More Questions, No Answers



THE KING OF IDIOT NATION



Joseph Maguire

In the last couple of days we have received still more circumstantial evidence (as if any more were really needed) that Donald Trump is an asset (possibly paid) to Vladimir Putin's intelligence apparatus. Last week, acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire - and his staff - informed the House Intelligence Committee that the Russians were in the process of meddling in the 2020 election with the goal of having the president reelected. When Trump learned that Maguire carried out what was, after all, his legal obligation, the demented old psychopath hit the roof and came to the conclusion that only someone as unhinged as he could possibly come to: JOE MAGUIRE IS DISLOYAL! He has been given the sack and is being replaced by someone named Richard Grenell, current ambassador to Germany and a man utterly void of any experience in the field of intelligence. Grenell's one qualification (at least in the eyes of Donald Trump) is that he is a far-right Trump loyalist who can be counted on the do the president's bidding - consequences and laws be damned. 

The question that comes to my mind (and yours, too, I'm sure) is this: why would the Donald do something this brazen, right out in the open for all to see? It has become riotously obvious to all but the half-witted forty percent that Trump has two crucial things going against him:

1. He's not terribly bright, and;

2. He's obviously severely - profoundly - mentally ill.

Can it possibly be that the dude is so completely out-of-it that he doesn't think intelligent people will put two-and-two together? This is only a hypotheses on my part but my guess is that, yeah, the president of the United States is living in a Dreamland where reality is denied a passport and kept locked up in a cage.

Even during the turbulent period of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, no one could have seriously thought that the United States would have arrived at where it finds itself during this weird and crucial moment. The Bush/Cheney years were frustrating and heartbreaking in too many ways to count; the era of Donald Trump is something else indeed. And while the rest of the planet looks on at the antics of this doomed nation aghast, it's not-at-all clear that the hideous jackass with the orange complexion will be defeated in 2020 as most of us predicted he would be only two months ago. Putin's machinations managed to get him elected in 2016, and there's not a reason to believe that he won't again be successful come November. Because of the electoral college and the fact that a full 40 to 45 percent of the voters are uninformed enough to believe that the nation is in capable hands with this maniac in power, anything is possible.

We will barely survive four years of Donald Trump. Eight years is not even an option. It is my belief that Putin has been privy to some of our most closely held secrets since the oaf of office took the oath of office a little over three years ago. The damage that an additional term of a Trump administration will do to America might very well be irreparable. Mark my words, boys and girls. Mark my words.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

AFTERTHOUGHT:

I visited the Clements family homestead in South Bend, Indiana last weekend. It's been in the family for nearly ninety years. It's where my mother and her sister and three brothers were raised. They're all gone now. One of my earliest memories is staying here when my grandparents were still alive, in about 1960 or 1961. The door at the top of the stairs was the room I used to stay in when we visited. One of my gentlest, early childhood memories was that, on the wall to the left of the door, there was a framed painting of Jesus that was always lit by a dim light, even late in the evening. I would awake in the middle of the night, sit at the top of the stairs and just gaze at that painting. A sweet. blissful memory that refuses to fade away.

The hallway of bliss



 Loretta and Walter Clements at home in South Bend, circa 1960