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| Our Morris MN Senior Community Center |
"Does it look like the MACA softball team can get past the teams from southern Minnesota in the playoffs this year?" Ahem.
I can figure just how long the shutdown has gone on, by looking at my senior center meal ticket. I last marked it for March 24. On that day I also had breakfast at DeToy's which is a habit, normally.
I remember: the coming changes seemed possible in my mind but I was still rather disbelieving. I had no sense of drama as I left my favorite booth seat for the last time in a long time - how long? - or left the main seating area of the senior center. I can still see the interior of the Morris Senior Center from the rear of the kitchen where I pick up my lunches these days. It's $4 and I recommend it for anyone whose age qualifies, I believe age 60 now. I'm well over the bar, age 65. You'll get your needed nutrition. The standard delivery is through "meals on wheels" to your door.
In our "normal" world I'd be sitting across from a rather new patron whose name is Bryce - don't know his last name - and he's Native American. Typically I'd see on the other side of the table Judge Davison too. It's "retired" Judge Davison and he is so blessed to be in such fine shape for his advanced age. Must have good genes. His most recent claim to fame has been to implement a summer pool and have it available for neighborhood youth. He lives in the addition on the west wide of the Pomme de Terre River, close to the dam. The biking/walking trail goes by his back yard. As an election approaches you can clearly see what political party he affiliates with, based on yard signs! Congrats Keith, it's my political party too.
Can our media hold steady?
I purchase the Star Tribune for the senior center and I end up getting most editions after they've been examined by anyone else who is interested. I regret to say I do not consume as much of these papers as I ought to. I began scratching my head to figure out why this is. Maybe it's fear. Fear about whether the Strib and other major metro papers can "stay the course" and continue reporting fairly in spite of the browbeating these institutions are taking from our president and his followers across the nation.
Can the Strib weather the storm against the furious "watchdogs" from the political right who say "fake news!" I remember recently when our august Star Tribune tried reporting pretty routinely about a court ruling that had to do with gerrymandering. When I was young I learned about gerrymandering in a way that clearly indicated it was wrong. I mean, Jim Crow is wrong too, right? It's not a matter of opinion. Certain truths we can agree on, presumably. What a different world we have appeared to hurtle into.
Trump was amusing as sort of a grievance candidate. Wasn't George Wallace a grievance candidate? And Trump was an entertainer with his rallies for which he developed a particular talent, an entertainer talent. He lives for it and in spite of observations about his suggested cognitive decline, he does well with rally "performances," better than I could do certainly. So for his age, that's really impressive if you want to separate the performance component from what he's really saying.
Does he have a well-defined philosophy in his own head? Or is he into a mode of simple self-preservation now, reading the public to see if he can tie together enough elements for a majority to stay in office (and keep law enforcement from nipping at his heels). He did not win a majority in the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton won the election but Trump won the electoral college. So Trump took the complete prize.
The Strib reported fairly on the court decision regarding gerrymandering. And it's not as if the court ruled gerrymandering was OK. We're not that far along yet in our disintegration of civilized society. So in an opaque way, the court backed off and claimed it wasn't really their place to make a determination. Hey, it was up to the politicians. So the Strib wrote its article on the premise that such logic might reasonably be considered cause for concern.
All us rational souls know that a political party in power at a given time will be tempted toward gerrymandering. Certainly the GOP at the present time would do this unapologetically. Remember a few months ago seeing the riotous "Goofy kicking Donald" map with the bizarre boundary lines (Goofy and Donald Duck, Pennsylvania)?
The Strib's perfectly reasonable article was met with a huff by a Trump-ite who wrote a letter to the editor. I'll paraphrase based on my memory: "The court didn't decide that gerrymandering was a good thing, just that it should be left to the politicians." And leave the bank robbing to the bank robbers. If the only way to fight this ridiculousness is to root for the Democrats to get this same power, I can't really object to doing that. Better than for the GOP to mine this. But maybe gerrymandering should be erased by the courts.
The nonplussed letter writer to the Strib accused the paper of "bias" and we can just imagine their hero Donald Trump chiming in. "Bias, fake news, corrupt" etc. And the bloodthirsty crowd cheers. A lot like Nuremberg from a long time ago, right?
These really my people?
I sometimes wonder if I have crossed into a different dimension from the one in which I have spent most of my life. So many blind Trump loyalists around me. Such a "red" Congressional district with its Democratic congressman who didn't dare OK impeachment. It is hard to prod myself into continuing to at least present myself as a Christian. I really want to make the commitment real but we are in a sea of Trump-obsessed "Christians."
Looking ahead, hard as it is
When can we go to church again? The shutdown of activity is totally legitimate but still discouraging. Trump on Friday committed another verbal absurdity, saying some states wanted to hold back with resumption of normal activity only because they wanted to hurt him politically! Yes, it's always about him! I repeat: It's always about him!
Trump is a single mortal human being. If he loses re-election, so be it. He can resume life with his favored pursuits if he can escape the legal consequences of certain things he most likely has done, not according to Hoyle as they say. Look at Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and Michael Flynn. For the record, Trump fired Flynn for lying to VP Pence.
And I really don't think Trump gives a rat's patootie about Flynn or anyone else really. He's a showboat who wants to demand adulation every single day, even Sunday when he "tweets" early-morning. Can you imagine the private thoughts his own closest associates must have about him? Have you thought about that? But the crazy circus continues.
He stirs up more dangerous red state vs. blue state conflict. Maybe he sees the "blues" as more of a threat than North Korea. And certainly more than Russia. We're supposed to all be Americans. That's what I understood in an earlier time. I remember when the senior George Bush said he'd have "no litmus test" for a Supreme Court nominee. Could you imagine any Republican saying that today?
How will our current challenges turn out? Maybe I could talk to a version of myself from six months down the road via the time machine.
Frankly, I don't think the MACA softball team could beat the southern MN teams.
Addendum: To illustrate how weird things are really getting, consider the incident in Georgia of the African-American young man getting hunted down and killed while jogging. A media person said "the usual partisan divide is not being seen in reaction to this." What? Are you suggesting that we might expect Republicans to actually defend lynching? I'd like to get back in the dimension I used to live in, please.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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