The Three-Headed Monster With No Name

As we watch the stock market dive and the presidential debates heat up, it seems that things have gotten a bit… well … intense.  I hate to say it, but these issues are not even half of the story. We are standing on the precipice of an abyss, and a monster with three heads stands ready and waiting to push us off. The problem here is that this monster has no name because media and candidates at the podium barely mention the threats it poses; no one wants to talk about it. He stands there, aloof and off the popular radar. One head, the one with power to immediately send us into the stone age, is the threat of nuclear war. Trump has made it his business to undo treaties and to heighten the threat so that we are closer to midnight on the Doomsday Clock than we have been in history. The second head is global warming. Yes, it is that bad, and we may have gone too far into rising temperatures to reverse anything. Yet the words “global warming” and “climate change” are redacted from official government reports on the subject. Finally, there is that pesky income inequality. The world’s 4,000 or so billionaires now own more wealth than the bottom 4.6 BILLION (60% of world’s population) people. That gap translates into global control of message and government policies. It’s time to care about what to do about this monster, I think, even if no one wants to talk about it.  

The Last Red-Eye

My cafe is closing. Today is the last day, and this steaming cup is my last red-eye here. For six years I have opened this place up at six a.m. to brood on the coming day, gather my demons together so I can see them clearly, identify what is important to me, pray a little bit, and write. It's been a kind of sacred ritual that will have to change, as all things must. So, I say goodbye, give a farewell kiss to  those mornings when words came to me. To all of those friends who I would never have met -- Gail, Bruce, Daniel, Chris, Danica, Cheryl, Sarah, and others -- I wish you well as we part paths. The coffee club disbands and life goes on, changed but aware of what is lost and what has been gained. Adios companeros.

Time to Throw Down the Gauntlet: A Time Trial Duel With The Donald

Dear President Trump --

In your State of the Union Address, I found many of your claims patently false, distorted through the megalomaniac lens through which you see the world. I guess I expect more of the President of the United States and still suffer from a quaint notion that leaders like you are supposed to tell the truth to the best of their abilities. That truth thing has stuck there in the craw of my brain, and I've been trying to figure out a way to get you to meet the truth head-on, even in an unorthodox way. 

I don't want to labor those points here, because I propose instead a kind of duel, after which the winner gets to present, with real -- i.e. reliable, legit, hard, researched statistics and data -- his case to the loser. No Sharpies. No numbers just pulled of thin air. No cherry-picked, maudlin, sappy tear-jerker examples of charity and nostalgia for an America that used to be so great.

I feel that climate change, for example, is one of the greatest threats to global security and economic justice that has ever faced the human race. You still see a future in fossil fuels. (There are many issues, which we can discuss at your leisure after our duel.)

Here is what I propose:

Because you are great at everything you do, you should be great on a bicycle too. You can train if you want, but you're just the greatest ever, so that would likely be a waste of time. 

We race a time trial of at least forty kilometers on lonely, mountainous, remote Arizona highways; or, better, on winding desert single-track, out in the open, like cowboys on pedal ponies. Forty K is long haul, and you would suffer. We both would. I would let you draft behind me if you needed to, but then pull away in the final kilometers. That would really hurt. If I saw that, I might be able to better understand how it is you see the world as you do. (Rush Limbaugh????)

The winner will have the undivided attention of the loser for no less than two hours. In those hours, the winner can bring whatever forms of evidence to support the viewpoint of the winner. The loser has to listen in good faith and entertain the validity of counter claims.

You've pretty much had your chance already; I'd like to earn mine.

Just for the record, I am recovering from a bout with pneumonia; in fact, I'm still feverish and on antibiotics. I can barely get out of bed. It would not be fair that way, but you don't really like things fair anyway.

So, what do you say? Let's go mano a mano in a race of truth. (I like that designation.) Out there, it's just you and your heart and your lungs and whatever gas you have in the tank. You would be on your own, no daddy to lift you up with a million bucks, no blue-blood billionaire bullies to ridicule and discredit your opponents, no pit bull lawyers to take the fall when you go too far in your cheating -- just you. You. Alone. The race of truth. Nowhere to hide. No tricks or distractions or insults or cover-ups.

Let's duke it out like old warriors from different tribes with bones to pick. Let's pick dem bones. You're a guy who likes to win. Let's take it to the mat, to the tarmac, into the wind, my wheezing, you zipping along on your e-bike. (I know how you like to cheat so would expect a motor somewhere.) You could take your speech to a new level, if you win, really stretching to prove your belief and commitment to your vision, to someone doesn't get it.

Also, I am still dealing with stiffness from an old surgery, so that would be another "trump" card just to sweeten the deal.

But I'll do it, no matter my condition. I am not a ringer or accomplished bike racer. The thought of meeting you in a real contest would be worth all the risk, all the pain of anaerobic effort. The regular, working-class guy versus the demagogue, the Teflon Don, the BS king. Just think of the PR possibilities.

Don't you think it would be great though? January in the Sonoran Desert would be a great backdrop for another Trump enterprise. My hacking and spitting into a hanky on the sidelines would provide the extra drama. 

I hope you will consider my offer as fellow "macho hombre," though I don't quite fit that designation.

If you have another suggestion, golf, perhaps, I would be glad to consider your offer, provided that I would be given time to acquire the equipment. But that doesn't have the cachet of the Old West, six guns at the ready, facing each other on the dusty Main Street at sunset, helmets fastened, legs ready for the lactic burn of oxygen debt, for the red zone where there is no room for anything other than truth, the truth, dammit! The truth, for once. 

I eagerly await your response,

Erec Toso