sonora2sonoma

With certain trump supporters claiming votes are coming in from China and many others believing the counting of votes should be stopped before all the votes are counted, it’s apparent one of the things that needs to happen before we can begin to bridge the chasm between the two competing visions of America currently in play is for voters to receive civics lessons so they can learn what constitutes a legal vote, how a legally-cast vote differs from an “illegal vote,” why all legal votes must be counted and how the invalidation of legal votes is not permitted by law.

In a world governed by logic, responsible government officials of both parties would join in issuing a statement explaining these differences and why the protests currently going on among those who believe the election was “stolen” from the president are not only based on erroneous information but also that the continuation of those protests poses a threat to the integrity of the electoral process.

In a world governed by logic, assuming voters understood the electoral process, they should be expected to also understand how the sanctity of the vote is defined and protected by law and they should be able to recognize the sorts of lies about voting currently being spread by the president and his enablers.

In a world governed by logic, the reintroduction of civics into the curricula of the nations’ primary and secondary schools would be seen as a necessary first step to preventing this problem from confounding the electoral judgment of future generations.

But then, in a world governed by logic, trumpism would be at best a fringe phenomenon given credence only by those on the extreme edges of society.

Wish it were so all one might, it’s painfully obvious we are not residing in a world governed by logic.

And, pending the development of a super-efficient, high-volume nonsense scrubber and bullshit remover, we won’t be living in one soon.

Tim Konrad

November 8, 2020

Which to choose? Listen to a radio program focused on what land mines trump might put in place to create difficulties for the incoming administration? Or continue reading an article in today’s NYT about the signs that precede civilizational collapse and which of them are present in our current situation?

Stark choices, to be sure, and also indicative of why, after the joyful elation of yesterday’s presidential victory celebration, I still experienced anxiety dreams last night, dreams of fighting gravity, of being pulled back downhill despite repeatedly trying to claw my way upward.

Between the irony of Giuliani’s reality-defying speech yesterday fresh in my mind as he denounced the vote count in the parking lot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping, while a crematorium and an adult entertainment shop called “Fantasy Island” loomed in the background, and Ruth Marcus’s Washington Post column quoting two former attorney’s general, from opposing parties, writing of the “insidious danger” inherent in the rhetoric of trumpist attempts to discredit the results of the election as invitations to “hallucinate evil,” is it any wonder my dreams might be awash in alarm?

And besides, weren’t they already hallucinating evil? But then, Giuliani isn’t known for the accurate reportage of facts.

Without attempting to diminish yesterday’s victory, it is glaringly obvious, regardless of which side of the political divide you’re on, that difficult days lie ahead. The number of people who voted for trump despite his numerous deficits speaks volumes about the nature of the electorate and the character of the nation. Bridging the chasm of understanding that divides us will require the mustering of resources and the employment of skills tailored to penetrate and dispel the clouds of doubt and fear that make otherwise normal-seeming people impervious to reason, resistant to facts and unwilling to consider opposing views.

So, while we are justified to breathe a deep sigh of relief over yesterday’s news, much work remains if we wish to cement that gain in any durable fashion. The success of President Biden’s efforts to govern for all the people, instead of just those who elected him, will depend on his ability to speak to the concerns and fears of his opponents in a way no other Democrats have been successful in doing thus far.

In the midst of the uncertainty and the transitory nature of the present moment, I’ve learned there’s one thing I can count on to apprise me of our progress along this path. My dreams, for better or worse, will keep me in the know.

Tim Konrad

November 8, 2020

The president has been outspoken of late concerning his growing frustration over how Covid has been stealing his limelight and limiting his ability to dominate the headlines in the manner to which he feels he‘s entitled. While decrying the micro-organism’s success in garnering attention, the president, with unintended irony, told the crowd gathered at his recent campaign event in Lumberton, North Carolina, that people are “tired of such negativity.”

In another striking and possibly prescient reveal while addressing the threat posed to his ego by his microscopic rival, the president opined to the cheering crowd gathered at the same election event, “by November fourth, you won’t hear about me anymore.”

To uphold our standards of presenting fair and balanced reportage covering all sides of the issues relevant to our times, we sought to arrange an interview with the virus to provide it an opportunity to weigh in on this matter from its perspective.

The bedeviled bug was clearly bothered by the brouhaha but nonetheless jumped at the chance to be heard.

“That’s all I hear about now,” groused the galled germ when asked how it felt to hear the orange one vent his pique in such an aggrieved manner.  “Turn on the TV, what do I hear? trump, trump, trump, trump!”

“A plane goes down, 500 people dead. They don’t talk about that, it’s just trump, trump, trump, trump,” protested the perturbed pathogen.   Now clearly irritated, the particle persisted, saying “He’s even gone so far as to suggest we have a questionable financial relationship with doctors!”

When asked to elaborate, the micro-organism declined further comment.  

Vegas oddsmakers were reportedly at odds over how many microseconds it would take for the president’s twitter feed to light up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve following the interview, some predicting the time interval would approach warp speed.

No further information was available at press-time.

It would appear, based on the above account that the desire to dominate the news cycle not is a phenomenon limited to Homo sapiens alone.

Tim Konrad

November 2, 2020

It’s hard to imagine that putting a little mark next to someone’s name on a piece of paper has the power to change the course of history, yet the one I just placed on my ballot has the potential to do just that in this, arguably the most important election in the history of elections in our country.

This election will, in a very real way, make the difference for a great many people in whether or not they will ultimately survive the pandemic currently savaging the vulnerable among us.  

This election will also determine beyond doubt whether or not we will be able to take advantage of our last chance to slow the emission of the greenhouse gasses warming our planet. The fate of low-lying cities hangs in the balance, but also the future well-being of millions worldwide.  

This election will determine whether we follow the path of reason going forward or continue along a course where fact and fiction are accorded equal relevance and science and ignorance become mired in disputes lacking any commonly agreed-upon criteria for their resolution, a sheer recipe for disaster beyond contemplation prior to the rise of trumpism.

And it will determine whether we continue as a democracy or devolve into authoritarianism. It will have profound effects on a woman’s right to make decisions about her body free of governmental interference. It will have consequential effects on issues like civil rights, LGBTQ rights, voting rights. It will determine whether we are granted an opportunity to regain our status as a world leader or will instead become designated, by foes and former friends alike, as a pariah on the world stage, a threat to world peace.

The stakes, as I said, couldn’t be higher.  And yet, in this divided nation, where the president gives encouragement to right-wing groups to demonize and threaten elected government officials and his fans cheer him on for doing so, where he interferes in justice department prosecutions at the behest of corrupt foreign leaders without consequence, it seems Crazy is the main dish of the day.  The aberrant is now considered acceptable and indecency is overlooked for the sake of righting counterfeit wrongs concocted from artificially contrived emergencies, fictitious threats and fallacious fearmongering. Heaven help us!

The delusional and paranoid state of affairs embraced by trump and his minions, where matters of conscience are now subject to debate and truth is twisted until it folds over on itself, pretzel-like, its meaning distorted beyond recognition, conjure up images of Pandora’s box.  

Truth is like a roadmap, pointing the way, fixing a location, providing clarity to an otherwise murky situation. When truth itself becomes obscured, it has lost its usefulness. The bounds formerly employed to contain chaos no longer exist. And what then?

We are all diminished to the degree that we condone this kind of behavior. When the unthinkable becomes thinkable and the inexcusable finds excuse, the very soul of our nation is at risk. It’s but few steps further until we are lost. And, when what was once held to be self-evident and fixed becomes debatable, we are no longer headed for trouble—we’ve arrived there.

Since we’re already in trouble anyway, our best course is to make it necessary trouble. As John Lewis reminded us, “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month or a year. It is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

A metaphor for our time, the story of Pandora’s Box is a reminder that, in order to survive, active participation in the struggle against evil is required of everyone.

We must remind ourselves that the forces that made it possible for a person like donald trump to ascend to power did not arise in a vacuum. They have always been around, hiding in the shadows like spiders, waiting for the right set of conditions to occur so they can once again emerge and spin their webs of intrigue, deception and control. It is the duty of each of us who value freedom to remain forever vigilant and aware of the spiders in our midst, mindful that democracy is not a given. Democracy is an anomaly, a treasure, a rare gift, a thing to be prized. It is not to be taken for granted, not a condition to be assumed. It requires maintenance, commitment, constant upkeep, even devotion.

As I was penning these thoughts this morning, my musings were disturbed by a loud thumping sound outside my kitchen window, an indication that someone had just sped past the speed bump placed to discourage people from speeding through our townhome complex. As I turned to look, I spied a newer silver pickup with side boards careening obnoxiously past with an American flag flapping on one side and a trump flag on the other.

How fitting, I thought! How timely. And what a shocking display of misplaced bravado, unfeeling disregard and masculine stupidity!

In addition to being highly offensive, this brazen exhibit of ignorant defiance, mere feet from my window, was a potent reminder of the extent, of the reach, of the real illness, the sickness of mind, currently running rampant in our society.

If and when we manage to somehow incise this presidential tumor from the body politic, its metastasized residuum will remain, deeply rooted in the minds of people who will attribute his defeat, ironically, to the duplicitous dealings of Democrats determined to destroy America. A nation thus divided will be difficult to manage, much less set back on the path to reality.

This coming Tuesday will either cement our fates or give us one last shot at redemption. Vote well!

Tim Konrad

November 1, 2020

While holed up huddled in abject terror over what next Tuesday might bring—either a return to sanity, a revolution of enlightened reasoning, OR a devolution into deeper delusions, mania and abject despair, I’m made mindful of the burden my generation is leaving, election aside, for Generation Y to cope with—the generation to which my grandkids belong. I feel compelled to apologize to them, to tell them how sad I am that they will inherit such a muddled mess of worries from my shortsightedly self-indulgent and massively misguided generation! I want to assure them that I was never idiotic enough to vote for any of it, except for once, when I was so young, uninformed and hoodwinked I shouldn’t have even been allowed to cast a ballot. Thankfully, I never made that mistake again!

Our country’s public-health-alert-of-a-president has taken my generation’s ill-conceived failings to the nth degree, growing them to monstrous proportions as befits his equally abominable proclivities. A product of the forces that stewarded such unrestrained hedonism and brought it to fermenting fruition, he is the personification of all that is rotten with today’s Republican Party.

As Michelle Goldberg observes in yesterday’s New York Times, “All the attention sucked up by this black hole of a president has been its own sort of loss. Every moment spent thinking about trump is a moment that could have been spent contemplating, creating or appreciating something else. But a perpetual state of emergency isn’t healthy or sustainable,” she adds, and makes it difficult to “conceive a future in which trumpism is unthinkable.”  

Goldberg continues, “trump has blocked out the sun. Only when he’s gone will we see how much we’ve been missing.”

Right now, I can’t even imagine a world without donnie covidseed spreading his misery around like pamphlets at a Jehovah’s Witness convention. What will the news media have to write about, I wonder, if he gets flushed down the toilet of history? If sanity prevails next Tuesday, about whom will I have to express my outrage and existential angst?

Actually, I figure this dilemma, daunting though it might appear, will in all likelihood take me at most, roughly 0.0008645666 microseconds to work out and then I’ll be “over it,” home free and ready to spend my time on immensely more important, productive, and satisfying pursuits like polishing the silverware, conducting search-and-destroy missions against the dust-bunnies in my study and varnishing some gourds I grew in my garden last year.

More broadly speaking, whatever happens with the election, I look forward to the day when we can all join together again without fear of contracting the ‘trump virus,’ so named because, after all the prolonged and mind-numbing idiocy of dumpf’s mishandling of the pandemic, that sonofabitch owns this thing!

Choose Life! Vote Biden-Harris 2020!

Tim Konrad

October 31, 2020

The president: “Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes, were gonna’ get little satisfaction unless I win. I say, Bill, we got plenty, we don’t need any more. We got so much. We’ve got to get the attorney general to act. He’s got to act. And he’s gotta’ act fast. He’s got to appoint somebody. This is major corruption and this has to be known about before the election.”

We are living in Crazy Land, folks! A trumpian-style Disneyland overseen by clowns with agendas. Only it’s not just an abusement park, it’s a whole damn country! With a nuclear arsenal!

There ought to be a spray for this. Some kind of aerosol—part holy water, part disinfectant—a toxic scum suppressant capable of quickly smudging, purifying, neutralizing, ionizing and exorcising anything it touches before the target has time to scurry under the refrigerator. An aerosol that’s part air-freshener, part spiritual revitalizer, part cosmic reconditioner; a trump-dispatcher of the first order, lightweight, compact and easy to use, at a price you can’t afford to not pay. No sane person should be without one!

trump Begone!

Just think of the marketing possibilities!

Tim Konrad

October 25, 2020

Our orangutan-toned president keeps talking about “rounding the curve.” Any day now, he says, we’ll be “rounding the curve.” Just how many “curves” is he talking about?  I’ve lost count at this point! You’d think, for all the curve rounding we’re supposed to have done by now, that, maybe, there’d be something to show for it. But no, only more empty rhetoric, his stock in trade. That, and delusional gobbledygook!

But there is one very important curve I’d like to see rounded right about now more than ever—the one that leads us to a world free of trump, free of his ugly and bizarre family, free of his pernicious domination of the news cycle, free of his corrosive influence on our body politic, free of his criminal politicization of mask-wearing, and free of having to see his face displayed everywhere I turn.  

I’m more than ready to round that curve!

Tim Konrad

October 25, 2020