The morning after, the sun comes up
One of my favorite modern “philosophers” is Garrison Keillor. As a Democrat, you might guess his take on the recent presidential election.
Regardless of whether you are progressive or conservative, Keillor’s reaction is worth the read, if you want unity, it means listening – something certain people – especially many in the mass media have neglected.
Posted on November 8, 2024
So America has gone and done it, elected the evil grandpa, which goes to show that literacy is in serious decline. Nobody who read the transcripts of his two-hour rants would want this old man in the White House. I’ve been reading them with fascination for the past couple months and they are beyond description, the anger and violent obsessions, the confusion, the incredible frequency of blatant falsehoods, the absence of any coherent philosophy, but now the Secret Service is going to have to guard him on his daily golf round, probably requiring the help of the Army and Marines, and who knows if there will be another election in 2026? Congress will be deadlocked, the man owns the Supreme Court, who will stop him if he declares the name of our country is now United Trump?
The beauty of being on the losing side is that there is no shame. Kamala Harris was a serious and tireless candidate who ran a heroic campaign and spoke about the real world, and the outcome shows the high degree of misogyny among American women. She could have been an excellent president. Everyone in my life voted for her, nobody ever walked up to me and tried to talk about her opponent’s good points, so it’s clear that I don’t live in his country. And because I’m 82 and he never talked about cutting Medicare and Social Security or deporting elderly people or accused us of having bad blood or eating dogs and cats, I can rest easy. His 20% tariffs are likely to cause inflation but an old man doesn’t need much to get along.
And the gorgeous thing about being a Democrat is that I can stop reading the newspaper and ignore Washington and walk around the Upper West Side of Manhattan where the Don got maybe 12% of the vote and enjoy the parks, the cafes, the little kids heading for school in the morning, talk to people in the subway, go to the public library on 42nd Street and sit in the reading room among college kids and work on my musical comedy.
The country voted against politics Tuesday and voted in a man who will fix everything. He will make Ukraine and Gaza disappear. Big tax cuts, Bobby Kennedy Jr. will end fluoridation and eliminate vaccines, Elon Musk will cut two or three trillion from the national budget, the U.S. Army will round up ten or eleven million undocumented migrants, many of whom are employed on farms or in hotels or nursing homes, and the profound results of all of this are on the heads of the Make America Cruel Again people.
I’m glad that Minnesota went blue though it was a close one, and I have to admit that Lake Wobegon went 58% for the Don and that will be the subject of my next book. It’s going to be a comic novel. Norwegians can be cranky, as any Minnesotan knows, and though they’ve been here for five or six generations, America has been a disappointment for many of them, they feel ignored or looked down upon and the Lutheran pastor talks like a socialist sometimes. They don’t like the Germans and the feeling is mutual and many of their children have married aliens, and there is resistance to the idea of public education (why should we pay for it after our kids have grown up) and coffee costs 50 cents that used to cost a dime. Nothing is like it used to be, young people are rude and go around with earphones and they mumble and you can’t read their handwriting and the language is vulgar. They’ve been unfairly dealt with left and right and they like the Don because he’s been mistreated too and is angry and he’s going to fix things. Nuts to Europe, to hell with Mexico and South America, and let’s show the Chinese who is who. Congress is a mess, can’t get anything done. We need one man who can take charge and do the job right and anybody who doesn’t like it, send them to Canada.
There’s a whole novel here and I’m going to enjoy writing it and I’m tired of worrying about democracy. You go worry about it and stew over the news. I’m done. The New York Times said that a vote for Kamala was the only patriotic option. Which shows you how important the Times is.
No, journalism is dead. There is no point in stating facts anymore. I’m going back to fiction. It’s worked beautifully for the Don and now it’s my turn.
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Have a great and prosperous week.
Hug somebody.
SPIDER Bytes
This week’s trivia question is: ” Which freezes faster: hot or cold water? The answer to last week’s question re: Nephelococcygia is the practice of doing what? Seeking and finding shapes in clouds. Pronounced nɛ.fə.loʊ.kɑkˈsɪ.d͡ʒi.ə, it involves using one’s imagination to identify recognizable forms or objects in the patterns created by clouds in the sky. After some readers stated that recent trivia questions have been too easy, I couldn’t resist that one.
Likely the last tropical storm of the season, Sara, will bring rain to Florida mid-week.
The CPI went up 0.2 in October to 2.6% for the year and remains above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. Despite that, some market watchers still expect the Fed to cut rates again in December to stimulate a weakening economy. It’s a rock and a hard place for the Fed. Economists call it stagflation.
President-elect Trump is wasting no time in picking his choices for leadership in his 2nd administration. The one I love the most thus far is picking Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head up a new (outside) Department of Government Efficiency, fulfilling a campaign pledge to give Musk sweeping oversight of government spending. Both are very successful businesspeople. Musk is an entrepreneur with an intellect rivaling Einstein.
Remember how convincing it was for some celebrities saying if Harris lost, they would be leaving the country, assuming we all would miss them. It must be nice to be able to move abroad whenever the mood moves you. Ta-ta.
Those folks who are smarter than you and I flew their ‘justified in polluting with fossil fuel’ private jets into Azerbaijan last week for the annual UN climate summit known as the Conference of Parties. The summit comes as their ‘scientists’ are warning our planet is in great peril. It began with expressed disappointment in the recent election in the US – expected to fly in the face of their goal to eliminate fossil fuel, worldwide. BTW, there was no disappointment expressed re: China, generating 50% of its electricity, and India, 80%, by burning coal. Those huge countries continue to ignore the Conference of Parties and their “science.” The US will begin selling natural gas to Europe again soon, relieving that continent’s dependence on Russia.
New research by engineers at MIT may lead to rapid improvements in a variety of electrochemical systems under development to convert carbon dioxide into valuable commodities – like ethanol and building materials. The team developed a new design for the electrodes used in those systems, which increases the efficiency of the conversion process. Go team!
A women’s volleyball player and team coach, as well as players from other schools, are suing San Jose State University administrators, the Mountain West Conference and the California State University system for requiring teams to play transgender women. In addition to fearing injury, the plaintiffs say the requirement reduces women’s sports opportunities. Amen.
