The Donald Trump Explained

It is no surprise the the wack-a-doodle candidate has won the day for Republicans, as that's pretty much been the New Standard for the GOP: rude, prone to wild exaggeration and outright deception, devotion to obsolete ideas, anger, anger and some more anger. Wack-a-doodle.

Such has been the norm since, oh, we all know it - since Barack Obama became the Democrat nominee and especially since his inauguration. It might have been labeled a non-stop Whisper-Smear Campaign, except they've never whispered their outrage. Only hyperbole fixes their rhetoric in place - policies are not opposed or debated factually, instead President Obama is Destroying America to the Point It Will Be Lost Forever and Ever Just Because He's Secretly a Something.

Who else could Republicans select from their field of bobble-headed pretenders? Ben Carson? Jeb!? No, not even the righteous indignation of Angry Senator Ted Cruz could capture the fervor of the faithful because he had a little too much piety in his patter. Piety? Screw that, says Trump. Screw everything - screw you, screw Mexicans, women, Muslims, well screw all brown folks, and screw the horse you all rode in on too. Get 'em outta here.

The faithful howl with derisive laughter at the wack-a-doodle peeing in the political punch bowl. And become loyalists.

Wisely, the GOP Machine applied only criticism to the Trump campaign since endorsing him would undercut his efforts - a convention floor fight, a new contender - none of that will appear. Better for the Machine to merely stand aside and watch until Trump's in power and reluctantly work with the fellow and should he fail spectacularly they'll shrug it off since "He's not one of us!"

He is, however, the candidate of our age - he's the Internet Troll who won't go away, who demands power, who claims to be an authority, who can't be argued with because he's just blustering a 160-characters per second per second and he's taken over the American Tumblr page  and just ruined the page which used to be pretty cool. His followers like it though, akin to the way some folks like the way the Three Stooges would bake wallpaper paste into the bread rolls and serve it up the gullible rich establishment folk. 

He's a perfect foil for Hillary Clinton - lifelong politician with a name the GOP despises. Truly, they should love her. She's like Nixon - driven to be in the White House, or in any office, hungry for it on a weird level. But she has her own Trump Outsider card - she's a woman who is wife of a despised man, and that's a powerful card never to be underestimated.

The Troll with a heart (hair? comb-over?) of gold is likely to win the day.

America On Holiday - 2014

Ferguson, Missouri images via The Big Picture

2012: Days of Future Passed

As the new year approaches I tend to reflect some, as most folks do, on Past, Present and Future. In truth, I'm likely too reflective on a constant basis, perhaps part of the hard-wired nature of The Writer in My Head.

Given the purely tentative and fragile essence of Life itself, I confess to some surprise to still be a living creature here on this wee speck of a planet in an infinite Universe. Existence for more than a handful of decades defies the odds. Perhaps it is that I have felt as if I were an Old Soul since I was but a young boy. Now that I am far beyond young boyhood, the passage of Time perplexes me far more than ever.

This fading year, 2012, is one where I have realized I am aging to the point of cultural irrelevance, a fact which was driven deep into my thoughts rather too often for comfort. My time here has straddled two centuries, and the changes in how life is lived are radical and spectacular. A great many of the changes were expected, yet many more were not. (Not that such a state is uniquely mine.)

And there's the simple fact that the time which has passed in my life is now greater than the time which is ahead and yet to be lived. Spooky.

The year I was born, Time magazine proclaimed that the "Men of the Year" were Scientists. Scientists. 

Every day, new and startling discoveries are made about our world and how we manipulate it and use it and attempt to understand it. Sadly, this year, the dubious wisdom of the Tennessee state legislature decided that Science was a collection of random theories which were to be challenged and doubted by American grade school and high school students. 

Not that Science solves any and every problem, but the vast wealth of possibility and discovery has apparently been dismissed as if they were mere Superstitions while Superstition is now heralded as a beacon of Truth.

The men who were singled out in 1960 helped to create so many of the innovations which shape life today via technology and medicine, and much more, and hundreds of other inventors and innovators built on their ideas:

George Beadle, geneticist, Charles Draper, designer of the Apollo Guidance Computer, John Enders, "Father of Modern Vaccines", Donald A. Glaser, particle physicist,  Joshua Lederberg, artificial intelligence and genetics,  Willard Libby, chemistry,  Linus Pauling, quantum chemistry and molecular biology,  Edward Purcell, magnetic resonance creator and physicist,  Isidor Rabi, physicist and microwave developer, Emilio Segrè, physicist, William Shockley, "Father of Silicon Valley". Edward Teller, physicist, inspiration for "Dr. Strangelove",  Charles Townes, quantum electronics, James Van Allen, nuclear and astrophysicist, and Robert Woodward, organic chemist.

I often think that it will be the children who have been born in the last few or next few years who will provide the next major shift in how life on our planet is lived -- and I confess that I most selfishly want to live as long as possible just so I can be alive as our wee planet makes another monumental stride into and beyond the realms of possibility.

Here's to you 2013 and all the years and surprises yet to come.