Time to Hit the Reset Button

The Rip Heard 'Round the World

 

It's been nearly three weeks since I posted anything on this site. It really hasn't been a case of writer's block as much as it's been the uncomfortable and embarrassing fact that I've gotten to the point where I can only describe myself as completely speechless. In the course of three weeks we've borne witness to the president of the United States behaving in a way that will only shame Americans a century from now. There's a dandy reason why Andrew Johnson is only mentioned today in the context that he became president upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in April of 1865. Other than that one fact, no one ever talks about the guy anymore. He was a racist and a buffoon, not worthy of our attention or study. If there have been any biographies written on his life in the last fifty years, I'm not aware of them. He's been permanently consigned to the shit pile of history where he rightfully belongs - where the current president will end up in short order.

I think what set me off more than anything in the last three weeks was witnessing Melania Trump drape the Presidential Medal of Freedom over the pudgy shoulders of racist demagogue Rush Limbaugh. I'm not overcome with a giddy sense of schadenfreude over the fact that el-Rushbo has been diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer and that he is probably going to be dead a year from now. Chances are not out-of-the-blue that I might be dead a year from now as well - such is the precarious state of my health. I wish Rush no ill will, just as I hope that he would wish me none. My problem is that it doesn't sit well with me that he is now in the same league as someone like Rosa Parks. That bothers me at such a gut level that I can scarcely articulate my feelings on the matter. Trump has cheapened and redefined - DOWNWARD - what it really means to be a good and heroic American. There is a dandy good reason why I'll never receive the Medal of Freedom: I don't deserve it. Rush Limbaugh deserves it even less than I.

Lock him up....

And now we head into the next chapter in the ever-shocking Trump era. The man has been having an orgy of mercy in the last couple of days, handing out pardons and commutations to a number of people - some deserving, most not so much so. Why now? Usually that sort of thing happens only when a president is on his way out the door in the hours prior to his successor's inauguration. What is he up to? What I love about Donald Trump more than anything is the dude's thin-as-glass transparency. What he's doing is conditioning the inmates of Idiot Nation to the idea of lots 'n' lots of pretty little pardons! When the electorate finally gets used to the idea of all those pardons, he will then issue a line of them to the thugs who carried out his bidding that allowed him to seize the Executive Mansion - Paul Manafort, Mike Flynn, Roger Stone - you know, that crowd. It will be interesting to see if the polling of his half-witted devotees falls noticeably when that happens. I guarantee that it won't.

There is already talk among some of the Democrats that there is enough evidence floating around out there to impeach the Donald before Election Day. They needn't bother. What the Dems need to do between now and then is concentrate on winning the election next November. They have no other choice but to ride this hideous jackass out. Watch them screw this up.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
`

Nancy Clements
1935-2020

Epilogue:

I took a sentimental journey last weekend to my late mother's hometown of South Bend, Indiana to bid farewell to my aunt, Nancy Babcock Clements. She married my mother's youngest brother, Bob, in the nineteen-fifties. They settled in South Bend where they raised their eight children. Uncle Bob and Aunt Nancy were my godparents. At the time I was christened in August of 1958 they had just given birth to their eldest, Brooke. Since I was in New York and they were seven-hundred miles away in Indiana, the entire affair had to be done by proxy. It's amazing when you consider that I had the talent to complicate family matters even at such a tender age.


Cousin Susan

At her memorial service at St. Patrick's Church in South Bend (the same church that my parents were married in nearly seventy years ago) she was remembered for her kindness and unflinching generosity. Nancy and Bob could easily have succumbed to bitterness and despair, but they never lost their quiet gentleness - even after losing two daughters, Loretta and Susan - the latter of whom died in 1992 through an unspeakable act of murder. Aunt Nancy's passing represents another vanishing thread connected to a childhood that is slowly dwindling away.

Bob, Nancy, Loretta and Susan are together again. There's even more to look forward to tonight. That works for me!


Uncle Bob and Aunt Nancy Clements, 2017
`

 SUGGESTED READING:

Aunt Nancy's obituary in the South Bend Tribune:

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/southbendtribune/obituary.aspx?n=nancy-margaret-clements&pid=195251456&fhid=14558

She was a saint.