WE NEED TO KEEP DONALD TRUMP AT HOME

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

WE NEED TO KEEP DONALD TRUMP AT HOME
.
HE HAS NEITHER THE CHARACTER NOR INTELLIGENCE
TO ENGAGE IN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMACY 

Every time Donald Trump leaves home he manages to embarrass the United States. He’s so self-absorbed, narcissistic, and delusional that he thinks the world and our allies are looking up to him with admiration, but actually, the world looks upon him with disgust. He’s seen as a crude, primitive, and unsophisticated hick. Yet, he struts about the world like he’s an emperor. That makes all of America look stupid. After all, “What kind of nation would elect such an ignorant buffoon?”
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All of America’s longtime allies are beginning to line up against him, because we’re, literally, sending a thin-skinned, sociopathic Hillbilly all over the world to represent us, and he’s doing tremendous and long-term damage to the standing of the United States all over the world.

How can our allies have any faith at all in a nation capable of electing such an unqualified ‘buffoon?’ And how can the world have any confidence in any agreements entered into with a man who routinely reneges on agreements simply because he got up on the wrong side of the bed, or he thinks it would serve to titillate his undereducated supporters at home?
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And his judgment has also proven to be atrocious. Even as he was trying to negotiate a nuclear arms agreement with Kim Jong-Un of North Korea, he unilaterally reneged on a carefully thought-out international agreement identical to it with Iran, and that was in spite of the fact that all of our allies agreed that Iran was in strict compliance with its terms. But all that was meaningless to Trump - all he was concerned with was the agreement reflected too well on the competence of his Black predecessor who embarrassed him once at a White House dinner. In addition, a clear example of the depth in which Trump contemplates world affairs was reported by nymag.com. The report indicates that a European diplomat said that "Trump will ask: ‘Did Obama approve this?’ And if the answer is affirmative, he will say: ‘We don’t,'" (http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/07/trump-putin-russia -collusion.html).
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Trump is also completely ignorant of the significance of American history. During his recent trip to France in commemoration of the one-hundredth anniversary of the end of WWI, Trump failed to attend the ceremony honoring our fallen troops. That’s a prime example of just how ignorant and self-absorbed he is. In spite of all of his claims to love our troops, and all his attempts to present himself as some sort of super-patriot, just that one snub was a slap in the face of every veteran who ever served this country. No other president in the history of this nation would have missed that ceremony - even if they had to be rolled out on their deathbed.  Yet, Trump dishonored those fallen troops on just a whim. The reason for that is, he’s so ignorant and self-absorbed that he has absolutely no sense of history. Trump is completely incapable of seeing anything beyond himself as having any importance.
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As a former Marine, I, along with hundreds of thousands of other former Marines have a USMC

“Devil Dog” tattooed on our forearm. That tattoo is in honor of those very fallen marines that Donald Trump so casually dishonored due to rain. The reason that marines so proudly sport that tattoo and are referred to as Devil Dogs is because of the ferocity in which the Marines at Belleau Wood fought and died for this country.  The name, “Devil Dogs” was given to those brave men by German soldiers to describe the United States Marines who fought in the Battle of Belleau Wood in 1918. The Germans said those Marines fought with the ferocity of  "Dogs from Hell." 
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So the very first thing a marine learns when he enters Marine Corps boot camp is about the battle of Belleau Wood, because these brave men set the standard for what it means to be a marine. Yet, Donald Trump, a goddamn draft-dodger, casually dismissed them on the ONE-HUNDREDTH anniversary of their sacrifice due to rain. But in response to his unconscionable snub of our fallen troops Trump got immediate blowback:
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Nicholas Soames, a member of Britain’s Parliament and grandson of Winston Churchill, tweeted, "They died with their face to the foe and that pathetic inadequate @realDonaldTrump couldn’t even defy the weather to pay his respects to The Fallen.” 
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And former Secretary of State John Kerry tweeted, "President @realDonaldTrump a no-show because of raindrops? Those veterans the president didn’t bother to honor fought in the rain, in the mud, in the snow - & many died in trenches for the cause of freedom. Rain didn’t stop them & it shouldn’t have stopped an American president.”
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LT. ROBERT MUELLER
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS

So America should never forgive Trump for dishonoring our fallen warriors, because to do so would be to dishonor them ourselves. They stood up and died for us in the face of the enemy, so we must stand up for them in the face of Trump. And it goes beyond just these fallen heroes. If what Trump did in Europe wasn’t bad enough, when he returned to the United States he also failed to make the two-mile trip to attend the Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington Cemetery. That’s a tradition that every president in recent history has adhered to, but not Trump - “To hell with ‘em; I got my own problems.” 
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Thus, it’ll be interesting to see the response of Trump’s flag-waving supporters to his snub of some of the most heroic warriors in America history. Is it really patriotism that motivates these supporters, or something much more sinister?  We'll see. It’s easy to wrap yourself in the flag and claim to be a patriot to promote your political ambitions, but what’s not so easy is living up to the hypocrisy in your daily life while under pressure, and Donald Trump has clearly failed to meet that test. 
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What’s actually going on here is quite clear. In spite of Trump’s claim that the recent midterm elections were a Republican success, the blue wave in the House represents a disaster for him, and a clear repudiation of his presidency by the American people.  In addition, with Democrats in control of the House, every facet of his alleged criminality is going to be thoroughly investigated, and just the thought of that prospect is causing him to implode.
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The Los Angeles Times reported in its article, Trump, stung by midterms and nervous about Mueller, retreats from traditional presidential duties, “[Trump’s] mood apparently has changed as he has taken measure of the electoral backlash that voters delivered Nov. 6. With the certainty that the incoming Democratic House majority will go after his tax returns and investigate his actions, and the likelihood of additional indictments by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Trump has retreated into a cocoon of bitterness and resentment, according to multiple administration sources.”
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That explains why Trump was so sullen in Europe and missing in action with respect to his presidential duties. The pressure’s on, and he’s personally under the gun so the flaws in his character are coming to the fore. And what that means when it comes to Donald Trump is, “To hell with the fallen troops, they’re already dead. My ass is on the line now, and that’s all that’s important.” So Draft-Dodgin’ Donnie is back, and in full, and self-serving effect. It's just too bad that Trump wasn't as fixated on our fallen vets as he is the Mueller investigation. If he'd thought there was someone at that cemetery who could block the Mueller investigation, a hurricane wouldn't have kept him away - even if he had to fly the helicopter himself. 
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Our founding fathers are undoubtedly turning over in their graves over this guy, and American history will never forgive the GOP for propping him up, and neither should we. Republicans have done many unpatriotic things in the past in pursuit of their greed and narrow interests, but after this stunt the GOP has revealed itself for exactly what it is - a party of greedy, bigoted, and misogynist pigs who couldn’t care less about America - so we should leave no stone unturned to send the entire party, along with Trump, to the waste bin of history. 

TELL ME,

HOW IS THIS GUY EITHER PRESIDENTIAL, A LEADER, OR QUALIFIED TO ENGAGE IN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMACY?
HE’S AN IGNORANT BUFFOON WHO DOESN’T EVEN HAVE THE CLASS
TO RESPECT THE VERY WOMB OF OUR SOCIETY.

Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
.
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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ABOUT STANLEY “TOOKIE” WILLIAMS - JUST FOR THE RECORD

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

ABOUT STANLEY “TOOKIE” WILLIAMS - JUST FOR THE RECORD
.

Tookie was a very sensitive and intelligent brother. He started the Crips at Washington High School as a defense against bullies, and then it got out of hand. Others started perpetrating crimes in his name, and he was held responsible for the deeds of others. That put a target on his back and forced him to become violent just to survive. 
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Tookie was an ambitious brother, but his reputation prevented him from pursuing the ambitions he held so passionately. The first time he came to the house I asked my wife was she crazy, inviting a vicious murderer to our house? I felt that she was placing our family in danger. But Val never saw him that way. Right up until her death, she saw him as the nice young man that became her friend at Washington High School, and as time went on and I began to recognize his intelligence, I began to see him in the same way - in fact, I started looking forward to seeing him so we could kick-back and talk.
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After I became more comfortable with having him around, at first I saw him more like a project, because my major was psychology in school, but as I got to know him better, I began seeing him much like Val. So when he would come over to visit, we would sit in my den and just talk about life. When he would come by he would completely drop his bad-guy persona and just get real. I think he craved the opportunity to do that with someone, and since Val was 2 years older than he was, he saw her much like his older sister, and eventually, once he got to know me, he saw me as an extension of Val. I also think that Val brought him comfort, because she reminded of the days before his life became so complicated. He once told me that he would do anything to have the life I led - a wife, family, future, and not having to worry about getting his brains blown out at any moment. He said, "That's why I like coming around here, man,  because it gives me a chance to experience normalcy." And then he laughed and said - “and chow-down on Val’s enchiladas” (Val would make them for him every time he came by).
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So Tookie wasn’t struttin’ around tryin’ to be Mr. Big Stuff.  He hated his life. I suggested that he leave the state, but he told me, “That wouldn’t do no good.  I have a target on my back all over the country, by people who don’t even know me. Man, I don’t know how this happened.”
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The last time I saw him and Val together was at a party we gave. He came up missing so I went around the house looking for him. When I peeped in my son and daughter's bedroom, I saw him sitting in the glow of a red nightlight watching them sleep. He had tears in his eyes.  I didn't want to embarrass him, so I sent Val in, and the last time I saw them together she was hugging him, and he was weeping like a child.  When I covered his state-sponsored murder for the Los Angeles Sentinel, as I looked down into his coffin and upon his lifeless body, I thought about that moment, and it’s stayed with me ever since. They both died in 2005.

*****************************

Tookie’s major crime wasn’t murder, per se - mere murder is routinely a part of the American ethic. Tookie’s major crime was allegedly committing murder in promotion of his own agenda, rather than the agenda of Haliburton and Exxon/Mobile.  We hand out medals for committing murder in their interest.
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People like Bush, Cheney, and Donald Trump have turned the American military into nothing less than the Crips with a dental plan. The United States is the biggest exporter of murder, and the means to murder, in the world. Our entire economy is built upon it. Tookie merely took the American ethic - in which he’d been indoctrinated all of his life - and applied it to his own environment. As far as he was concerned, he was America, and everybody else that didn’t see things his way, was the USSR. 
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No, I’m not trying to be an apologists for the murder and mayhem Tookie left in his wake, but I do want to put it in perspective.  Yes, Tookie killed people, but only people who were trying to kill him.  On the other hand, George W. Bush is responsible for the deaths of over a million innocent people in Iraq, and they built him a library.

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Thus, the existence of the Tookies in the Black community is our fault, because we’re so busy watching BET, MTV, ESPN, partying and having a good time, that we're failing to educate our own young people in OUR own values. We're allowing them to take on the very values that were responsible for our enslavement - and I'm not speaking as a detached academic from an office atop Mt. Olympus, I'm speaking as a hood rat . . . just like my late friend, Tookie.

*******************

ODE TO TOOKIE

*
Tookie?
Yeah,
I knew Tookie;
I WAS Tookie,
And I knew his pain.
*
I knew the pain of a child
That the cold, smirking
Eyes of society
Peered down upon;
Of being caught like
A doe in the headlights
Of unbridled hatred
For nothing more than
Just . . . being;
Of being
Under-acknowledged,
Under-appreciated,
And under-educated,
By a society
Intent on robbing me
Of the innocence
That is every child’s birthright.
And I know the churning, agonizing,
And unfocused anger
Of a youth
Who knows anger
Much too soon.
*
So,
Tookie?
Yeah,
I knew Tookie;
I WAS Tookie,
But I ain’t going out like that.
*
Because some the greatest minds
I’ve ever known
Held court while sitting
on empty milk crates
In the parking lot
Of ghetto liquor stores;
And at their feet I embraced
The love of knowledge,
And through their tutelage
Defined self-worth
In my own terms.
*
These were the "Eulipians"—
Writers, poets, musicians, painters,
And uncommon drunks—
Those shade-tree philosophers who
Contemplated the fungus
Between the toes of society;
Who danced with reckless abandon,
Unfettered by formal inhibition
Through the presumptuous
Speculation of the ages.
*
Yes, the Eulipians,
Who lived in county jails,
Cardboard boxes, alley ways,
And luxury apartments.
Seemingly insignificant
Here in Great Bruteland,
But of ultimate significance
In the eyes of God.
*
While these obscure intellectuals
Stood well outside the mainstream
Of academy,
I watched with astonished delight
As they sang, scat, blew, and scribed
Their various philosophies into the
Mainstream of human knowledge.
*
Tookie?
Oh Yeah,
I knew Tookie;
I WAS Tookie,
*
But I met the Eulipians,
Who, from their ragged podiums,
Put forth the proposition
That knowledge was free, thus,
Would transcend attempts to be
Contain through barriers of
Caste and privilege - and even,
Institutionalized murder -
Leaving man's innate thirst
For knowledge free to overwhelm
His lust for stupidity.
*
So,
Tookie,
Yeah,
Yes in deed, I did know Tookie;
I WAS Tookie,
But I choose a different tact.
While I refuse to lunge
Against your saber
In a glorious and defiant act,
Look into my eyes, my man -
I still got my brother’s back.
*
You thought you had him,
While facing death,
But he went down like
Like Trojan -
Leaving your silly asses,
With your silly smiles,
Standing there
Shocked and frozen.
*
"What’s up, baby,
Can’t find a vein?
You been beggin’ to do this,
So let’s us do this thang.
But if y’all
Waitin’ around
To see some pain,
I ain’t the only one gon’
Die here,
You jive ass, lame.
*
"Faint of heart?
Give it here,
I’ll stick the damn thang for ya;
I’m a man of the hood
And strong of heart,
So I'm goin' down
Like a warrior.
*
"Naw, my man,
You don’t see no fear;
You really look surprised!
I’m gon’ honor my people
As I leave here,
So just stick me,
So I can close my eyes and die.
*
"You schemed and cheated
To take me out,
So let us get this on;
You can still my body
And take my breath,
But my heart
Will still live on."
*
So,
Tookie?
You mean
THAT Tookie.
Yeah, I knew Tookie,
We’ve planted his heart
Within the hood;

So what you saw as dirt,
We see as soil,
To sow this tragedy,
Into something good.
*
Tookie,
Oh yeah,
I KNEW Tookie,
But I ain’t goin’
Out like that.

*

Stanley 'Tookie' Williams - An All American Boy
http://wattree.blogspot.com/2013/11/tookie-williams-all-american-boy.html

Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
.
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE LOVE OF MY LIFE - RIP

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

LIFE WITH VAL
(The Party)

by
Eric L. Wattree
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Today, November 8, 2018, is a very special day in my family’s life. It’s the birthday of my late wife, Valdie LaVern Wattree, who died during the early morning of April 27, 2005. But to my entire family it seems like she passed just yesterday, because she left such an impact on all of our lives that we still haven’t managed to lay her to rest. I wrote the piece below while Val was still alive, and kept me scratching my head.
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Valdie was an amazing young woman. I met her when she was 14 and I was 16 years old.  But in spite of our youth, the first time I looked in her eyes, she made me feel significant. The only reason I'm even capable of writing this piece is because of her encouragement. Ever since I was a child I loved to jot down my thoughts, and even before I could write, I would draw my thoughts using little stickmen.  Val recognized that tendency in me when we were kids, while I just saw it dooddling. But after she dragged me in off the street and married me on Christmas Day, when she was 19 and I was 21, she began to push.
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This one’s for you, baby. Since you’ve passed, I’ve found that life can go on, but not without you in my heart. So as I promised on the day we were married, and again on your headstone - Until Death Do Us Part - and Beyond.
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Val and I are 44 and 46 years of age, and we've been married for 25 years. We were married on a Christmas morning, and she’s been an ongoing gift in my life ever since. We have two kids - a 23 year old daughter, Kai, and a 21-year-old son, Eric, Jr. They both graduated from college last month (Eric, on my birthday).
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I met Valdie when she was 14, and my life hasn't been the same since. I'm sort of a laid-back, ‘cerebral’ kind of guy who refuses to make a move without thinking it through. You know the type - the kind of guy who people aren't really sure about until they get to know him. Val, on the other hand, is a totally spontaneous, what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person that everyone loves on first sight. But she's SO spontaneous that the kids and I have to keep an eye on her to keep her out of trouble.
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In both high school and college my son was the school basketball star, and before each game countless kids would congregate at my house waiting for Val. Others would go to the gym early to save seats in the bleachers, waiting for her to show up - and when she did, the party was on.

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The kids used to call the section where Val sat "The Dog Pound." More than once a player on the other team would miss free throws or plays because they were laughing so hard at something Val might have said about one of the referees or opposing players - and the funny thing was, in spite of that, the referees and the kids on the other teams loved her, and they all called her by her first name - though some of the kids called her "Nani" (baby-talk for mommy).
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Kids who were scheduled to play our team would come by the house and say, "Now Val, this is just a game. Don't be doggin' me on the court next week." And she'd say, "I ain’t gon have to, my son's gonna do it for me - and get out of my refrigerator. Don't Ruth feed you?" Sometimes after a game my son would say, "Momma, you know you were a bad girl at the game today, don't you?" And she'd say, "What? His toupee was on crooked!" Sometimes I seriously wonder was the Whoopie Goldberg movie, "Eddie," loosely based on Val's Antics.
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She is so out there. She lives in her very own universe. I tell her sometimes, "Val, if WWIII broke-out, you wouldn't even know it until you heard the blast. And it's true. Val is so oblivious to the things that the rest of us worry about that it verges on dangerous. In spite of the fact that she is well known as one of the top Property Administrators at Hughes Aircraft in El Segundo, Ca., she manages to leave all of her business acumen in her desk at work. One day, for example, she saw a very expensive household item that she wanted to buy. So she came to me and asked if it was alright for us to purchase it. At the time, we were sort of strapped, so I told her that we didn't have the money. She looked at me with deep disappointment and said, with total sincerity, "What do you mean we don't have the money? You have a box full of checks in your desk drawer." So, needless to say, I handle the family finances - and that's in spite of the fact that she made $37,000 a year more than I did, and I'm a government employee.
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Once when we went to have our taxes done and the tax preparer looked up at me and said, "I know you shame."  But I wasn't.  On the contrary, I was proud of my woman because she's the very best at what she does. Huges aircraft literally stole her from Rockwell International.  She's the only Black person I've ever known to have a corporation contact her and make her an offer to come to work for them.  Several years later I worked on a project with her and they even offered me a job, but I've always been a political person and I'm a union rep for the postal service.  I've only lost one case in over a decade, and I thoroughly love kicking them in their ass.  But Val wants me to be a "suit," a corporate executive, and she's convinced that I'll shoot right up the ladder.   But I pointed out to her that everyone doesn't see me in the same way that she does,  so that's been was one of the biggest fights we've had in our marriage. She also suspects that it's a male ego thing. She claims I'm just afraid that they might make me work for her. She never should have brought that up, because I'd never thought of that possibility until she mentioned it.  But now that she had . . .
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It's Val's disarming personality that makes her so successful, and it's also helped us out of a number of uncomfortable situations. About ten years ago when we moved from Los Angeles to Covina, California, we were one of just a few Black families in the area. Not being used to that sort of situation, we - make that I - was more than just a little uncomfortable. And to make things worse, one of the neighbors had a huge Confederate flag spread across one entire inside wall of his garage - and the garage door was always open, so whenever we drove down the street his blazing Dixie flag hit us right in the face. I felt uncomfortable with it, but hey, that flag was draped across that wall long before we moved into the neighborhood, and besides, the man has every right to be a bigot - the only thing I hate almost as much as I do a racist is a person who comes into a situation and thinks everyone else should rearrange their lives to accommodate him. So I just learned to ignore it, as I THOUGHT Val had.

About a month or so after we moved in, however, the lady from across the street invited us to a party that she was having. Again, being the laid-back kind of guy I am, I felt uncomfortable about the prospect. I don't like parties as a matter of course. You have to stand around laughing and smiling when you really don't feel it and discuss issues that you really don't care about (How about those Dodgers?). It's not my thing - it makes me feel phony - and I had the feeling that this party would be all that multiplied by a thousand - especially, not knowing anyone, and being the only Black couple there - "Hey, Bubba! Guess who’s comin’ to dinner?"
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But Val immediately lit-up. The lady had said the magic word - PAAAAAR-TAY! Before I could say a word, Val took the ball and ran with it. "I'd love to! Hey, can I be the bartender? I make the best...." The lady ended up at our house all afternoon laughing and talking with Val. By the time she floated back across the street, under the influence of a quart of Val's "sample" Margaritas, Val was up on all the neighborhood gossip, and the two women had forged an unshakable "Most Favorite Neighbor" Treaty.
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This was going to be more complicated than I thought - it had become serious. We had just moved to the area, and already, life as we were just coming to know it was about to come to a screeching' end. I could just picture this nice, quiet neighborhood under the influence of Val and her notorious mixed drinks. Once the neighbors came down from their hangovers they'd never forgive us. I could just see the headline of the next day’s San Gabriel Valley Tribune now - "BLACK CHICK CORRUPTS COVINA!" - and knowing my woman, there was no doubt in my mind that’s exactly what was about to happen.
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Val has a real knack for mixing drinks in a way that masked the liquor. She can blend various juices, fruits, and crushed ice with more artistic flair than a Renaissance master. If she could pull-off the same thing with paint and canvas we'd be instant millionaires. She can mix these drinks so well, and make them so pleasing to the taste, that people generally forget about the gallon of liquor that's in them. We'd have parties where I'd here non-drinkers saying, "Ah, Val, can I have another "slush," please?" I'd think, "slush," my ass. The only thing that's going to be slushed is you, in about five minutes." Val got a real kick out of it - and now she was about to do it to our new, unsuspecting, highly conservative, neighbors.
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The night of the party I wasn't as uneasy about it as I'd been previously, because by then I'd had a week to get to know both Rose, who seemed to have made Val her closest friend on the block, and her husband, Al, who was really a nice, henpecked, guy. But I still wasn't passionate about the prospect of being paraded about as the new Black guy on the block to a lot of people that I didn't know. So I begged off with a cold that I had made it a point to cultivate three days prior to the event.
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The night of the party I kissed Val on the cheek and told her to have a good time. But as she was leaving I held on to her hand and reminded her, "but not too good of a time." She promised to be good, and she was off.
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I then got comfortable and settled into the bedroom to watch television for the night, but I kept the window open and the blinds open so I could keep an eye - and ear - on the party.
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By 12:30 a.m. the party was going full blast. I could hear the laughter and the faint sound of music playing in the house, but by 2:00 a.m. I began to hear the sounds of Val working her magic. A couple of guys who I recognized as two of my more conservative neighbors were in front of the house arm-wrestling on the hood of a brand new Chrysler, and another guy was calling out to a woman who was struggling down the street barefoot in an evening gown. So I decided I'd better drop in on the party and rescue these people from my recklessly fun-lovin' woman.
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When I walked in it was clear that Val was in full control of the festivities. It was also clear that I didn't have to worry about uneasy small-talk, because everybody in the house was about as loose as you could get - and still stand up. Val walked up and hugged me, saying, "Hi, honey! Hey everybody! This is my Nu-Nu, Eric." I heard various drunken responses:
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"Hi, Eric!"
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"Hey, Nu-Nu!" 
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"What's his name? Nu-NU!!!?  What the Hell is that, Swahili?"
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"Big, ugly rascal, ain't he? Just kiddin', don't beat me up, brother!"
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Then this one guy walked up and said, "Hi, I'm Stewart. I live down the street. This is quite a lady you've got here."
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"Yeah, I know," I said. "I hope she's been behaving herself?"
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"Naw, I can't say that she has," the man said, in a Southern drawl. "First, she done got everybody drunk - but I can't fault her for that, because that's what I came here for - but then, she called me a Commie."
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I said, "what!?"
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Then Stewart's wife chimed in. Between the booze and her laughter, she could barely get her words out. She introduced herself as Sue, and said, "No, she asked my husband, 'Are you a communist or something?' And my husband said, 'No, I ain't no damned Commie. What made you say that?' Then Val said, 'Well, why you got that Communist flag in your garage?'" Sue went on, trying to talk through her laughter, "Then Stewart said, 'That ain't no damned communist flag! That's Old Dixie. We from Georgia.'"
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With that, someone else took up the story. "Then your wife told him, 'Same thing.'" With that, everybody fell out laughing all over again - even me, because I knew Val was serious - as Stewart stood there pretending to be incensed. But everyone knew that while the joke was supposed to be on Stewart, we were actually laughing at the childlike innocence in which Val viewed what should have been a very uncomfortable subject - especially in the current situation. But it turned out that Stewart had been receiving a lot of ribbing over the flag for quite some time, and Val's remark just put the icing on the cake.
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But it turned out that both Stewart and Sue were really nice people. Stewart is quite an intellectual, and believe it or not, he ended up becoming my closest friend in the neighborhood. We'd get us a 5th of Scotch and spend hours together debating everything - and the more lit-up we got, the more animated the debates became.  He'd say,  "Okay, I admit it. I’m a Southern bigot - I think we should lynch anybody who roots against Georgia Tech, but you're a radical revolutionary - and you're a bigot too." Then he'd raise his glass  and say, "So here's to two jive-ass bigots!" Then we'd laugh and continue getting our heads bad.
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But by this time both Stewart and I knew better.  We had long since agreed on one thing - since the essence of our being is what we think, and physical attributes are purely superficial, it makes more sense to define ourselves according to the way we think, rather than how we looked - and if that is true, then our preoccupation with race was an exercise in stupidity.  And Stewart had the last laugh in that regard.  The first time he invited me to his house I jokingly asked, "You don't have any  Poplar Trees in your backyard, do you?" He laughed and said, "Very funny. But you don't have to worry, I'm fresh out of rope."  But when I walked into his den I immediately felt ridiculous, because the first thing that smacked me in the face was two huge portraits, Miles Davis on one wall, and Charlie Parker on the other. So it turned out that I was the one who had prejudged him.  He had a larger jazz collection than I did, and I've been collecting jazz albums since I was 14 years old. I had to admire him, because by that time we had been drinking buddies for a couple of months, and even though he knew I played saxophone, he hadn't mentioned a word about being a jazz lover. He'd set me up, and that was the day I learned to never underestimate him.  He said, "You thought I was into Merle Haggard, didn't you?  So now, who's the presumptuous bigot?"
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I really liked that guy. He had also quietly taken down his Confederate flag. When I asked him about it he said, "To me it's just a regional symbol, but I can understand how it might be offensive to you, so what the hell?" If it hadn't been for Val I probably never would have met that guy, and I would have been poorer for it, because I learned several lifelong lessons during our friendship. But Val brought many other things into my life as well. I discovered my love for the mechanics of writing as a direct result of recognizing that I didn’t write well enough to answer the long love letters she used to write me while I was in the Marine Corps. Prior to that time I always loved jotting down my thoughts, but I only did it one thought, or one paragraph, at a time. But when I was faced with having to respond to her letters, it turned out that I had a problem with stringing my thoughts together in an organized fashion. So in order to get around that shortcoming, I would let her letters guide me. I would respond to her letters by writing a response to each paragraph one at a time. Within a year I was doing all the writing for my battalion commander. That became my job.
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While I was in the Marine Corps Val was working for the Department of Motor Vehicles, and in spite of the fact that she was still living with her mother, when I came home she came by my mother's house to greet me and asked me to go for a ride with her. She had rented me a fully furnished apartment a block away from one of the top jazz clubs in Los Angeles.  She moved in 3 months later, on Christmas Day after we went to a Justice of the Peace and got married. She was 19, and I was 21. About a year later she encouraged me to quit my job and go to college on the G.I. bill.  Then several years after I'd finished college and had become a published writer for various publications, she came home one day with a newfangled gadget she'd bought me called a Commodore 64 Computer.  I still have it in my garage. So, while living with Val can indeed be challenging, I can’t imagine life without her.
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I could go on and on about this woman, but I'll put it all in a book one day.  But I’ve got to go now -   it’s time for me to mount a campaign for dinner.
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"Oh, Sugar Lips!"
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"Sugar Lips, my ass. Hit the microwave, Buddy!"
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EPILOGUE

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Well, it turned out that I would be forced to live without her, and every day of the 13 years since she's been gone has been agony. In spite of the fact that my educational background is in psychology, I just can't manage to move on.  I know it's dysfunctional, but everything I do has her fingerprints on it.  When she suggested that I take writing more seriously, I remember telling her, "That's a White thang," but she told me, "You can do this, baby."  Then when my book was published, she threw a big party to celebrate, and then suddenly died just one week before the publisher sent me my first copies.  I still have the box . . . unopened.

SOLITUDE 

There was a little house in Watts, in the back of my grandparents’ home, that sat totally silent just for me. It sat there in complete obedience to fulfil it’s one and only purpose, to accommodate, and give focus to the thoughts of a young and aimless mind. Totally vacant accept for a sofa and a table, there was no furniture to warm the air.  So as I sat in it’s embrace, and quietly drew the thoughts I couldn't express, I could feel the clean, cool air against my face as it locked the noise and confusion of humanity out of that small niche of the universe that I had claimed as my own.

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I loved that house, because it introduced the soul of a child to the beauty of solitude. I would sit there for hours with paper and pencil trying to bring life to my thoughts. I couldn't write back then, so I would breathe substance into my world by drawing the images of crude little stickmen that I would speak to, then patiently awaited the time when they could speak back.
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So all these many years later, I still go there, but only in my mind. I return to escape life’s horrors;  I also visit to celebrate life’s triumphs. I go there to commune with those who left me behind.  My grandparents are there, my mother is there, and my late wife is there to comfort me when I’m lost.  But my manhood is also there to reinforce me, and the depth of my intellect resides there to inform me and to give flesh to the stickmen I'd left behind.
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So, yes, I love that little house, and the perfect solitude that it made all mine. I also love the cool, clean air, and the crude little stickmen, it always brings to mind.

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Thus, life has come full circle for me. Once again I sit in solitude drawing stickmen.  But this time I  sit with sweet memories of Val to warm the cool, clean air.

Happy Birthday, Baby.
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Eric L. Wattree

wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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AMERICA'S CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS IS AT HAND

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

AMERICA'S CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS IS AT HAND
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The primary danger of a man like Trump is not only that he’s so self-serving that he’s willing to test the limits of democracy to promote his own interests, but he’s also so uninformed that he doesn’t recognize that there are any limits. That’s why he’s so enamored of the world’s most brutal dictators. He not only admire them, but he envies their unfettered and absolute power. What makes that so dangerous in a man like Trump is he’s also so undereducated that he doesn't realize that, that kind of power is incompatible with both the American ideal, and our form of government.  For Trump, desire, delusion, and reality are one and the same. That's why he thinks he can re-write the Constitution with an executive memo.
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Trump has always been the victim  of a combination of ignorance and delusion, and those who have spent any amount of time around him immediately recognizes it. Trump's former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, is reported to have called him a “moron,” and the late William T. Kelley, who taught Trump at the University of Pennsylvania, said, “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.”
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Thus, Trump is so uninformed regarding the underpinnings of America’s democratic traditions, and so self-serving, greedy, and still in such fear of the revelations yet to come out regarding his Russian connection that didn't come out in the Robert Mueller Report, that he’s completely untethered to the democratic principles that most of us take for granted. As a result, as we speak, he’s currently testing the limits of America’s willingness to defend our Constitution - and by the way, yes, despotism can happen here.

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Trump has casually announced that he intends to change by executive order the 14th Amendment of the Constitution that declares anyone born in the United States a U.S. citizen. He claims he wants to change the amendment to prevent undocumented immigrants from sneaking into the country and creating “anchor babies.” But it was also the 14th Amendment that declared citizenship for former African American slaves, so if his Republican-stacked Supreme Court allows him to tinker with the 14th Amendment, who’s next?  If he could declare all African Americans non-citizens, that would certainly solve the GOP's demographics problem, wouldn’t it?

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Any other president in United States history would immediately recognize that just the thought of trying to override the United States Constitution with an executive memo is crazy. But not Trump, and that’s exactly the problem with a dangerous demagogue like him - he’s such a blindly narcissistic and pathological sociopath that he doesn’t view reality like a normal person. We’ve been warned about him by more than one group of professionals who are ordinarily disinclined to criticize the President of the United States in such a blunt and pronounced fashion, but Trump’s behavior is so glaringly dysfunctional that they felt compelled to speak out. In its article reviewing the book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” Psychology Today pointed out:

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“John Gartner, Ph.D. is the founder of ‘Duty to Warn’ an organization intent on warning our country that we are in dire trouble due to our president’s mental instability. More than 60,000 mental health professionals have signed John’s petition, which states:
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‘We, the undersigned mental health professionals, believe in our professional judgment that Donald Trump manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of President of the United States. And we respectfully request he be removed from office, according to article 4 of the 25th amendment to the Constitution, which states that the president will be replaced if he is ‘unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.’”
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But as deadly serious as that is, that’s not the worst of it. When you combine Trump’s mental instability with his blind narcissism and fear of going to prison if he's thrown out of office, and then add to that the fact that he’s being enabled by a Republican Party that’s in a panic over the loss of power due to a rapidly changing demographic, it becomes clear that the very viability of American democracy is in severe jeopardy.

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The Republican party has clearly demonstrated that they’re just as recklessly unstable as a group as Donald Trump is as an individual, and they have no limits. They’ve already broken all of the rules of democratic normality to literally SHOVE what all the credible evidence shows is a criminal felon down our throats as the newest Supreme Court justice - and when I say “felon” I’m not just engaging in hyperbole. Newly elected Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh clearly committed several instances of perjury before the United States Senate, and beyond that, the Republican-controlled Senate literally left no stone unturned to ensure that the credible evidence of Kavanaugh’s alleged attempted rape of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was blocked from being thoroughly investigated. So essentially, the GOP has gone to ridiculous lengths to place a criminal on the highest court of the land.

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So now all of the chips are in place. The GOP controls two branches of the government, including a reliably conservative Supreme Court to protect Trump from the Mueller investigation. They are now in a position to validate any and all of their radical assaults on the Constitution. So now the final phase of the conservative conspiracy to take over America begins:
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Trump is already talking about an “immigrant invasion” of the United States, and he’s already predicted “there will be violence” if the Democrats win the coming election - which they did. So now, all the conservatives have to do is send in Trumplodytes to incite violence. That would give Trump all the justification that he needs to declare martial law and suspend the Constitution. He then instantly becomes the Vladimir Putin of the United States - possibly for life. 

So America shouldn’t take this threat lightly. It’s time for Americans to stand up and fight this attack on our democracy with just as much passion as we fought WWII, because while the battle we currently find ourselves in is not against the guns and bombs of an outside invader, we’re now fighting the guns and bombs of a domestic enemy, and the threat to our way of life is just as severe. Could that be why Trump is currently disrupting the operations of Homeland Security?  Think about that for a moment. 

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I've written extensively about how conservatives tend to be mindless followers, and we saw a perfect example of that in the NFL controversy. The American flag is a symbol of American values, and the freedom of expression is the very FIRST Amendment of the United States Constitution. And as a former United States Marine I can tell you for a fact that the Marines who died for this country didn’t die for either a piece of cloth, a song, or the opinion of a cowardly draft dodger like Donald Trump. They died for what that beautiful  piece of cloth represents - the right for Colin Kaepernick to do exactly what he did. Without that right both the American flag, and the National Anthem, would be totally meaningless. But most conservatives don’t possess the intellect to see that.
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As a result, Donald Trump has convinced his mindless conservative minions that it's wrong and unpatriotic to exercise the rights guaranteed under the Constitution - it's fine to brag about them, but it's grossly disrespectful to actually act upon them - and his mindless minions obediently follow his lead.  But the fact is, those who follow Draft-Dodging Donnie and who are jumping up and down about patriotism and how the flag is being disrespected, these are the people who are actually disrespecting our flag and the troops, not Colin Kaepernick. These people are trivializing the very values for which our Troops gave their lives. They’re allowing a dummy like Trump to manipulate them into promoting bigotry and stupidity in an attempt to tear this nation apart, and thereby, escape the consequences of his own criminality.  So to allow themselves to become complicit in that effort is what’s actually un-American, and it takes a complete idiot not to see that.

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With regard to the recent spate of domestic terrorism that has been overtaking the country of late, Trump claims that it's not due to his hateful rhetoric, but the unfairness of the press in asking about it. Well, ABC news did a little research into the matter, and here's what they found:

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 ‘NO BLAME’?  ABC NEWS FINDS 17 CASES INVOKING ‘TRUMP’ IN CONNECTION WITH VIOLENCE, THREATS OR ALLEGED ASSAULTS

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So if all of this sounds far-fetched, according to a 1990 Vanity Fair interview, Ivana Trump once told her lawyer, Michael Kennedy, that Donald Trump kept a book of Hitler's speeches near his bed - and as we all know, Trump doesn’t like to read.  Thus, as has been repeatedly stated, when fascism comes to America it will come wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross, and considering that over 81% of White Evangelicals "Christians" support Trump's criminality, that seems to be exactly what is happening.  So yes, it can happen here, and let there be no doubt about it, anyone who supports Donald Trump is the domestic enemy of the United States.

Eric L. Wattree

Http://wattree.blogspot.com

Ewattree@Gmail.com

Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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