traffic. They seem to be aggressively polite, by which I mean they are apt to turn left directly in front of you, and are almost as apt to stop in traffic to let drivers turn left in front of them. Turning left is a desperate measure, somehow.</li>
<li>On Cape Cod are "breakdown lanes," and at rush hour drivers are allowed to drive on the shoulders. I propose they be called "breakneck lanes," because drivers reached 80 miles an hour along the shoulders, onramp drivers be damned.</li>
<li>We saw where John Hancock was buried, in a burying ground (not cemetery) where lichen-licked tombstones lean and lurch. Disney's Imagineers must have had New England burying grounds in mind when designing the Haunted Mansion. Yes, my pop culture is showing again.</li>
<li>Nothing's good in movie theaters these days. Thank God, since were forced to see more of Boston instead.</li>
<li>Gulls, some cormorants, but not one barking seal, or any other sea life. No birdsong, even in deep woods, except for some chittering along a street one morning in Gloucester. What's going on?</li>
<li>Saco ("Socko"), Maine, where Sam Brannan is from, is mostly a city of theme parks now, shuttered for the winter. Sam essentially created the Gold Rush in California, and profited from it, and never went back to New England. What would he think of Saco now?</li>
<li>In Wallaston, a Boston suburb, we stayed at a brand new Howard Johnson hotel. I thought the hotel chain had disappeared, but here was a new one, with a giant adirondack chair outside the office as its symbol. Turns out (serendipity!) the first Howard Johnson restaurant was founded by a man named Howard Johnson (go figure!), in Wallaston.</li>
<li>We miss the end of the greatest Game 7 in World Series history, and we feel sorry for easterners, who have to stay up so late to watch baseball games.</li>
<li>"Paul Revere's Ride," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, we learn, is a poem that elevates a then relatively unknown man to everlasting memory, and sacrifices fact in order create an Everyman hero to rally support for the Union in advance of the Civil War.</li>
<li>We are not happy with Portland, Maine, where Longfellow was born, because it gave us a parking ticket. You'd think parking enforcement would give you the benefit of the doubt if you buy a parking pass but then park in a poorly marked commercial zone anyway. The old port neighborhood is nice, though.</li>
<li>This is my souvenir.</li>
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shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-49250341487822905632016-08-16T07:14:00.004-07:002016-08-16T07:14:52.832-07:00Sphere of influence<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Another sad thing has drawn me out of blog retirement.<br />
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Not Donald Trump sad — not that unwanted, bilious sensation of my soul being pickled. Peh!<br />
<br />
This sadness nourishes the soul instead.<br />
<br />
Lynne Rivers Roper died last week. I did not know her, except in words and pictures and sound.<br />
<br />
First I knew her as Lynne Rivers, as she called herself on facebook®™, where I went to witness and discourse with swimmers from around the world.<br />
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"Great name for a swimmer," I thought, especially her kind of swimming, in the torrents and forest-bound rivers and pools of what she called the west country, the southwestern corner of England. Also, the heaving water of the English Channel.<br />
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Her swims always seemed to warrant great effort first, long hikes out of civilization into the woods of Elizabethan adventure novels, or climbs down the fossil-packed Devonian layers to the sea. Her Bit-O-Honey®-colored dog, named Honey, led the way and made it into most of the photos.<br />
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Lynne called it all "wild swimming," and described many of her jaunts in a blog, <a href="https://wildwomanswimming.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">wildwomanswimming</a>.<br />
<br />
Immediately I liked the term, though almost as immediately I found some swimmers objected to it; swimming is swimming, some swimmers said.<br />
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You might not think such a thing controversial, but there you go.<br />
<br />
It was the first time I was to get that Lynne was a bold spirit, even about so seemingly innocuous a matter.<br />
<br />
Lynne was quite a writer, which I had taken to be just a really good thing she happened to do. But she was a <i>writer</i> writer, the breadth of which I am not fully familiar.<br />
<br />
(Forgive me, personal friends of Lynne's, for my lack of knowledge; forgive me also, English friends of Lynne's, for my inevitable botch job on your geography and culture and politics herein.)<br />
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Of skinny dipping, for example, Lynne wrote: <br />
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<i>Like every activity in our consumerist culture, wild swimming has become
a lifestyle choice. It’s aspirational, and visually suited to glossy
magazines luring city-folk with a country-living wet-dream. Can nudity
possibly be a part of this? Skinny dipping is subversive in a more
complex way than that of being cheeky and rebellious, not least in that
you can’t sell kit to people who aren’t wearing anything. Once you’ve
plunged yourself into a moorland brook on a sunny day, skinny-dipping
becomes almost inevitable. What does this represent but the exposure of
one’s body and soul to nature, a baptism, a metaphorical sloughing of
the skin?</i> </blockquote>
Pick any paragraph of Lynne's descriptions of swims or swimming — of the same swim in the same place meriting vastly different descriptions, or of keeping swim lessons available to English schoolchildren — and her words will dance before you.<br />
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I told her several times, though not enough, and she returned the compliment, despite my quite low dancing-word average.<br />
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Next I heard her on radio programs in the United Kingdom, speaking out for open-water swimming, and against an English culture that presented any open water as dangerous and not to be attempted. She became a frequent spokesperson for the Outdoor Swimming Society, a UK open-water advocacy group.<br />
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In time she became Lynne Roper online — I think she explained more people knew her by that name, so I'm not sure "Rivers" wasn't a <i>nom de plume</i>.<br />
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Over time, by tangent, I learned that she had been a paramedic until sidelined by injury, and that she had been an operations manager in the Royal Air Force, and a university instructor. I learned that she had had breast cancer.<br />
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Bold by nature, and emboldened by her health care and health scare experience, Lynne wrote frequently and passionately for the National Health Service in England, and against the Tory government of the United Kingdom for working to dismantle or privatize the NHS and make health care harder to get for those who can least afford life without.<br />
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Lynne and many other UK swimmers I met on facebook©™ taught me much about the political climate in Britain.<br />
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Time passed, and Lynne suddenly began asking facebook™® friends for advice about voice-recognition writing software. I didn't put much stock into it, and maybe it had nothing to do with Lynne's subsequent diagnosis of a brain tumor.<br />
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I inferred two things, though: Lynne was having trouble typing — but planned to write anyway.<br />
<br />
And write she did. A new blog, <a href="https://outofmybrains.org/" target="_blank">Out of My Brains</a>, poured out Lynne's frank, detailed and funny account of brain tumor diagnosis and treatment. I was going to say "unflinching," but I have a feeling even someone I took to be forthright and baldfaced was holding back just a bit, for the sake of family and friends and readers like me.<br />
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Her blog featured an x-ray image of the tumor. Lynne named the tumor "Hunt," after Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt, the British Secretary of State for Health, upon whom Lynne pinned blame for leading the wreckage of the National Health Service.<br />
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In stark terms, Lynne pointed out she was fortunate for health care that so many others may not be able to get.<br />
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Equally stark and matter of fact, Lynne said she would not live long. Maybe a year, probably less.<br />
<br />
Lynne's last post in Out of My Brains was June 18, and she apologized at the top for typos. She described the dreadful effects of her treatment, her illness, a terrible day for her, for her parents.<br />
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She wrote of wanting to describe an idea for her treatment regimen in a later post.<br />
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I never knew Lynne personally, but I like to think I know enough that she would want people to remember her for the daily selfies sent from her hospice bed, her head shorn, her face thick from medicines, an angry lump and red scar on her right temple — and a piece of chocolate, melting and messy, held in her lips.<br />
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There must have been a good week and a half of these.<br />
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But I can't do it. I choose to remember Lynne, a real inspiration found in a virtual world, as she looked in the sea, shoulders above the water, her hair a <i>dry</i> (!) silver mop, her face to the sun, stretched wide in a smile.<br />
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After her death, friends filled facebook®™ with photos of her past, when it looks like she had chestnut hair. <br />
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It's easy to see, from back then and in the few years I knew her through words and pictures, Lynne lived for joy, for friends, for justice, for honesty, for care of others, for wild water and the chance for more people to share that joy. She lives on as one of those people who packed much more into life than the average person — who lives on in others because of it.<br />
<br />
Some of her friends suggested giving to <a href="https://www.stlukes-hospice.org.uk/" target="_blank">St. Luke's Hospice Plymouth</a>, which cared for her in her last days. It seems absolutely fitting.<br />
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In the last few days, I have considered my own open water, not wild swimming by any means. Yesterday, wind under one of the bridges picked up the water, slapping my face, and I thought of Lynne.<br />
<br />
Swim for her. Swim because of her. shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-65727042688842383172016-06-08T06:18:00.000-07:002016-06-08T19:14:03.701-07:00Descent into madness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Few matters would return me to this blog.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">One of th<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">em, God help <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">us all</span>, is Donald Trump.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The hypocrite behind the Teleprompter®™. The snake in the tall grass, <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the lipsticked pig, acting presidential, for <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Tuesday, any<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">way.</span></span></span> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In writing, I revive the delusion that I can influence anyone who reads this. <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You have been few but faithful, and I'm guess<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ing you stood in the choir with me, or are too polite<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> to call me a misinformed ass<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Speaking of misinformed ass, Donal<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">d Trump. Don't let him become president<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">.</span></span> </span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I'm harboring my delusion once more that you might be among the few who (1) read this, and (2) might be voting for <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Trump.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Don't do it, I'm begging.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When last I <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">wrote, <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">months ago, I also drew <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Trump at the podium, a windmill o<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">f Trumpian bluster who morphed into the Nazi <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">s</span>wasti<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ka. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That was back when Trump was mostly a sick joke.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Now he's a nightmare of <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">r<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">id<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">iculous proportion.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">(Although he still lends cred<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ence t<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">o my fer<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">vent hope <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">he is playing a vast practic<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">al joke, <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">set to implode the Republic party on the convention floor by <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">exposing himself as a closet <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Clinton fan.)</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The nation under Mitt Romney as president would have been tolerable. H<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">e <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">revealed himself as</span> an elitist snob at the worst time for his campaign against incumbent Barack Obama last election, but he had the chops to be president.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Trump is anything but presidential.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">E<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">xcept for the frown he makes during one-on<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">-one interviews, when he says he's the least racist person that ever lived. The frown is presidential<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">. It reminds me of what John Steinbeck said of a character in<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The Winter of our Discontent (ironic title<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">), "pulling a frog face."</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Trump <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">owns a<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> lot of suits and ties. So there's that.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Make America great again? For whom? From whom? Trump has insulted and <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">dumped on and denounced whole groups of Americans for pander and sport.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Wo<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">men. Musl<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">im<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">s. Mexicans. War heroes. People with disabilities. Iowa. <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">He calls people names, <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">referri<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ng to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas," then repeats the name<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">s<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">louder, when someone points out it<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'s offensive.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">He divides people and derides them, and invites followers to join in. <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To echo his own <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">superlative rhe<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">toric</span></span>, he is the least presidential person in the history of the country.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Trump wants to be president of <i>some</i> of the United States — <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">that which</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> is rich and white and male, mostly. The beautiful people he doesn't make fun of.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Trump vows to build a wall against Me<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">xico, and get Mexico to pay for it. He broadly brushes immigrants from Mexico as killers and rapi<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">sts, conceding some of them might be good people, he doesn't know<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Then he says the Hispanics love <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">him. Last week, a<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">t a rally, he con<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">gratulated "my African American," pointing to a man in the audience.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I picture him, his arm clutched close around "my African American's" neck, telling his smir<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">king cro<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">nies, "Isn't he the greatest?" Then giving his African American a playful slap on the che<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ek.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Last week, Trump sa<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">id the judge in a class-action suit against his Trump University is bias<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ed against him because the judge is Mexican (then "of Mexican heritage<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">" when Trump repeatedly was told the judge is American, born in Indiana), and Trump wants to build that wall.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Next he sa<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">id any Muslim judge would be bias<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ed against him, presumably because <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Trump blustered <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">infamously about vowing to keep Muslims out of the cou<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ntry.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">By extension, any<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">one</span> Trump has <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">denounced would be ineligible to preside in any lawsuit against him — and serve in any position in <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Trump's</span> government? — becau<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">se <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">he</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> would automatical<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ly <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">be unfair to Trump, the xenophobe<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I guess that's going to make it easy for him to run the country.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Don't let Trump run the country.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If you can stomach the TV news <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">lately<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, you get the nightly dollop of smiling Trump spokespeople<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> spinning his spew into golden denial<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, of<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> playing "I know you are<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, but what am I?" for the cable news circuit.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Trump is the bully who grabs your wri<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">st, slaps your face with your own hand, and says, "Why <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">you hitting yourse<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">lf?! Quit hitting yourself! What's the <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">matter with you?<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">!"</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">He lies then denies<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">it</span>, even when shown the evidence.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Trump is a racist panderer, telling anyone what he wants to hear. He told California f<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">armers last week there is no d<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">rought.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I g<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">et it. Government doesn't work. Federal government overreaches, the economy slogs along, too many people don't have good jobs, while politicians and banks run the country in<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> spite of us</span>. Society's a <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">mess, problems abound.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I get that we<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'re desperate for a solution.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Donald Trump, the div<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ider, is not it. He is a new, <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">bigger problem. His mission has been to lie openly and abash<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">edly, to make you afraid and make you hate, to make himself king.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The solution is harder than that, and won't be found with this election alone. It will be found in the hard work of us taking responsibility for our role as citizens.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I get that Hillary <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Clinton is establishment, is Bill Clinton reincarnate, in too deep per<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">haps, bringing to the candidacy all the baggage of the Clinton presidenc<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">y. I'm not sure <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I get all the vitriol against her; I think so<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">meone traveling a similar long road in <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">government service accrues battle scars, makes colossal mistakes, gets off track from the ideal, if any ideal existed<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I think the hate for <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Clinton is more perception than proof, much of it manufacture<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">d and allowed to tendril like kudzu over everything, in the sam<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">e way <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">that unalloyed and instant<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">aneous hatre<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">d for President Obama was made to fester.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But Hillary Clinton does not corral Americans with labels, and encourage others to denounce them.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Nor does Bernie Sanders, who if anything hates only what Trump represents, <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">the privileged class who dance through loopholes like lariats at a <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Wild West <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">show, and tell e<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">veryone else to <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">make do with what<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> little they don't own<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Opponents stuck "socialist" on Sanders like a "kick me!" sign from the start, and his ideas for free education seem wonderfully unworkable. But here's the thing: He's promoting ideas for America, one America, not for some of America.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Now I see Republican leaders one by one endorse Trump as their party's candidate, saying he says some things they can get behind, that this odd, angry<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, bamb<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">oozling bluster </span></span>is just the Candidate Trump, to get votes, and the President Trump will be different. Which is the rationalization of the temporarily insane.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">To support Trump, <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">be you</span> Republican official or average voter, is to support his racist, abusive rants, is to support putting whole peoples in a lower class with impunity.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">No amount of lipstick can pretty this pig. No argument will explain <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">awa<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">y<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> your support for this guy</span></span></span>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Don't let Trump be president. These are <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">u</span>nited <span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">s</span>tates.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span></span></div>
shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-39789565259951830482016-02-24T13:37:00.000-08:002016-02-24T13:37:29.991-08:00Process of elimination<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK3Nk1NOY7yMKBJ2ITn3nEfhmSzHGhj8znINhgnaw8Bj3JQ9ITUqjD3nH2-kZsU4XmoCn6rkj48qLjmOXnolmQTHZzNA64-Qsg7bBTtG4mU-bhBQ4T3Icb_Y83zM7YoxwgTf_X5VVmY6E/s1600/Cruz+222316.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK3Nk1NOY7yMKBJ2ITn3nEfhmSzHGhj8znINhgnaw8Bj3JQ9ITUqjD3nH2-kZsU4XmoCn6rkj48qLjmOXnolmQTHZzNA64-Qsg7bBTtG4mU-bhBQ4T3Icb_Y83zM7YoxwgTf_X5VVmY6E/s1600/Cruz+222316.png" /></a>Counting down the presidential candidates I won't endorse.</div>
<br />
Like you care.<br />
<br />
Batting next — Ted Cruz!<br />
<br />
No way! Why? Cruz is smarmy and unctuous.<br />
<br />
He is Joe McCarthy incarnate, swinging a cross like a cudgel, rooting out not Commies but whoever and whatever doesn't jibe with his brand of Christianity.<br />
<br />
He's Trump but worse: Same strange ideas, same foaming foment of hatred and division. Except Cruz knows which levers to pull, he knows the codes. He knows which ears to whisper into.<br />
<br />
Silver-tongued devil.<br />
<br />
So if you're keeping score at home, no endorsement for Trump, none for Cruz.<br />
<br />
Like I ever would.<br />
<br />
Let's end the suspense: Not endorsing anyone in the Republican slate, even though Marco Rubio looks almost hinged in this crowd he hangs with.<br />
<br />
Who's left? Stay tuned.<br />
<br />
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<br />shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-4239001382505353932016-02-18T12:40:00.000-08:002016-02-18T12:40:25.166-08:00Face is familiar<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiObh70-YRuQxrnRIZHzMC4Z0MYNF_LB0NDLOLLF4QH2X7vw9oSekcCNXDaM_ffcROX82iSqzd8Z0kLqDE-dzqDBfYpsWiqxwpbj53BIu2hagtoxw56eflzmvuz3N2FtUADQ8YTEJ2SZrA/s1600/Trump+121716.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiObh70-YRuQxrnRIZHzMC4Z0MYNF_LB0NDLOLLF4QH2X7vw9oSekcCNXDaM_ffcROX82iSqzd8Z0kLqDE-dzqDBfYpsWiqxwpbj53BIu2hagtoxw56eflzmvuz3N2FtUADQ8YTEJ2SZrA/s1600/Trump+121716.png" /></a></div>
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<br />
I'm almost ready to endorse a candidate. Like you care.<br />
<br />
To paraphrase Bernie Sanders, "Well, it ain't Donald Trump, that's for sure."<br />
<br />
Remember, it all starts with some words …shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-64395030295154098032016-02-10T12:17:00.000-08:002016-02-10T12:24:33.078-08:00What's on your mind?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz5DvUIHZ5zog_uxbu3X-W8_vaBKr3qqJnVfwY5_q8c4_Askxwdnjxbdum0z7AFgF76MHoWpJ_AZeByS0oMasK6yq8caUWfVAD2Uyuy7GlJ6WFoHQYDJitZZ6HeU69blzW81mSotoyqKA/s1600/facebook+eye+12816.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz5DvUIHZ5zog_uxbu3X-W8_vaBKr3qqJnVfwY5_q8c4_Askxwdnjxbdum0z7AFgF76MHoWpJ_AZeByS0oMasK6yq8caUWfVAD2Uyuy7GlJ6WFoHQYDJitZZ6HeU69blzW81mSotoyqKA/s1600/facebook+eye+12816.png" /></a></div>
Such a strange tentacled creature, is facebook.™® <br />
<br />
This is how facebook®™ greeted me Monday, with a picture of me someone else had posted a long while back:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Shawn, we care about you and the memories you share here. We thought you'd like to look back on this post from 3 years ago. </i></blockquote>
Really? facebook®™ cares about me? Everybody at facebook©®, or just the executives? Or whoever's in charge of holding onto old posts and showing them to me on the anniversary of their posting?<br />
<br />
Or maybe the algorithms and bots and gear boxes assigned to this work have become sentient, developing emotions for those whose posts they aggregate?<br />
<br />
Or is facebook©® speaking on behalf of other users?<br />
<br />
"This won't show in anyone else's News Feed™®™ unless you share it," facebook®™assured me, and I took it at its word, leaving it unshared.<br />
<br />
Last week it designated a Friend's Day — I'm guessing it was some facebook®™ anniversary — and you could watch a video of a pair of hands tossing photos of you onto a surface, along with showcards bearing your name, as if a friend or relative was looking through a photo collection (odd, right, actual tactile photos, with white borders, like from the 20th century before home computers?) and culling the photos of your facebook®™ past for you to peruse and presumably to share.<br />
<br />
I didn't oblige. Photos of me are relatively few anyway, and they represent events far between. If I'm in them, I'm part of a group, usually as a reluctant participant (except for portraits with well-traveled swimmers), and it's someone else's photo, posted on someone else's facebook®™ page. Not much to see here; move along. <br />
<br />
Many people did share this montage, and on my News Feed®™ toward the end of the day they ran right after another. I didn't look look too closely, just long enough to note I had probably seen these photos from others' pasts. It's the same pair of hands, tossing the same photo shapes onto the surface; only the photos and the names are changed.<br />
<br />
I seem to remember that facebook®™ did something like this around the holidays last year, except that it was a kind of music video with your photos. Same music, but your photos, and text with your name in it.<br />
<br />
On Sunday, facebook®™ reminded me that the Super Bowl®©™ was to take place later that day, and encouraged me to post about what I was doing to commemorate this glorious day.<br />
<br />
I don't really think facebook®™ was asking because it cares about me and wishes I wouldn't be an unpatriotic wallflower and not watch the American Game.®™<br />
<br />
Every time I open facebook,®™which is a lot, it asks, "What's on your mind?" Lately it has also asked if I'd like to post onto facebook something I attached to a private email, and gives me to the link to the attachment, making it just a click from world viewing.<br />
<br />
facebook©™ is passing strange.<br />
<br />
facebook©® regards me likewise, I'm sure.<br />
<br />
If facebook©®™ ran an audit, it would fire me as a user. facebook®™ is photo- and video-driven, for one, and I prefer words.<br />
<br />
It's the only social media I use, the only one I can handle, the Hoover®™ vacuum of my free thought and time. If I tweeted® and followed others' tweets,™ or snapchatted™® or looked at everyone's Instagram®© pix and gifs, I would lose what little room I have left to exist.<br />
<br />
facebook®™ alone has been enough to turn me into one of the folks I used to wonder about, looking into their onyx slabs of magic as the world rocketed by, before I got a shining magic slab of my own.<br />
<br />
Now people wonder about me, bent over my magic slab, wonder why I can't or won't give them my full attention. I would tell them it's because I'm following the multifarious lives of people far away, on facebook,®™ but I'm heel and cad enough already by that point.<br />
<br />
On days when the world rockets by, taking me with it in a full day of work and away from my smart phone, then I consider it a treat to peruse facebook®™ at the end of the day, to see how other people's days (mostly the swim parts of their day) have gone. It's all the other times, bored and misanthropic, that facebook®™feels conspiratorial, sucking time.<br />
<br />
I like facebook.®™ Even as an unsophisticated (photo-averse) user, I find it powerful as a communication tool for special-interest communities. You're probably bored with my adulation of "Did You Swim Today?" a forum for swimmers worldwide; it's still fascinating to witness the global scope of pool swimmers and open water swimmers, of newbies crossing their first pool length, and warriors crossing miles and miles of the ocean's most treacherous and famous crossings.<br />
<br />
facebook®™ is the best kind of short-wave radio. I can type a message to a swimmer in the UK, and get a message right back, and have a little conversation in real-time. facebook®™ is wonderful that way.<br />
<br />
I have gotten to swim with several people I've met through facebook™®, half a world away. Usually they have had to travel to me in order to make that happen, but still.<br />
<br />
On facebook®™ I have met many interesting people, and I like to think that if I somehow lived near them, we could be face-to-face friends.<br />
<br />
I also have face-to-face friends who went away, in place or opportunity, and facebook®™ is a way to stay keep connected.<br />
<br />
facebook®™ has its limits, though, and overreaches many times every day. I think I may be in the minority here, because what I regard as flaws may be part of facebook's®™ design. It's not good for:<br />
<ul>
<li>Politics. It's used for politics, every day, but I'm not sure it's a good medium. True, I have learned more about UK politics than I ever would have without facebook,®™ and I have "liked" and occasionally commiserated with people whose views I empathize with. But facebook®™ is a terrible medium for debate or information.<br /><br />Much of the political discourse comprises so many slaps of mud on the wall, antagonizing readers to comment or like or rant about. But the idea of carrying on a conversation by following a long string of comment feels anathema to actual debate or conversation, let alone reasoned discussion or a search for information. Which leads to:</li>
<li>Long discussions. It doesn't take long for me to try and follow a lengthening discussion (about anything, really, though many of these discussions become vitriolic) before I remember I've got matters to attend to in my real life, and this virtual life can and should go on without me.<br /><br />As with political discussions, I get nowhere. I have neither grown nor helped.</li>
<li>Personal crises. It's no place for people who need real help. facebook®™ is ostensibly a great and multi-connected community of friends, with vast and instantaneous reach. Yet its immediacy can't overcome its impersonality.<br /><br />Several times, including recently, someone has posted threatening or at least intimating suicide. I am more or less a stranger except for one tangential common link. I live far away. In short time, more-or-less strangers with the same common ground, more or less, began a lengthy frantic discussion trying to secure emergency help for the person who posted.<br /><br />By the end of the day, the person posted thanks for others' concern, and something about a small unrelated matter, which spawned posts of anger from others for what they saw as a blithe tone from the person who caused people a world a way to scramble to her rescue.<br /><br />Occasionally a few post about their hurt lives, and I don't know what to do, so far away, so distant, so ethereal, except give words of comfort and encouragement. I don't know how to ask if they have gotten real, professional help, or if they can get some, or just a real shoulder to cry own.</li>
</ul>
facebook's®©™ <i>raison d'être</i> is also its weakness. It can't make friendships. It can designate friends, but its definition of friends runs awry of what I imagine of face-to-face friends. facebook®™ friends show me curiosities and breathtaking sunsets and funny videos, which amuse me; facebook®™ friends also show me plates of food, or tell me where they're eating, display vacation videos or show pictures of their children at the amusement park, which makes me uncomfortable.<br />
<br />
Please don't take offense if I don't "friend" you on facebook®™— and chances are we already have become facebook©®™ friends, because I post my blog on facebook®™ too, which is probably how you're reading it.<br />
<br />
I really enjoy the subject we have in common, and the humor or eloquence or adventure or just the rhythm and cadence of how you share it. But when we become friends in facebook,®™you give me a window into your world, friends and family I don't know, children I wouldn't ordinarily meet and whose lives are best lived away from the window of social media; I give you a window into mine, too, though mine is usually lilliputian and fogged up because it's mostly about swimming.<br />
<br />
Your family is your family, and it's fine, and mine is mine, your life your life, and mine mine; if we were face-to-face friends, perhaps our lives would intersect that way, but even then we would keep much private, just like in real life.<br />
<br />
You could say I don't have to read those posts about people in your world I don't know, and I don't; a thumb flick, and the post rolls away. facebook®™ is about making those connections, and I'm swimming against its tide.<br />
<ul>
</ul>
facebook™®© bots, I'm sure, are working on that right now.shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-63359554429031609772016-02-04T12:19:00.000-08:002016-02-05T06:34:57.967-08:00Flushed<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFk6_EEnkzo2aOJwFhbCIPjp-sMg7LSO10WCLW3ZP1ZehTHFL0d9faauboRiZtrOer2WSdblCs8Rvq2A7efLdUOualbI-r_WSQ1chMaw0c_RsBEbrF-9qiCpfm0kq8Wl21tkuOf5iUtDw/s1600/Brainfall+12316.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFk6_EEnkzo2aOJwFhbCIPjp-sMg7LSO10WCLW3ZP1ZehTHFL0d9faauboRiZtrOer2WSdblCs8Rvq2A7efLdUOualbI-r_WSQ1chMaw0c_RsBEbrF-9qiCpfm0kq8Wl21tkuOf5iUtDw/s1600/Brainfall+12316.png" /></a>Every morning, first thing, I fill a bucket of water from the kitchen tap, then next morning pour it out under a tree out front, and repeat.<br />
<br />
Every morning.<br />
<br />
It's something Dan Lungren long ago told me to do — one of the few things, probably the only thing, I do on Dan Lungren's say-so.<br />
<br />
He last appeared on the public stage as the classic Republican fat-cat congressman, leaning heavily on the lobbyists' dole, wanting limited government except for the part that monitors and regulates our private lives.<br />
<br />
But back when he was California's attorney general, he advised residents to let their kitchen taps run for a minute each morning, to flush lead that built up overnight.<br />
<br />
At the time, shortly after our daughter was born 23 years ago, Lungren sued 14 plumbing manufacturers on the state's behalf, charging that their faucets leach hazardous amounts of lead into water.<br />
<br />
<i>Huh, what now?</i> I remember thinking: The thing that dispenses clean water in your glass — also dispenses lead into otherwise clean water?<br />
<br />
Letting the water run for a minute minimizes the lead left over, Lungren said.<br />
<br />
So ever since, for two decades and change, I have flushed the tap. When the drought looked like it wasn't going away, I started catching the water in a bucket to put on the trees. I overhear visitors to our home every once in a while asking, <i>What's with the bucket of water under the counter?</i><br />
<br />
I don't know whether lead is still a hazard in the faucet I flush. The one we have is new; I managed, in my lack of grace and patience, to install it last spring (still no leaks!). News and government sources tell me lead is probably still there, so I do what I can, running the tap for a minute.<br />
<br />
We've got it made.<br />
<br />
Flint, Michigan, not so much.<br />
<br />
You probably know that the state of Michigan switched Flint's water supply from the clean source of Lake Huron to the caustic source of the Flint River in April 2014, to save money in that economically depressed city. And/or to enable tax cuts for the wealthy of Michigan. And/or finance mounting retirement pension obligations.<br />
<br />
The corrosive Flint River has etched the pipes, leaching lead from them and into the water supply. Flint residents did what you and I do, turning on their faucets without a second thought, and now Flint children have lead poisoning. Michigan switched Flint's water back to Lake Huron in October, after the story finally blew up, but lead still appears to be coming from the corroded pipes.<br />
<br />
Water from Flint taps comes out the color of crushed brick.<br />
<br />
Water ran like that for a year and a half before government, denying and delaying, decided to do something about it. <br />
<br />
Now Gov. Rick Snyder, trying to save money/cut services to serve tax breaks, as well as Michigan and the federal government (that's us), will have to pay millions and millions more to fix the problem and manage the long-term health consequences. Oh, and Legionnaire's Disease — did I mention that since the water switch, 10 deaths from Legionnaire's Disease resulted in Flint, up from zero before?<br />
<br />
Or maybe you didn't know about Flint. Maybe you also don't know about Porter Ranch outside of Los Angeles, where since Halloween natural gas has been spewing out of an underground storage cave, its sickening methane cloud driving people out of their homes. Southern California Gas Co. took a week to reveal what happened, and says it will still be more weeks before the spew is capped.<br />
<br />
Though invisible, it's one of the country's worst ecological disasters.<br />
<br />
It's not well known, which is curious but not surprising. Neither disaster affects you or me, except as distant witness.<br />
<br />
What would you do amid these disasters, though? Wouldn't you be out of your mind with rage? Whether from negligence or fiscal malice — the FBI and a Congressional committee is chasing who knew what when — it really doesn't matter, does it? Leaders governing on Flint's behalf poisoned its water, and residents using the water ingested unsafe levels of lead, which in children especially can cause irreversible harm, developmental delays, borne out in long-term medical care, educational costs, unbearable heartache and loss.<br />
<br />
Whether negligence or cost cutting or a trick of geophysics, natural gas has made a neighborhood unlivable, and worsened air across Southern California.<br />
<br />
Would you care the cause? Would you delay and deny, debating whether Democrats or Republicans did this, whether one inept or uncaring government trashed the budget and forced another to govern by terrible triage — some die, some live? Would you hem and haw and analyze whether someone worked it so the rich got richer and the poor got poorer and poisoned?<br />
<br />
Or would you just want it to stop? Would you just want it never to have happened? Would you expect those who caused harm to make it right, right now?<br />
<br />
Wouldn't you also wonder why? How, in this greatest country in the world, an entire city could be poisoned? Would you wonder how other cities could be made to drink tainted water, worse than Flint's?<br />
<br />
Erin Brockovich, who has worked her celebrity like a cudgel, advocating tirelessly — good for her, good for all of us, letting her do our advocacy — says what you may have heard before: Our infrastructure is falling apart, and disasters await. This big brawny visionary country, morning-in-America sunny yellow, seemed to have gotten everything built and then lost interest. Taxes became anathema, and no one can seem to figure out taxes judiciously applied pay for that infrastructure and keep it intact.<br />
<br />
We wait until the bridge collapses into the river and hope it's the only one for awhile, because two bridges, well, we didn't even have a plan for one. We wait until the well is poisoned, and pay millions millions later because we tried to get by with a few hundred now.<br />
<br />
We hope a child doesn't suffer for a lifetime —a life denied and delayed — because we wanted a tax refund.<br />
<br />
Or shouldn't anyway.<br />
<br />
Do what you can do. Flush your tap, water your trees and think, <i>How lucky am I?</i> shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-71051943849450545082016-02-02T12:00:00.000-08:002016-02-02T12:00:42.649-08:00Are we there yet?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-32157865325756243762016-01-21T12:16:00.000-08:002016-01-21T12:16:04.806-08:00False hope<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Yo, California,<br />
<br />
Can we just pretend the last month never happened?<br />
<br />
Can we go on thinking the creeks had disappeared to a trickle, that rivers sank, showing the old ribs of long-forgotten wharves, the hills turned rock gray, the land became hopeless?<br />
<br />
Because this — this heavy rain and snow, this gift of such strangeness — is really not helping.<br />
<br />
Soon the I-told-you-sos who finally realized that maybe they shouldn't water during a storm, will open the valves once again. The holdouts will start watering again, thinking somehow the drought is over.<br />
<br />
It's not. The ground is muddy, the puddles are welcome, the rivers swell and churn, but the drought is still here.<br />
<br />
Call Industrial Light and Magic. We need the illusion of dry.<br />
<br />
We need billboards blocking lakes, depicting them as sere beds of despair. We need fake sun and blue skies of linen. We need the clacking feel of thirst in our throats.<br />
<br />
We need to embrace the three-minute shower, the ones we were taking a month ago, as a permanent practice. We need to keep capturing shower water and tossing it on dying plants outside.<br />
<br />
We need to let yellow mellow, and make it law.<br />
<br />
Because this — this gift of strangeness — will become more strange, not less, as we become more plentiful and demand more plenty.<br />
<br />
After 166 years of this, we can't keep pretending we live in Eden, and making it look that way through wanton water waste. It's not Eden. It's dry desert and chaparral. We've just been extremely fortunate.<br />
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<br />shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-70175956626103258212016-01-19T12:37:00.000-08:002016-01-19T12:37:40.304-08:00Toast<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Up to our asses in glasses, that's us.<br />
<br />
First-world problem, No. Umpteenish: Our kitchen cupboard is overgrown with glasses and cups and tumblers. Glass glasses and plastic glasses and ceramic glasses.<br />
<br />
Wine glasses and water glasses and iced tea glasses. And cups just for Christmas.<br />
<br />
In fact, Christmas is the reason the cupboard fills to the brim, flouting the laws of physics. <br />
<br />
Christmas is when more glasses and cups show up — also, ironically, the only time so many glasses are really necessary.<br />
<br />
And even then, not so many glasses. Not nearly so many. <br />
<br />
The rest of the year, the glasses expand to fill space. They creep to the edge of the shelves at night, while we're sleeping, and lean just so. They grow fat in their disuse, and jostle and grouse in their overcrowded condition, and make themselves ready to fall and shatter to the ground at the next opening of the cupboard door.<br />
<br />
Some day, they conspire: Some day.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I can't ignore a certain — insularity — with these posts lately.</i></blockquote>
The newest glasses are Mason®™ jars with threads along the lip, like for lids. The acquisition of a gift exchange, they have overlarge unwieldy handles that elbow aside other glasses and don't play nice — what do you mean, "insularity?"<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Gee, glasses today … the last one was literally about walking your dog around your neighborhood. And before that — coat hangers. Coat hangers? I mean, come on! Live much? </i></blockquote>
I live plenty. The blog's by me, about me. Write what you know, you know?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Ok, not insular. Parochial. Picayune.</i></blockquote>
Parochial?!<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>And Pick. Uh. Yuuuuune!</i></blockquote>
I write about other stuff.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Yeah, guns </i>ad nauseam<i>. I see the blood dripping lower and lower with each post about it. I'm not sure people notice, though.</i></blockquote>
Maybe. I'm trying to make a point. Maybe it's too esoteric. I write about politics. And social issues that resonate with me.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>And? </i></blockquote>
And what?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>That's it? Do you do anything about it?</i></blockquote>
Like …?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Act on your convictions? Give to a campaign, call your representatives, do something? Anything?</i></blockquote>
I wrote my congressman a couple of times, and my senator once. I receive talking points emails about the subject in return.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>So, the answer is "no."</i></blockquote>
No, not really. I'm working things out, which is why I write them out. I'm never sure what to do.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Grown man like you. Think you'd have it figured out by now.</i></blockquote>
Yeah, you'd think.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Now it's glasses and coathangers and dog walks. Heavy.</i></blockquote>
Well, the wine glasses — of which we have many, the majority of the household loving wine — fit warmly in the hand but don't stack very well, so they're in a fragile state of constant teeter —<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>And the "drawn" part of "Shawn Drawn," getting simpler by the day. Or more simplistic.</i></blockquote>
I'm toying with a new style.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Or just trying to get the "drawn" part done as fast as you can. Like you've got somewhere else to go.</i></blockquote>
Well, maybe I do.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Got your mind on something else?</i></blockquote>
A thousand miles away.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Write about that, then. Sure beats wandering around your house, pontificating about dust, or coasters or messy rugs.</i></blockquote>
Nothing to write home about, really. Just other stuff to get done. Maybe. After.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Maybe you need a breather.</i></blockquote>
Yeah, I've been thinking about it. Thinking through my fingers, like this, has fed energy into other things I do. But lately the other things have crowded into this time and space, and require me to think through my fingers in other ways anyway.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Ya gotta rest.</i></blockquote>
And grown man or not, I really do puzzle over stuff I'm probably supposed to be firm about. Not that typing solves the puzzles, but it makes them more concrete.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Like glasses?</i></blockquote>
We keep these enormous plastic cups we got as gifts — of course! — which would stack quite nicely if they weren't so tall. So they must be arranged upside down and rightside up instead, carefully, or the kitchen becomes chaos.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Tough life.</i></blockquote>
Yeah, maybe I need a breather. Maybe once a week with these posts.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Try that, see how it goes. </i></blockquote>
Hmm. Nice talking to me. shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-60555215936668027672016-01-15T12:07:00.000-08:002016-01-15T12:07:43.600-08:00People in my neighborhood<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJUijEMU3mbMiiZXiBpXSn1Z71XAhv5C90NgYj0p7R4Onq0eVLHDI1YVcT3L8ldSnkWzFNhfYRKcdoNomvNoPSbdgorQXix2QySsT8tLJOHiSKrU1CPUh5r42fJ_eIfTLKsQUMfdCzoqU/s1600/Neighborhood+111416.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJUijEMU3mbMiiZXiBpXSn1Z71XAhv5C90NgYj0p7R4Onq0eVLHDI1YVcT3L8ldSnkWzFNhfYRKcdoNomvNoPSbdgorQXix2QySsT8tLJOHiSKrU1CPUh5r42fJ_eIfTLKsQUMfdCzoqU/s1600/Neighborhood+111416.png" /></a>Dear You,<br />
<br />
Much has changed since last I wrote, so much that I've almost forgotten them all. Not everything entirely, but big parts of everything.<br />
<br />
It occurred to me, walking the dog this morning, I ought to write it down and let you see. And let me remember.<br />
<br />
Change can get so you forgot something has changed at all. You forget why you were so upset about the change, or how it changed the way you felt, until all you can remember is the changed thing, and not how it was before.<br />
<br />
Our son, home for the holidays, let out a surprising "Whoa!" when we passed by the elementary school around the corner, where they paved the paradise of a big soccer field and put up a big parking lot.<br />
<br />
Maybe the parking lot is important. As parking lots go, it's nice. It's <i>engineered</i>; someone knew a thing or two about making it, and ringed it round with trees and creeping carpety landscape and woody mulch.<br />
<br />
I doubt the parking lot was needed. More likely the school district had use-it-or-lose-it money. "Whadda we do?" Someone in the district probably asked. "I don't know," said someone else. "A parking lot?"<br />
<br />
So the soccer field, the long yellow-green space, where the tiniest children played in the recreational soccer leagues around here, is gone. Then I forgot all that, until our son said, "Whoa!"<br />
<br />
It's one of so many changes like that, all the time, every day. Big, cataclysmic, life-altering things, and little relentless imperceptible grains of time moving imperceptible grains of sand.<br />
<br />
I'm writing about the little things.<br />
<br />
Our street — it's a funny thing — doesn't change all that much. It's a dog-leg cul-de-sac, mostly duplex rentals on one side, single family homes the other, some of them rented, probably more owned. The rentals at, I guess, the elbow and paw of the dog leg, change residents every six months or a year for reasons I can't make out.<br />
<br />
It's been a while since new children moved into the neighborhood, and those that do are young teenagers whose lives are lived elsewhere, somewhere. Here is a place they proclaim as base, but life is lived <i>out there</i>. They don't hang out in front of homes or the street here much.<br />
<br />
Neighbors are probably glad we had the house painted over the summer. Not that it was bad, but now it's nice — except where I scraped the new trim with the fender of my car trying to back into the garage. I keep thinking about looking for spare paint the painters might have left, and fixing that.<br />
<br />
The lawn is another story, a battered rendition of tundra, left dead through the drought, trying to grow through the cold rain. <br />
<br />
Out with my dog this morning, I am jarred, as I always am, by the unreal swath of green a neighbor put in front of his house on one of the main streets. Literally unreal, fake grass laid smooth as an eggshell over the sloping mass of dirt where his lawn used to be. The greenness doesn't throw me so much as the unblemished, edge-to-edge smoothness of it. No trees out front, either, just that curve of smoothness. The man who lives there has achieved homeowner nirvana, or stasis, the pinnacle of leisure, having nothing but free time, I suppose.<br />
<br />
Two women who I suppose are his daughters drive their sports cars to his house and carry their dogs in the crook of their arms for visits, then carry them out to the car, where they stand on their owners' laps and look out the driver's side window as they drive away.<br />
<br />
More and different dogs have appeared in the neighborhoodlately. The man who used to walk our dog's doppelganger has a new dog now, but is just as annoying, always walking with traffic, always on the side we're walking, against traffic, always setting my dog to barking fits, always forcing us to move to the other side of the road to let him pass and my dog to stop parking. He always waves and smiles. Annoying man.<br />
<br />
Another woman walks two little dogs and one great big dog together. The big dog once tore loose of the woman's hold and ran across the main street on a very busy morning to check out my dog. Traffic halted, the woman shouted and I seethed. I could probably have said something more charitable to the woman when she stopped traffic to retrieve her big sniffing dog, but I had not the presence of mind.<br />
<br />
Even the residents who irrigate their lawns defiantly in the drought have shut off during the rains, which is nice. Rain is easing the shared angst.<br />
<br />
Someone is finally, finally doing something about the house at the other end of the street, the house it seemed someone should have been living in long ago. I didn't know the family who lived there; we don't know just about anybody on our street, except our immediate neighbors. They had adapted the front of the house to accommodate a child who used a wheelchair. Then they were gone. Someone kept the lawn cut while the house was empty, then kept it trim even when it had crisped and browned in the drought.<br />
<br />
Someone was messing with the house in little ways, though, and slabs of plywood were nailed across part of the door and one window. Maybe someone was squatting in it, hard to tell. Other than that, the house looked ready to be lived in.<br />
<br />
Some Tasmanian Devil of a house flipper has come in and changed out all the windows and put a big demolition bin in the driveway, filling up with the innards of the old house, and within a month, I expect, a new house will emerge. It will be a fine house. But it was a fine house before.<br />
<br />
The county planning department has posted a sign in front of the Seventh-Day Adventist School on the main throughway. A cell phone company wants to install a "stealth monotree" on the school property. Stealth monotree. It'll be a cell tower, disguised as a tree. <i>Stealth</i> is an overreach, if they're talking about the disguise, because cell towers so disguised look like trees in the throes of the most horrible arboreal disease. They are very tall sticks with very few branches, and unwieldy bulbous galls which are really the doodads that relay the cell signals.<br />
<br />
Schools and municipal parks like cell towers because the cell phone companies pay rent. The Adventist property is like a nature preserve into which a school is nestled. A pheasant or two lives on the property somewhere. I have never found a good way to describe their call. They are rusty hinges on a screen door, or tiny ah-oooga horns on tiny Model-Ts, or those metal noisemakers that you spin on a handle.<br />
<br />
They remind me the neighborhood is not overbuilt, yet. I hope the stealth monotree gets lost deep in the nature preserve.<br />
<br />
Not that developers aren't trying to overbuild. They're cramming more than a dozen homes, 10 feet apart from another, in a place where a fitness club used to be. The houses tower right next to an apartment complex — woe be to residents on both sides of that fence in the planned gated community.<br />
<br />
What is it about gated communities? What faux sense of security and privilege does one get by living in a neighborhood with its own fortress to the outside? This one is called Something Something Oaks, "oaks" being a popular neighborhood name.<br />
<br />
A gated community four miles away, I remember, was named "Twelve Oaks," "twelve" also being an attractive adjective for such places. It seemed like the developers felled all but 12 oaks to make the name true.<br />
<br />
The little permanent farmer's produce stand is still not built, and no sign it ever will after it burned down last spring. The farmer kept selling, from folding tables tucked under trees farther in the property. Maybe he'll keep doing that. That corner of the main throughway seems so empty now.<br />
<br />
The many, many cones of dirt from the Something Something Oaks development are starting to settle and flatten in the vast empty corner across the throughway from the empty produce stand property. A nice old house used to sit right in the middle, with forested property all around. Or so it seems. It's been so long that I've forgotten. It's a forlorn farm of dirt now, the gate smashed into the earth by the trucks that hauled all that dirt, and no one even seems interested in wandering in and looking around.<br />
<br />
Now you're up to date. I'll let you know if anything changes.<br />
<br />
All the best,<br />
<br />
Shawn<br />
<br />shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-79828736317437543042016-01-12T12:44:00.000-08:002016-01-12T12:44:24.924-08:00It's somewhere under here<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>My world, and welcome to it.</i></td></tr>
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Albert Einstein, the proto-Yoda, probably never said, "If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>We know he never said it, because the quote has been made into many Internet memes, picturing Einstein at his own messy desk. Einstein is a magnet for quotes that sound like something he might have said. The same for Mark Twain. And Soupy Sales. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>We accept the Larger Truth, though — he could have said it! And it ain't wrong!</i></blockquote>
Never mind: I have achieved fusion — or maybe fission. My cluttered desk shows a mind at once cluttered and empty.<br />
<br />
This is my desk, raw and untouched, on one day, January 5, 2016, representative of most days. Nothing has been altered. I play it as it lays.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNJxm0ptHW48VKAYIWteg5Ffq7e0bSP72nn9y1jssjC4vsxC0jWowPVH-GJGgcNRzOvojleqZfYkRMvKUE40MQ3l12cqNfZOHTsWFUD6AST5Z46MPWap9y0VDyv2S91QIggU2w3qYJ-vw/s1600/Desk+left+111615.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNJxm0ptHW48VKAYIWteg5Ffq7e0bSP72nn9y1jssjC4vsxC0jWowPVH-GJGgcNRzOvojleqZfYkRMvKUE40MQ3l12cqNfZOHTsWFUD6AST5Z46MPWap9y0VDyv2S91QIggU2w3qYJ-vw/s1600/Desk+left+111615.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The various epochs on the left side of my desk.</i></td></tr>
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The work done here ossifies the farther left and right my elbows push them.<br />
<br />
Work on something, move it to the left or right. Work on a new something, push it left and right, pushing farther left and right the thing I was working on before.<br />
<br />
The Cambrian period is over there, about four feet to my left, atop the two-drawer file cabinet whose purpose more and more serves to hold the ancient work now settled deep into the detritus, maybe never to be seen again.<br />
<br />
A Cambrian deposit extends to my right, too, uplifted on the scanner that no longer works correctly, but which I still have plugged in.<br />
<br />
The Pleistocene epoch, then, is nearer, just wide of my elbows. The scissors I last used, don't know<br />
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what for, but haven't put away, probably won't for quite a while yet. Well, now that fact bothers me, so I'll put it back in the hanging tray. There.<br />
<br />
To my right, a tray of artist's pencils our son's girlfriend gave me last year for Christmas. I should put them away too. Receipts. Receipts and receipts and receipts. They exist throughout the sediment on my desk. I could file them, but they'd just grow back.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2aRrj2h_IhtnC_9DGKUB-CIdGDnL21GBp3wwmd6qzW6vFiAIlvYsuda-tYeCgMPaV5QVsWH9hMFqV7O7CC-fPFOnNI-FcSHrYmRhiqQpmjMdXHu-Mlo3b8dvElkwrvLbaiszpXtyWFmA/s1600/Desk+right+11116.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2aRrj2h_IhtnC_9DGKUB-CIdGDnL21GBp3wwmd6qzW6vFiAIlvYsuda-tYeCgMPaV5QVsWH9hMFqV7O7CC-fPFOnNI-FcSHrYmRhiqQpmjMdXHu-Mlo3b8dvElkwrvLbaiszpXtyWFmA/s1600/Desk+right+11116.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Detritus to the right of me.</i></td></tr>
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The desk is in a room in our house, a room dedicated as my office, which is a great big chunk of greedy use for a space. It was one of the reasons we got this house, space enough for my office.<br />
<br />
It is messy sanctuary inside and out: Inhabitants of the rest of the house don't have to suffer from my mess. They can close the door. I don't have to suffer for my mess from the inhabitants of the house — unless a bill due has somehow made it onto my desk, buried somewhere in the Triassic period.<br />
<br />
It's not ideal, and nothing ever is, of course. The room was going to be digital on this side, where I'm typing, and traditional and hand drawn on the other side of the room, but nothing ever worked out that way.<br />
<br />
To look upon this room is to laugh. Empty shelves behind me, sadly unused, while the desktop overflows beside me.<br />
<br />
The closest I've ever gotten to the home-improvement TV shows, which I hate, hate, hate ("Step One, crack open that cask of $500,000 cash you've got lying around. Step Two …"), is reading about the studios of illustrators I admire.<br />
<br />
I don't do it anymore because it's depressing. Large, high-ceilinged rooms with wooden floors and tall windows with northern exposure. A counterspace extending the length of one wall, all papers neatly stacked, the computer with two giant screens blinking happily, emitting great paid work. A fleet of flat-file cabinets stacked in the middle, topped with butcher block, to form an island in the middle of the large room, where the illustrator and assistants can cut and paste (really, not virtually) and matte, and sign their latest book, none of the cutting and pasting and matting and signing getting very messy, because the assistants clean up.<br />
<br />
And a view of the Rockies or the Eiffel Tower or seastacks from the illustrator's desk.<br />
<br />
I hate those illustrators.<br />
<br />
I have a flatfile. It's full. It's been full for years. It has no use except as an archive for someone else to discover, and probably to throw out the contents of. The problem for actual physical tactile artwork is I never know what to do with it when I'm done. Even the quick sketches on warm bond paper, sketches I'm just going to scan and manipulate here, on the computer, are hard to throw away. They are things, created, and throwing them away would feel like sin.<br />
<br />
So they shift, tectonic plates of paper creeping farther away from me, imperceptibly, while I pull out a new piece of scrap paper and begin sketching, here on these small triangles of clear desk space in front of my computer keyboard.<br />
<br />
As is my habit, I scan them on the other working scanner above my computer screen, then add the paper to the continental scrap that scrapes slowly over my desk, obscuring everything, even important things I have forgotten are under there.<br />
<br />
I need help.<br />
<br />
Hey! My Pink Pearl®™ eraser! I'd been looking for that.<br />
<br />
<br />shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-58973462780977993132016-01-07T12:13:00.000-08:002016-01-08T06:10:03.658-08:00Follow the blood money<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf4wv-1qHAYDRgaJmGhdN2zcZB7Uaeg6ivQ0dFjGqIiNjbr9rSbPhOxxIRXRLSnpdWPGUWaD7yFUrgRGWy6onz0qkTfyKIF2-Ue0LDCs2aIYb4DUMwvHVW1svhdY9pcDOXVKyFB11Ooc4/s1600/Targets+11616.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf4wv-1qHAYDRgaJmGhdN2zcZB7Uaeg6ivQ0dFjGqIiNjbr9rSbPhOxxIRXRLSnpdWPGUWaD7yFUrgRGWy6onz0qkTfyKIF2-Ue0LDCs2aIYb4DUMwvHVW1svhdY9pcDOXVKyFB11Ooc4/s1600/Targets+11616.png" /></a></div>
Suppose everyone is right.<br />
<br />
Suppose President Obama is correct, that far too many guns in the United States are far too easy to get, and some of the people use them to commit crimes, or harm others, to kill themselves and/or kill large numbers of people, or fight turf wars in city neighborhoods.<br />
<br />
Suppose the National Rifle Association is correct too, that owning a gun is a right, guaranteed to citizens under the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Let's assume that right is inviolable, that the amendment is crystal clear on this.<br />
<br />
Suppose, as gun rights advocates say, that no laws will ever keep guns away from people who want to do harm. Suppose instead that existing laws can accomplish this, but our cities and states and federal governments — our representatives, in our name — don't enforce them.<br />
<br />
Suppose President Obama's tears were real this week, when he announced executive action to close loopholes in how guns may be sold through legal channels without background checks, direct more resources to mental health and apply new technology to gun safety.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I think they were real, by the way. Obama is genuinely angry and tired of so many horrific gun deaths that have happened while in office — the deaths especially of first graders — little six-year-olds, nary a care, killed en masse. You should shed a tear too. But I'm not so dumb not to recognize an opportunity to spend political capital.</i></blockquote>
</blockquote>
Suppose … well, suppose we are right where we are now, each in our corner of the multi-cornered moral universe.<br />
<br />
So if everyone is right, each divided in righteousness —<br />
<br />
What do we make of the fact that 32,000 people in America are killed each year by guns, and 80,000 are injured? Not just the horrible and gripping mass deaths that hold the nation's attention too many times each year, but the daily horrors, a shooting death here and a shooting death there, writ small, that take place each day across our country?<br />
<br />
More than 100,000 people, killed and injured by guns.<br />
<br />
We blink, and move on.<br />
<br />
Take a look anyway:<br />
<br />
In 2012,<br />
<ul>
<li>About 12,000 Americans were killed by homicide, and some 58,000 injured;</li>
<li>Some 20,000 people died in suicide by gun, and 4,000 were injured in the attempt;</li>
<li>About 1,000 died accidentally by gun, and 15,000 were injured;</li>
<li>About 1,000 died in police-related shootings, another 1,000 were injured.</li>
</ul>
More than 100,000 people, killed and injured by guns.<br />
<br />
I could compare that rate to gun deaths and injuries in other Western industrialized countries, but you and I know the U.S. figures far outstrip all of theirs by sadly ridiculous measure.<br />
<br />
<i>Mother Jones</i> Magazine (you say libtard mouthpiece, I say street-credible crusader) this year crunched the data and pegged the total annual cost of gun violence in the United States at $229 billion. That includes $8.6 billion in direct costs — medical treatment for the injured, funeral costs, etc. — and $49 billion in the victims' lost wages and productivity.<br />
<br />
The direct costs from one murder comes to $441,000, <i>Mother Jones</i> reported — in the cost of police investigation, ambulance transport, hospital care for other victims, mental health counseling, court costs and imprisonment. Taxpayers cover 87 percent of those costs, mostly for imprisonment.<br />
<br />
Spread those costs of gun violence across the country, and it comes to $700 per person.<br />
<br />
Even if those figures are off by a magnitude, they are still staggering — rampaging-disease staggering.<br />
<br />
Yet now, as ever, when the issue of guns arises, as President Obama raised it this week, we go immediately to our corners. We run to the nearest mic and camera, to the nearest TV set, and proceed to feed from our troughs of validation. Maybe we do so more earnestly than ever, given it's an election year, we're talking about guns, and President Obama's enemies are well practiced in whatever-he-says-we're-against-no-matter-what. <br />
<br />
Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio, once on record for supporting "reasonable limitations" on guns, said into the nearest mic that President Obama was trying to dismantle the Second Amendment.<br />
<br />
No pausing to consider complexities, to offer nuance. Just jumping to the simple extreme: Obama wants to quash the Second Amendment.<br />
<br />
Rubio is among legislators who earn high ratings from the NRA — which is an odd thing in itself, a badge of political capital from a lobbying group, for a representative of the people — which advocates the absolute interpretation of the Second Amendment, to the point of orchestrating the suppression of research into gun violence, and fomenting fear of job and funding loss among researchers who might try. <br />
<br />
Following the shootings in San Bernardino, as follows most such high-profile shootings, gun sales go up, reportedly because buyers fear the loss of the Second Amendment, or the world's going to hell and we need to go down shooting. The politics of fear is not built on nuance.<br />
<br />
The NRA steadily advocates that more arms will equal peace, and that armed guards in schools will be safer.<br />
<br />
Yet no one to say, from our opposite corners in our righteousness, that <i>together</i><br />
<ul>
<li>perhaps we should work on this problem </li>
<li>maybe we should see it as an epidemic of disease in our communities</li>
<li>maybe the Second Amendment doesn't entirely mean what we practice, that the well-regulated militia part throws gun rights into a new light, for a new consideration, and the proliferation of guns is not the intent</li>
<li>32,000 deaths each year by guns, at a cost of $229 billion (almost as much as paid in Medicaid) is egregious and outrageous, a bloodstain on our country?</li>
</ul>
We blink instead, and move on.<br />
<br />
Why? I think we don't hurt enough. You. Me. We don't hurt, God — or luck — bless us.<br />
<br />
We go about our days without noticing much more burden than we've taken on over time — mortgages, groceries, college loans, home loans, car loans, gas, taxes. We take them on, beasts of burden, and don't register the costly pain of gun deaths around us.<br />
<br />
Unless gun violence affects us directly; but even then we are so efficiently spread across the country that our small voice of outrage and heartbreak and reform loses to the voice of status quo.<br />
<br />
It's the same for the care of our Veterans. More and more, we know fewer and fewer people who serve our country in our defense. Someone else goes to battle; someone else pays for the wounded, somewhere. It's the same for public education: My kids are out of school, not my problem. <br />
<br />
What could we do with the money we all pay toward gun violence? Suppose the old saw is true — that guns don't kill people, people do. But guns enable holders of grudges to settle the score once and for all, of those enraged to mushroom their anger with violent finality, of the angry to extend their anger, of the confused to end their demons. Otherwise, they're grudges that need counseling and hugs and forgiveness, rages that need time and space to dissipate, angers to ease, and confusion to be treated.<br />
<br />
Those billions spent in gun violence: Could they go instead to help the people for whom guns become the instant and horrific answer?<br />
<br />
Gun violence as a public health issue is gaining traction, and it makes sense to me.<br />
<br />
What if we made gun violence a pocketbook issue? What if we could show what this country could do with the money spent on gun violence?<br />
<br />
I just thought of Theodore Judah, the engineer who dreamed of a railroad to cross the country. He first went to the financial titans of San Francisco seeking investment, framing the railroad as good for the country, for the welfare of all. The titans yawned.<br />
<br />
Next he approached merchants in Sacramento, chiefly Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker. This time, though, Judah made it plain: Gentlemen, you will make unimaginable profits from your meager investment. They bit, and the rest is history.<br />
<br />
What if we could show how much we could save with the reduction in gun violence? Follow our blood money?<br />
<br />
Otherwise, what are we to make of more than 100,000 people killed or injured by guns in this country each year?<br />
<br />
Is it our cost of living?shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2209290477747333170.post-53463556166045432152016-01-05T12:07:00.000-08:002016-01-05T16:10:50.261-08:00First-world hangups<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Coat hangers, am I right?<br />
<br />
At least once in your life, you wanted to be an inventor, to improve the world and/or become rich and/or famous. Maybe you had to invent something for a school assignment. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>[Flashback: Once in school I had to invent a toy, but I had no clue and no time but plenty of tears and tantrums. My dad took over. He cut a short length of broomstick, drilled a hole through its length, stuck it onto the end of a scrap-metal rod, and bent the end of the rod into a kind of hook so the little length of broom handle would stay in place but also spin freely. Then he made a handle out of broomstick for the other end of the rod. Finally, he fished out a one of the back wheels of a long-unused tricycle (no telling why he still had it): A toy.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>[You rolled the tire on the ground, and kept the tire spinning with the hook end of the rod, the little piece of broomstick spinning as it touched the tire tread.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>[Not once did I hear the conversations that should have/probably did take place, pivoting on:</i><br />
<ul>
<li><i>Why is your dad inventing your toy? Isn't this supposed to be your assignment?</i></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<ul>
<li><i>Why should we call that an invention, when it's really more of an update (a clever one, mind) of the old hoop-and-stick that boys played in the Good Old Days?</i> </li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<ul>
</ul>
<i>[Ah, parents: Will we ever learn?</i><br />
<br />
<i>[Ah, children: Likewise.<br /><br />[I still have it, in the garage with the scant remains of sporting goods; it's really quite something.</i><br />
<br />
<i>[Flashback over.]</i></blockquote>
You probably outgrew this notion, this flair for inventing. A few of you didn't. A few of you grew up to invent really useful, fascinating, earth-changing things, like artificial hearts and variable-speed wipers. Others of you invented things we didn't need but couldn't live without, like twitter®™. Either way, you are not reading this, busy as you are inventing more things, and becoming richer and more famous.<br />
<br />
Don't despair. I have a brilliant opportunity for someone among the rest of you, to become rich and famous and, in so doing, disregard this blog forever.<br />
<br />
After this post, that is.<br />
<br />
You ready? Here it is: Coat hangers.<br />
<br />
I am officially done thinking of a way to eradicate them. They are infernal devices of frustration. Tools — dare I say? — of the devil.<br />
<br />
Though I have found this burning need to make them better, I can't fill it. Now it's yours to carry the torch.<br />
<br />
It won't be easy, take it from me. Coat hangers haunt and taunt me every time I use them. Every mother-loving moment.<br />
<br />
They are a big part of the reason my clothes heap on the floor until laundry day. Not a defensible reason, but still.<br />
<br />
Why do I hate them? They:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Hook onto everything you don't want them to. <i>Every single time.</i></li>
<li>Come off the hanger rod in twos or threes when you only want one. Always.</li>
<li>Jam into other hangers when you try to put them away, so they make themselves ready to come off in twos or threes the next time. </li>
<li>Knock at least one hanger off the rod and between the dresser and the far corner of the closet, unexplored since the Ford Administration. Vast deposits of coat hanger wire back there, I'm sure.</li>
<li>Wrinkle pants, no matter how neat <strike>you</strike> I try to drape them.</li>
<li>Especially the plastic hangers with the little struts that strengthen the hangers but make the pants-draping part too narrow.</li>
<li>Plus, the plastic ones with the strengthening struts still break — just when you could really use it.</li>
<li>Break under use, especially the wire hangers with the cardboard tube base. Why do they exist? They are those hangers you get from the dry cleaners, I suspect, and they're not designed for long-term use, but who doesn't try to keep using them? You'd think we go to the dry cleaners twice a week, like people on TV, for all the dry-cleaner hangers we have.</li>
<li>Remind you you're getting old, especially the coat hangers with their tattered paper lining, advertising some dry cleaner from long ago and far away. We don't tear off the paper — too much work, the paper just bunching at one end of the drapy part when <strike>you</strike> I try — but let it tatter and yellow on the wire frame.</li>
<li>Drop your shirt to the floor of your closet anyway, even after you have taken pains to secure it to the hanger. Hanger makers have colluded to make their devices about an inch-and-a-half too narrow to suspend your average shirt. Hanger makers are having a good laugh right now. They always do. </li>
<li>Make your life harder, especially the ones designed to hang just pants, upside down by the cuff. They're supposed to clamp the cuff and the pants hang straight, no bending. But the clamps don't clamp, and the steps needed to arrange the pants and install them in these devices — bother, I just heap them on the floor.</li>
<li>Confuse and confound — my half of the closet includes a token number of sturdy wooden hangers, sculptural in their beauty, with a hook that swivels in its base so it can hang clothes facing left or right. I reserve them for fancy slacks and clothes that I don't have, so they remain empty. Sour grapes, anyway: The hooks don't swivel very well; <strike>you</strike> I still have to turn the hook <strike>your</strike>myself with <strike>your</strike> my free hand.</li>
<li>Threaten relationships: My wife and I are left-handed, but she hangs clothes with her right hand, so that the clothes face left. Who in her right mind does that? Clothes hung by left handers must face right! Relationship saved by my washing and hanging my own clothes.</li>
</ul>
You feel my pain, I know you do. My only hope now is that I've stated my case with passion sufficient to spur you to creating a bold new world, one in which clothes may be draped in a sensible, harmonious fashion, off the floor.<br />
<br />
Necessity is the mother of invention, of course, and this necessity is a mother!<br />
<br />
When you solve this urgent need, save a few. I must admit two good uses for these terrible contraptions:<br />
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<ul>
<li>They hang T-shirts really well! T-shirts are 85 percent of my wardrobe, and <strike>you</strike> I don't have to worry about wrinkling them. For some reason, they hang rather well on these devices, and that saves a lot of dresser drawer space for sweaters I never wear.</li>
<li>They make great puppets for art class, which I did in fourth grade, by folding my puppet in half when no one else did, and winning a Snickers™® bar.</li>
</ul>
Aside from that, hangers can go hang.<br />
<br />
Good luck to you, Mr./Ms. Inventor. The world awaits amid piles of dress slacks and skirts (how do you hang skirts? Never mind).shawn turner illustrationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17147572827678544031noreply@blogger.com0