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

Out of Step Boomer

Being an aging, privileged, white male has its perks. You get called "sir" a lot for one thing. Cashiers at the grocery store look at your disheveled, frumpy outfit with pity. And other old guys are ready and willing to confide in you their views of the world. Having made it, they think things are great and want to talk about good restaurants, pretty places to visit, the balm of being above the fray of making a living. Only problem is you're not a bona fide member of that club. For one thing, you're not as rich, but that's not the main thing. You were a teacher for your career. They were architects, lawyers, real estate moguls, and trust funders. You worked harvesting tobacco to pay college tuition, washed dishes, did menial labor that burned into a sense of injustice. They are a comfortable, self-satisfied lot. You have a chip on your shoulder and a nagging awareness that the way things are is just wrong. I say this because too much comfort is like a drug, and it requires that you rationalize having so much with others of a like mind. You see things differently, don't share the story that comfort in retirement is the highest good. You see all too well a world on fire, and, more importantly, you feel it, can't sleep for it, want to throw yourself on the gears of the machine in rebellion and defiance. It is time to devote your mind and heart to creative resistance, the imagination of something new, a more humane cultural, social, political, and, yes, economic narrative that includes and raises up the marginalized and outcast; if you do, I believe you will burn with a light choosing generosity over fear. You will find your tribe and work together with them to lift each other up. You will give until it hurts and then give some more. Then, if necessary, you will be the first to clamber over the barricade, to take one for freedom, struggle, and equity. Sleep will come easier then and you can rest knowing you heard the call.

January In the Desert

Ice crystals on agave, air so clear it sparkles, grass, green moist grass, under the gnarled mesquite, vermilion flycatchers on the railing of the bike path, blue panels of mountains on the horizon, light coming in low through the windows, citrus colors lighting the clouds and sky, vapor rising off a hot cup of coffee held in a gloved hand, numb toes and red cheeks as the bike rolls through a town still sleeping. You get up early, well before the sun, and wander along the wash in the darkness. You think of friends who are gone and friends who are sick and about to leave, and you think of the courage all of the desert creatures have when they get up and enter the food chain in search of life-giving water and sustenance. This is the rarest of ephemeral beauty and you have learned to see it for what it is. All of this, the gem of winter in the desert, a passing moment so rich it breaks your cold and tired heart. You take one step and another as you hone the razor edge of peace right here and right now and let all else fall away.

Breaking the Wrong Rules

This is a test. This is not, however, ONLY a test. The impeachment is testing the waters of accountability, the limits of presidential power, the resilience of the framers' design of checks and balances. It serves to see just how much people will accept in a leader's bad behavior, how much of a blind eye they will turn as power is transferred to the executive branch. Impeachment was crafted as the firewall preventing tyrants from tipping a democracy into an authoritarian regime, an autocracy. Trump and his billionaire backers want that kind of unchecked power, and impeachment is all that stands in their way from imposing it. Trump posed as a political outsider, someone who would "drain the swamp" of political stagnation. He promised working class voters he would break the rules that favored the rich and powerful. But surprise, surprise: he's one of them, and now is breaking the rules, but not the ones favoring the elites. He's power drunk, and already talks like a dictator saying he won't leave even if removed. He's not a rule breaker for justice or equality, not a hero reforming that "gull-dang big gummint," not a rebel working for the have-not white workers abandoned in the Rust Belt. He's a democratic institution crusher. The rules he wants to break are the ones standing between those of us who work for a living and the corporate powers that want to drain the last drops of profit from a system in crisis. He's turning up the volume so no one can hear the real reasons he's breaking the rules. He is not Robin Hood or a beleaguered defender of democracy. He is a corrupt despot, an agent of a ruling elite that can never have enough wealth or power. 

Day One

It's official. I'm back in the classroom after being on leave for a year and a half. Much has changed. Books are now links in the course website; assignments come in as cyber text rather than paper; students take photos of the white board rather than take notes. But I still wear my Costco jeans and Hawaiian shirts with Chacos and socks. The first class was a bit of a shock. I couldn't remember my lesson plan and the computer wouldn't project the image from the document cam. For a crazy few seconds I was lost in front of the class wondering if would be able to figure out how to proceed. I decided to come clean and to tell the class I didn't know how to connect the computer to the projector. When I asked, I was directed to a black box mounted on the wall that had the switch for the document cam. Aha! I was able to get rolling into the lesson and the semester. I do still have something to offer, I think, about writing. If I can remember to trust that, I might just make it through the semester. Now to get ready for Day Two, still a beginner, in need of help from others.