Donald Trump: The Most Dangerous Individual of Our Time

Smart caring people from both sides of the political aisle must have at least some degree of foreboding after the events of the previous 4-year presidential administration.  We should all realize that the riots of January 6, 2021, were but the culmination of a series of events that led to near disaster.  Those of us who are old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis knew we were in trouble in real-time, but the real gravity of that series of events took time to sink in.  We later learned how close we came to a true nuclear holocaust.

Will this time be painted with a similar brush of pending doom by future historians?  Well, it is clear by the dump of new book titles that, while opinions vary a bit, we were in serious trouble.  Most depict a president “consumed by personal hatred” with an out-of-control violent temper exacerbated by his election defeat.  In Michael Bender’s book, Frankly, We Did Win This Election, he tells us that Trump wanted whoever was responsible for telling the world that he hid in the White House Bunker during the Black Lives Matter protests, executed.  Yes, executed, as in killed.

In Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker’s book, I Alone Can Fix It, they point out that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley was so worried that Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act, that he compared the lies of the stolen election to Hitler’s Reichstag fire that Hitler used to seize control of Germany.  His concern was such that he developed contingency plans to prevent Trump from calling out the military to stage a coup.

Michael Wolff’s book Landslide tells us that Trump aides thought he was “off his rocker” and they made vain attempts to appease him while ignoring his demands.  Wolff goes on to assure us that we were never in real danger.  He arrives at this, not because Trump wasn’t a delusional tyrant, but because he was so disorganized and incompetent that he had no chance of success.

There was also talk of Trump getting the support of a few Iran hawks in the administration to launch a strike on Iran just before he left office.  Trump raised this possibility with Milley as late as January 3rd but was finally persuaded to drop it.  By all accounts, Trump, who was and is the GOP leader, was unhinged and viewed laws, rules, and norms as minor inconveniences.

Of course, Trump loyalists and members of his cult don’t read such books.  They get all they need to know from the only true source of good information, Q.  Yes, Q, better known as Jim Watkins (and his son Ron), is/are probably the man/men behind the curtain telling the Trump minions all they need to know.  Q of course is the Wizard behind the QAnon conspiracy cabal. 

Who is James Arthur Watkins?  Well, he started a company called N.T. Technology in the 90s while he was in the US Army.  The site was built to support a Japanese porn site called Asian Bikini Bar to circumvent strict Japanese censors.  It later hosted other Japanese porn distributors many of which had names suggesting links to child pornography.  You can see why such a man would be in a position to suggest that Hillary Clinton and other members of “the elite” ran a child sex slave shop out of a pizza parlor.  He was an actual expert in the field.

So, with Donald Trump still in charge of the GOP, and people like Jim Watkins serving the Kool-Aid to a large contingent of followers, and folks like Jim Jordan still beating the Trump drum in Congress, and the great legal mind of Rudy Giuliani to steer them out of trouble, will the good ship Trumptanic avoid the icebergs ahead?  I can see Donald and Melania on the bow now, and him yelling I’m King of the world.

Down the Internet Rabbit Hole

I recently made an eclectic trip down an Internet rabbit hole and learned something about viral infections.  The rabbit hole opened as a Facebook ad for a mystery-thriller that featured a Dorothea Lang photograph.  That image was of a crossroads store in 1939 North Carolina and depicted the crowded front porch of that store complete with Texaco pump, Chesterfield, Camel, Coca Cola, and Sweet Scotch Snuff signs.  I zigged my way past the mystery offering and headed toward the Depression Era photographer, Dorothea Lang.  It was here I learned that she had contracted polio at age seven and walked through most of her life with a partially paralyzed right leg.  At that age, the year would have been around 1902.

Dorothea had an interesting life and her photographic coverage of Depression Era migrants produced some of the most iconic imagery of that period.  Her Migrant Mother is instantly recognizable.  It is her later life where I found my next turn in the rabbit labyrinth.  She developed PPS or post-polio syndrome that affects 40 to perhaps 80 percent of those who had polio.  It typically attacks 30 to 35 years after the initial exposure and can even develop in people with NPP or non-paralytic polio.

I bring this up as someone who grew up in a time of polio infections in the pre-Salk vaccine period.  Three of the children on my block got polio and were crippled for life.  I was playing a board game with one of them (Billie-Lynn Fig) when she realized she couldn’t stand up.  When I last saw each of them, they were all wearing special shoes with metal braces to support their crippled legs and were using crutches for mobility.  It wouldn’t be until March 26, 1953, that Dr. Jonas Salk would announce on national radio that he had developed a vaccine to prevent poliomyelitis infections.

While there may have been some anti-vaxxers in the 50s, I didn’t know any.  Certainly not on my block.  We rushed to get vaccinated and we were thankful to have that threat removed from the list of things that could go wrong.  We could go back to our duck and cover drills in schools and the tests of the air-raid sirens that would tell us we were all about to be incinerated in an atomic bomb attack.

If we climb back out of the rabbit hole and into the light, we find ourselves once again facing a debilitating and sometimes deadly disease.  I applaud those of you who are vaccinated against the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.  For those of you who are unvaccinated, please reconsider.  Getting ill with this disease, even if you recover, can have lasting effects.  We have all heard of the long haulers with lingering SARS CoV-2 symptoms.  If the viral experience of polio sufferers is any guide, even decades from now, your life may be threatened once again.  We also have the experience of shingles that is linked to the varicella-zoster virus known as chickenpox.  Decades after having chickenpox, people can come down with painful shingles.  PPS and shingles are but two diseases that are known to have possible long-term problems.

Those who contract Post-Polio Syndrome, have an overall mortality rate of 25% due to respiratory paralysis.  We can only hope that a PPS-like residual infection will not strike recovered Covid-19 individuals, we just don’t know yet.  We know that this vaccine is as safe as any vaccine can be and it is effective in preventing serious illness in you and it reduces your ability to spread the virus to others.  

GET VACCINATED!

A Little Empire History Predicts the Fate of Democracy

Eventually, all governments collapse under their own weight, are replaced by something deemed to be better, or are overturned by someone stronger.  Sometimes it is the result of several of these factors.  With governments, the problem throughout recorded history usually involves human greed and corruption.  No matter how strong the original design is, elements of human nature will erode even the best of them.  In Robert Burns's "To a Mouse" he wrote, “The best-laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft a-gley.”  This is to say, no matter how carefully planned, things can happen to precipitate the “Under New Management” sign.  American democracy is not immune to such an event.  The rise and fall cycle of major empires seems to follow like night follows the day.

The Persian Empire lasted a mere 220 years.  In 330 BC, Cyrus the Great promoted a peaceful tolerance between the diverse religions and cultures of some of the most advanced civilizations of the time.  This was a good thing because his empire stretched across the three continents of Asia, Europe, and Africa.  His successors, however, had their own ideas and began implementing personal agendas.  Sound familiar?  Cultural aggression created conflict and erosion of Persian rule.  Little kingdoms sprang up.  The weakened Persian Empire was no match for a little Macedonian upstart calling himself Alexander the Great.  Persia’s last emperor, Darius II, was assassinated by his own men who mutinied.  What remains of this great empire we now call Iran.

Alexander the Great

Next up we have the Roman Empire that lasted over 500 years and completely encircled the Mediterranean Sea stretching from England to Egypt.  Having recently watched the HBO series Rome for the second time, I have a renewed appreciation for how politics can collapse a civilization.  The parallels between the demise of the Roman Empire and the erosion of our own ideals are grim reminders.  Political infighting, small civil wars, political corruption, and wealthy families helping themselves at the expense of the poor, created unrest that became fatal.  Rome was eventually divided into the Eastern Empire and the Western Empire.  That further contributed to the dissension as the east prospered and the west declined.  Enter the Barbarians, stage left.  These Barbarians were the Huns, Franks, Visigoths, and Vandals and infiltrated Roman society, politics, and the military.  Rome was eventually sacked in 476 AD as the Barbarians staged a revolt and the “empire without end” (imperium sine fine) was brought to an end.  Political corruption and failed societies are connected and become id quod plerumque accidit (that which generally happens).

The Praecones (Heralds) Were the Early Roman Version of Facebook

Next up we have the Ottoman Empire, famous for its footstools.  It was essentially a religious Islamic Caliphate in direct conflict with the European Christians.  They prospered for 623 years beginning in 1299.  They eventually fought against the Allies in WWI, they lost that war, and control was seeded and split between Britain and France.  This accounts for English and French being second languages in much of the Arab world.

We have all heard of the Mongol hoards and Genghis Khan, but it is hard to realize that he/they conquered more land in 25 years than the Romans did in 400.  In 1206, a warlord named Temujin unified the nomadic Mongol tribes and was given the title Genghis Khan.  While Khan was a great military leader and the Mongols were fierce fighters, they lacked the administrative skills needed to manage such a large territory.  In unity there was strength, but the Mongol Empire was eventually split into four dynasties.  Enter the Black Plague which was spread along the lucrative trade routes created by the Mongols. Khan’s descendants were forced to retreat to Mongolia just 152 years after his ascendance.

Genghis Khan

Now the Big Daddy empire of them all, the British Empire.  In its heyday, it controlled 25% of the world’s landmass and 22% of its people.  For 214 years, the British Empire explored, looted, and colonized around the globe.  Through all of this, they acquired great wealth.  Early in the 20^th century, however, two World Wars dealt the death blow to its economy with a rise in independence movements and the loss of its colonial power.  India gained its independence in 1947 and a 99-year lease in Hong Kong ended 50 years later.  After 200 years, sunset had arrived on the empire where the sun never sets.

The British Empire

Each of these empires had a central state that controlled disparate areas with an array of cultures and religions.  The people and natural resources of these “others” contributed to its wealth and power.  While it is hard to envision the United States as an empire by the traditional definition, it is still subject to the same forces that caused the eventual downfall of its historic predecessors.  Sure, we have Guam and Puerto Rico and a total of 14 US Territories scattered about the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, but that hardly compares to the likes of India, Canada, or Australia.  We have, however, become the world’s superpower with the wealth and natural resources of many previous “empires.”  We also have many of the same complexities of the military, economic, and cultural factors that can act to destabilize a government from within or to make it easy pickings for its enemies.

We have, as a nation, become a target for destruction by many of the same forces that brought the demise of the more traditional large landmass empires.  At the beginning of the 16^th century, what would become America was a mostly virgin body of land occupying almost 57% of the continent of North America.  The United States is two-thirds the size of Africa, half the size of Russia, but it is over twice the size of the European Union.  In terms of total GDP, we are the richest nation in the world.  By per capita GDP however, we rank 5^th behind Luxembourg, Switzerland, Ireland, and Norway.

How will our great nation fall?  When will it happen?  Is it inevitable?  To answer that last one, history says yes.  History even predicts how much of it will happen.  Internal strife and infighting, a gross disparity between the haves and have-nots, religious and cultural differences, and political corruption will all contribute to our downfall.  We have seen the handwriting on the wall of our Capitol building after the riots of January 6^th.  The broken glass, busted doors, and graffiti tell a tale for those willing to read the signs.  There were also the statues, murals, and historic benches damaged by the residue of pepper sprays, tear gas, and fire extinguishers that speak to the violence of this attempted coup.  Not since the Civil War has our country seen such a deep divide.

How Democracies Cease to Exist

Our current challenges to survival are numerous.  We have climate change that is causing drought, fires, and record high temperatures in the west, flooding of coastal areas, and damaging weather events everywhere.  Our infrastructure is crumbling and, while all agree critical repairs are needed, political shenanigans have prevented any solutions.  We are suffering the crippling effects of a global pandemic exacerbated by political maneuvering aimed at hampering the solution.  Politicians who have no background in science or medicine are pontificating on both.  We have a former president, who wants to be president in the image of his mentor in Russia. He attempted a coup to remain in office and still sows the seeds of dissension among his followers and some right-wing leaders.  Income inequality is on the rise with three individuals, Bezos, Buffett, and Gates, holding half the wealth of our nation.  Many US billionaires now pay a lower effective tax rate than that of the working class.

The age of self-rule and the golden age of democracy was perhaps begun in 1945 at the end of WWII when there were only an estimated 12 democracies worldwide.  By the year 2000 there were around 87.  Then the trend reversed, and right-wing populists took over Poland, Hungary, France, Britain, Italy, Brazil, and the United States.  Behind these populist movements was a demand for simplistic solutions to complex problems.  The hard work of democracy was giving way to the populist offers of those easy solutions that included racism, xenophobia, and a shift to an acceptance of authoritarianism.

Social media provided many with the ability to move within a self-imposed information bubble.  With isolation, they find a salve for their insecurities by absorbing misinformation and lies that reinforce deeply held emotions.  An area once dominated and moderated to good effect by ABC, CBS, and NBC, has now been replaced by Facebook, Twitter, Fox News, and other unmoderated media.  Tribalism brings with it a sense of belonging.  How else can you explain the followers of ludicrous conspiracy theories: tracking microchips in vaccines, wealthy elites running satanic child sex shops out of pizza parlors, and flat earthers where all around you is a soundstage under a dome just as was depicted in the movie the Truman Show.  Who believes this crap?  Apparently, there are a great many such believers.  You need to look no further than the numbers of unvaccinated among us.  Free vaccines are readily available, people around us are getting sick, and some are dying.  Yet they still believe a former president who thinks you can drink bleach and another guy who sells pillows for a living.

Trust Us!

In 1956 Nikita Khrushchev said, "My vas pokhoronim" as he addressed Western ambassadors at the Polish embassy in Moscow.  His, “We will bury you” epithet, bore ominous nuclear innuendo during the Cold War.  Sixty-five years later, his successor, Vladimir Putin seems to be saying, “we will feed you lies and wait for you to bury yourselves.”  China too is biding its time.  In 1960 China’s GDP was only 11% of the US, but by 2019 it was at 67%.

Our democracy is at a tipping point.  Conservative politicians seem to be more willing to accept authoritarian rule to advance a financial advantage over the undeserving masses.  They will convince those masses that they will be better off with a “benevolent authoritarian” than with someone who doesn’t hold with their values.  All will be well as long as they get to pick their favorite grifter.  They will tell the plebian hoards that you can only trust us, not those “other guys.”  Americans need to wake up and understand that what they smell isn’t the roses, it’s the fertilizer.

Time to smell the...

My Year in Cuba

In the early 70s, I spent a year in Cuba, albeit restricted mostly to the base at Guantanamo, aka Gitmo.  I say mostly because I accidentally swam beyond our base boundaries a few times while spearfishing on the reefs.  We still had Cuban workers on base who commuted through the gate and lived in and around the city of Guantanamo.  We also had a Cuban village on the base for those workers who managed to cut all ties with their homeland.  My roommate, Matt Hernandez, was a Mexican American who facilitated our acceptance at their off-limits after-hours club/restaurant on the base.  This club and its counterpart in the Jamaican village were preferable to the EM (enlisted men’s) club on the base that catered more to drunken fleet sailors wanting to let off steam.  I spent most of my time at the EM club wearing a hard hat carrying a billy club on Shore Patrol duty.

I enjoyed the Cuban food and company and managed to even attend their illegal cockfights.  I never understood the “entertainment value” of watching two roosters fight to the death but I was amazed at the gambling activity associated with the events.  The owners would walk around the ring holding up their prize rooster and would take verbal bets from participants in the crowd.  How they kept track of all those bets was the amazing part.  At the end of the match, the winning and losing owners would either pay off or collect their bets.

The fighting pit is larger than it appears because it was
dug down with more seating under the tin roof.

The climate in Guantanamo was like south Florida except that it almost never rained.  There were two seasons, hot and damned hot.  There were only two leisure time activities on the base and, for those who didn’t enjoy skin diving, there was only the consumption of alcohol.  Some would argue that there were also picnics and sunbathing, but I would counter that both of those activities involved large quantities of alcohol.  Luckily, alcohol was cheap.  A fifth of Smirnoff Vodka was fifty cents.  A bottle of cold duck was twenty-five cents and beer was about ten cents a can.  Next to the soda machine in the barracks, there was a similar machine that sold cans of beer.  Since alcohol was sold without federal taxes, all domestic (US) liquor was cheap.  I was cursed with a taste for scotch and it still had foreign taxes.  A fifth of scotch like Dewar’s White Label ran about five dollars.

As an E-5, I was allowed to ship my car down to the base without transportation charges.  After I got my orders to Cuba, I prepped my 1963 Buick Skylark convertible by painting it with a base coat of both zinc chromate and red-lead boat bottom primers to prevent rust.  I topped that off with several coats of blue enamel.  I can only assume that somewhere on the base that car still exists, even if it doesn’t run.  Since none of my friends had cars, I was a popular guy.

We would use the Skylark for regular weekend runs to the beach and I enjoyed the fact that I didn’t have to walk up and down from the Gold Hill barracks to work at the commissary.  Matt and I would also drive down to the boat docks and rent a small boat to go fishing.  But wait, isn’t fishing another leisure activity?  No, as anyone knows who has ever fished, fishing is just another excuse to drink.  We were no different.

That's younger me standing above a popular beach.  The concertina wire
(lower left) marks the divide between the base and Castro's Cuba.

I remember a nighttime fishing excursion that involved the significant consumption of alcohol where we did particularly well.  We had managed to boat several snapper and grouper that we placed in the center seat baitwell.  What we didn’t realize was that the baitwell leaked into the surrounding bay.  Soon I had hooked into something quite large.  Now I don’t remember what pound test was provided on the rental rods and reels we used but suffice it to say that that monofilament line could have been used to tow a small destroyer.  I fought this denizen of the deep for quite a while and managed to get it next to the boat.  I grabbed the gaff and pulled about a five-foot hammerhead shark into our 12’ skiff.  The shark was not amused with this turn of events.  He managed to convey to us his displeasure with a series of “I don’t want to be here” flips and flops about the boat.

The shark was not the only one not amused as I saw Matt move to the bow with a look on his face that told me he didn’t want to be here any more than that shark did.  I know it was the alcohol talking but he even threatened to swim back to shore to get away from our new guest.  I glanced down at Matt’s hands gripping the gunwales about a foot above the waterline.  There, just beyond his left hand, I also saw a large dorsal fin from a fellow member of the Sphyrnidae family.  I pointed at the fin just as this much larger relative began to scrape along the side of our now too-small floating conveyance.  Matt looked, saw the fin just inches from his hand, and then yelled something that only dolphins and sonar operators could hear that told me I needed to start the motor.

We made a beeline back to the base exchange docks where we offloaded our cargo.  The snapper and grouper made it into our now ice-only beer cooler and Mr. Shark was placed on the hood of the Skylark.  We drove back to the Gold Hill barracks and I went up to retrieve my camera.  Matt waited by the car.  While I was in our room I saw something that was not to be ignored.  I didn’t know what I was going to do with my newfound knowledge, but I knew it was going to be big.

Downstairs we took picture after picture of the shark.  We had shark profiles, gaping shark, shark with Jack, a shark with Matt, shark on the hood as an ornament, you get the picture.  Then I asked Matt to grab one end of the shark and I led the way to the stairwell.  He asked why we were climbing up three flights of stairs with a dead shark.  I didn’t answer.  The questions continued until we got to our room.  Then Matt’s questions were answered in an instant as he asked another.  “You aren’t going to do what I think you are going to do?”  I just smiled.

You see our friend Roy, who worked in the commissary butcher shop, had been partaking of that other form of recreation.  He had come to visit and decided to wait.  He knew he was always welcome to our booze.  After all, alcohol was almost cheaper than water there.  He had obviously enjoyed more than his share and had passed out on one of our spare bunks.

We pulled back the sheet to see Roy in his boxers.  We then quietly slipped the hammerhead in next to him.  We tucked in the sheet to keep them both cozy.  Matt and I moved to the other side of the room and continued with our own libation.  We waited a couple of hours in vain for Roy to wake up.  He must have been really plowed.  Eventually, Matt and I went to bed.

The spare bunk from the story would be across the room
from the foot of my bunk.

Early the next morning as dawn broke, we were awakened to the terrified New England accented screams of Roy.  I saw him on the floor at the foot of my bed twisted in the sheet, covered in fish slime, and locked in a loving embrace with the dead shark.  He was screaming and twisting and getting further entangled with the sheet.  I was quickly dressed and out the door with Matt on my heels and Roy’s screams fading into the hallway behind us.  My trusty Buick made for a quick getaway.

My only surviving picture of Matt and Roy

We drove around for a while.  Our main mission was to avoid Roy.  He was a mad sailor with a hangover who smelled like dead fish.  We managed to dodge him for a couple of days.  When the inevitable confrontation happened, Roy was surprisingly calm.  It seemed he didn’t remember much about that night and couldn’t explain what happened.  His main comment could have only come from an old salt who had been a regular at some of the more disreputable sections of the Philippines.  He related how he had often awakened to see some less than attractive ladies of the evening in his bed, but nothing held a candle to waking up in bed with such a foul stench and finding a bed partner with only one eye looking back at him.

For those who might ask about the fate of the shark, he was buried in a shallow grave in a field near the base chow hall.  Foul smells from that building were not unusual.

My only other remembrance of note from my time in Gitmo involved the open-air base theatre.  There was a large stage and a projection screen in front of a large concrete slab with chairs.  As I said, it almost never rained.  At the rear of the slab was a projection booth.  Behind the projection booth was a large banyan tree.  It was at this outdoor venue that I saw Bob Hope’s Christmas show and whatever movies made it through Navy censors and budgets. 

The projection booth and banyan tree would be
behind the scaffold at the right.

We would pull up at the rear of the seating area next to the projection booth.  With a full cooler and the Skylark’s top-down, we would drink and watch the movies.  The only thing that makes this all noteworthy is the Banyan tree.  You see, the base Jamaican workers had unrestricted travel between their island home and the base.  On those trips, all manner of homegrown agricultural products would be brought back to the base.  The Jamaicans would climb the Banyan to watch the movie.  Before the opening credits would roll there would be a large blue cloud surrounding that huge tree.  Occupants sitting in open convertibles could enjoy the second-hand residual effect of that sweet-smelling smoke.  Luckily, we brought snacks too.

Religion and Politics

In the early 70s, I was stationed for two of my four years in the Navy at the Naval Training Center in Orlando, Florida.  For half of that time, I had a second part-time job as a bartender in the Officer’s Club.  With no experience in a bar other than as a consumer of their fine attitude-altering products, I was assigned to their best mixologist, Al.  Now Al had been bartending at the Officer’s Club since back when it had been an Air Force base before the Navy takeover.  He handed me a three-ring binder with the recipes for the most popular drinks of the time.  Beyond the memorization of ingredients and quantities of various cocktails, Al had some other bartender advice.  He told me there were a couple of basic rules that would serve me well.  First, be a good listener, and second, never discuss politics or religion.

I come by my bartending skills through genetics; this image shows my 
great-uncle Frank's bar in the Newtown Square Hotel and my
grandfather John Dallas owned a hotel and bar elsewhere in Pennsylvania.

That was good advice.  Whenever a customer began discussing either of those verboten topics, it was best to nod, smile, and change the subject as soon as possible.  Well, anyone who has read my political commentary, knows that I’ve made up for lost time in that arena.  That second topic, however, doesn’t come up much in my writing as I prefer to honor an individual’s choice of religion.  This is especially true if their choice doesn’t overtly affect me.  It only starts to be a matter of discussion if religion becomes the justification for something outside the area of a personal belief system.

Stained Glass Trump

To that point, I find far too many people using religion as a shield or club.  They will justify a political or virtually any position of theirs in the name of religion and claim some other-worldly logic that is not to be challenged.  They will assert that the Bible, Koran, or Talmud is to be interpreted in such a way as to bolster their position.  I will have no position on your choice to observe the teachings of some organized religion or to follow a deeply held philosophy unless you claim that it needs to be accepted by everyone else without challenge.  To waive a religious belief as some sort of magic wand to support some position is to raise my ire.

Lately, we have seen a surge of nationalism and faux patriotism used to justify racism and white supremacy.  We have likewise seen people quoting passages or philosophies from their chosen “good book,” to support all manner of non-religious positions.  While words written perhaps thousands of years ago may have been well-intended, we too often forget that these same writers also held that the world was flat and, as interpreted by modern Young Earth creationists, that same earth is only 6,000 to 10,000 years old.  You may hold such beliefs but don’t expect them to go unchallenged.  Likewise, don’t expect others to swallow as “gospel” such easily debunked ideas.

Our founding fathers crafted our originating documents with a two-sided hope which protected the state from religious incursions and religions from state influence.  Since that time, we have seen countless incursions of religious influence on our politics.  From a variety of topics including contraception, abortion, and gay marriage, we see religion crossing over to become a political force.

The Establishment clause of the First Amendment has been widely interpreted to create the need for a separation of church and state.  Thomas Jefferson penned the Constitution and his feelings on the matter are well established.  In his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, he declared that the Establishment clause clearly built a “wall of separation between church and state.”  As a Virginian, Jefferson fought to disestablish the Anglican Church as the church of choice for all in the state.  He argued that compelling citizens to support through taxation, a faith which Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers and other “dissenting” faiths found contrary to their own beliefs, was wrong.

I believe that members of organized religions have every right to discuss and argue their points before a political body but to use their tax-free financial enterprise to further influence political direction is wrong.  In that latter instance they should be taxed like any other business desiring to use its financial strength to better position its “business.”

President John F. Kennedy once stated, “I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.”

The separation of church and state may be an arguable point for some but using some a priori reasoning to justify your position is inherently flawed and shows its weakness.  You should establish your reasoning with knowledge derived from observation or experience, not something you believe just because you believe it.  Your logic at that point has devolved to that of a mother who ends her argument with, “because I said so.”

Absolute Truth

There is only one absolute truth in this world and that is that it doesn’t exist.  We can have perceived truths and they may stand the test of time but when we stop questioning our perceived reality, we run the risk of error.  We must continue to challenge our knowledge of all things important.  Without getting into the philosophical sciences, we have empirical sciences that require evidence.

In a recent Wired article titled, The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill, author Megan Molteni details the importance of science and how critical it is to continually challenge or question assumptions.  In this article, a researcher who started life in the physics arena moved into studying the spread of infectious diseases.  Among the topics of atmospheric physics was the means of disease transmission.  The WHO (World Health Organization) and the American-based CDC (Centers for Disease Control) used as fact a rule that declared a 5-micron threshold for a disease to be “airborne.”  It ruled that particles larger than 5-microns quickly fell to the ground or to surfaces.  The early assumption was that this was how SARS-CoV-2 was being transmitted, i.e., in close proximity to infected sources or in contact with contaminated surfaces.  Recommendations early in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic were based on it not being “airborne.”  This meant that the washing of hands and social distancing of 6 feet was the primary mandate.

It had widely been accepted as a fact that all respiratory infections transmit through expelled droplets in coughs and sneezes.  The exceptions to date were measles and tuberculosis that were known to be “airborne” where microscopic particles (aerosols) could remain infectious and stay suspended for many hours and travel long distances.  This distinction was important.  The larger than 5-micron droplet spread of infection rule, meant hand washing and social distancing recommendations were all that would be required, where acceptance of airborne (aerosol) transmission, would mean a more expensive recommendation involving the use of N-95 masks and isolation wards.

Researcher Linsey Marr would challenge the physics of these assumptions based on this 5-micron philosophy.  She knew that such assumptions were flawed and that the actual science was much less finite.  Heat, humidity, and airspeed would all be factors in the spread of disease.  In 2011 she did research in airplanes and daycare centers that showed influenza spreading by airborne transmission where infectious particles stayed suspended for hours.  Her manuscript was rejected by all but one medical journal.

She delved further into the origins of the 5-micron assumption and found it was based on a few studies from the 1930s and 40s.  A deeper dive into the citations of these publications and one published in the 50s found that critical research had determined that 100-micron particles sank within seconds but that smaller particles floated much longer.  Somewhere along the line, the 5-micron size had been picked up and used as gospel and became the finite distinction between the droplet and aerosol transmission of disease.

Eventually, Marr and a colleague signed an open letter addressed to the WHO, and they were joined by 237 other scientists that advised stronger recommendations for masking and ventilation to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2.  A few days later the WHO updated their brief and acknowledged that aerosols couldn’t be ruled out and added masking to their guidelines.  They weakened this to apply only where you couldn’t distance indoors.  Both the WHO and the CDC did a CYA and, while now admitting that SARS-CoV-2 could be airborne, they said they knew this all along and that hospitals had been treating it this way from the beginning.  On April 30, 2021, the WHO finally quietly updated its website to acknowledge the virus could spread via aerosols.

I am a big believer in science and the scientific method which relies on skeptical observation.  It is a continual cycle of observation, research, hypothesis, testing, analysis, conclusions, and more observation.  Using the basics of this scientific method in all manner of research and critical thinking will generally be of great benefit.  Unfounded assumptions are the antithesis of this scientific method but especially so when we rely on such assumptions without challenging them with skeptical observation.

If only we could convince the good people who still fear science and continue to promote wild unfounded and unproven theories regarding vaccinations, we could cautiously move beyond the disaster of this pandemic.  If only we could educate the QAnon clan, perhaps they would no longer follow those coprolite-for-brains leaders and spreaders of misinformation, we could advance as a society.  Science is not perfect, but it is a self-regulating body that acknowledges its imperfections, albeit sometimes slowly.  This is certainly better than the “knowledge” disseminated as absolute fact and truth that is based on the whims and creative guesswork of self-proclaimed Nostradamus-like folks.  These are the followers of that “like, really smart” and “a very stable genius” fellow who is convinced of his own infallibility.

Parallels

The tragic collapse of a 12-story condominium tower on Miami Beach on June 24, 2021, has parallels with what is currently wrong with our American democracy.  Both were originally designed with good intent based on the best knowledge of the day.  While the foundations were initially strong, they were eroded over time.  The foundations were weakened, and needed maintenance was neglected or postponed.  The ultimate result, tragedy.

In the case of the building, people saw the cracked concrete, the rusted exposed reinforcing steel, and the standing water.  People knew that ocean water was seeping into the lower structure on king tides.  As the expense of maintenance was delayed, the estimated costs nearly doubled.  People saw the need to make repairs, but nobody was willing to pay.  Now that the structure has collapsed, everyone pays, and some have made the ultimate payment.

While it will be some time before the specific causes for the building’s collapse are identified, it is almost certain to be a combination of many things.  A whole litany of factors contributed to the failure of the entire structure.  Certainly, this building was designed to last more than 40 years, but it was not properly maintained.  Even climate change and rising sea levels may have been partly to blame.

Like this building, our American democracy was designed to last a long time.  It had a strong foundation upon which we built our hopes and dreams.  It has so far stood the test of time through two world wars and countless assaults.  But today we find that the foundation is crumbling, and its structural integrity is threatened.  Our two ruling parties are so deeply divided that recently one of those parties threatened its members with a loss of committee assignments if any of them broke ranks and cooperated with the other side.  For a democracy designed to function with two parties debating the issues and using compromise to make difficult decisions, this was certainly a serious crack in the foundation.

Many idly watched as a corrupt president attacked our core values.  He fanned the flames of racial hatred and religious intolerance.  He provided cover for a minority faction of our society to vent their loathing of Jews, Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and members of the gay communities.  He used this hatred to protest his loss of the presidency in a fair election through a treasonous insurrection conducted in our nation’s capital.  He has used the power of this group of supporters to shift the Republican party to the extreme right where cooperation or compromise is seen as weakness or failure.  He has brought our nation to the brink of collapse by attacking its foundation.  He would rather see this country fail if he can’t have things his way.  Donald Trump and his Republican supporters are the corrosive salts eating away at the very substructure of this democracy.

Without a working Congress and positive legislative advancements, this country will fail.  The historical engineering report that will document our nation’s collapse will note many individual failures and causal factors.  Among them will be:

• A failure to address climate change that resulted in drought, sea-level rise, crop failures, food insecurity, and extreme weather-related events.

• A failure to address our crumbling infrastructure that resulted in electrical grid failures, information network failures, structural transportation network failures, job loss, and economic disaster.

• A failure to address gun reform continued the carnage in our schools and neighborhoods.

• A failure to address immigration reform and its root causes that resulted in a continuation of an uncontrolled influx of migrants.

• A failure to address the need for renewable energy that exacerbated climate change and furthered our dependence on limited resources.

• A failure to address affordable health care forced our citizens into situations where their continued wellbeing depended upon the size of their bank accounts.

• A failure to address the problems associated with equal opportunities for a college or technical education allowed the decline of our status as a world economy and we saw a rise in economic inequality.

• A failure to better manage our budget deficit served to only postpone the inevitable collapse of our economy.

• A failure to address racism, sexism, and religious persecution widened the divide in America and hastened its collapse.

These are but a few of the things eroding the very foundation of our democratic way of life.  We can no longer postpone the needed repairs.  We can no longer ignore the damage being done in the name of nationalism, patriotism, isolationism, party politics, and white supremacy.  We will put off the long overdue maintenance on the foundations of democracy at our ultimate peril.  Stop the hatred.  Stop listening to the mentally ill grifting conman from New York now living in Florida.  Stop his supporters from using his hate-mongering to their own ends.  Save our democracy before it collapses in a pile of rubble.

The events of January 6 and June 24 were both tragedies.  Both were preventable.  Both present us with lessons to be learned to prevent similar occurrences.  We need to investigate the causes of both to help us understand how we can prevent them from happening again.  As we have seen, maintenance of foundations is extremely important and delays are costly and deadly.