In the movie “To Die For” Nicole Kidman plays a fiercely ambitious
career woman. When her future is threatened, her vision becomes ever
more narrowly focused on the object of her fear, and the screen
contracts darkly to her limited “tunnel” view.

That is what Trump is trying to do to us. He is trying to frighten us,
to narrow our vision to focus on his manufactured images of anarchy
and chaos.

In fact the real threats are not coming to us from those minor
conflagrations. Here in California we are facing real conflagrations;
fires worsened by the effects of climate change as well as other
national catastrophes, like 220,000+ Americans dead of COVID-19 with
50 million new jobless.

These are the real and looming threats to our welfare as a
nation.

Don’t let Republican propaganda blind you to the incumbent president’s
incompetence and worse, heedlessness to our needs in the current
interlocking catastrophes. Reject McConnell and Trump and give the
politics of hope and community offered by the Democratic nominee a
chance.

I just want to know: why is amassing vast quantities of meaningless
cash more important to the dedicated capitalists than preserving a
livable planet?

Look outside; our air is unbreathable. The climate change caused by
fossil fuel burning is drying and heating the planet leading to
catastrophic fires, brutal hurricanes and numerous other
life-destroying threats.

The exclusive focus on money and profits by corporations and
politicians has paralyzed our response to these threats

While some scream “socialism” to smear any who advocate rethinking our
mad rush to oblivion in the race to stash more cash, I think a
system that caters to real human needs while limiting production to
necessities and growth to sustainable levels so as to not destroy the
Earth’s beauty sounds like a great idea to me.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Armor is only effective
when it has no chinks for a weapon to penetrate.

This pandemic has shown when we leave the hindmost (the poor, people
of color, the homeless) to suffer unsupported, a virus can wend its
way in, inflicting terrible damage which cascades into our society.

Instead we need Medicare for All. Not only would this improve
protection and coverage overall, but it will actually strengthen
Medicare.

Today Medicare is limited to those over 65, elders costly to cover;
meanwhile private insurers skim off the cream (healthy people cheap to
keep). If we had Medicare for All then healthy folk would be buoying
the balance sheets of Medicare not buying bigger yachts for insurance
CEOs.

A vote for progressive candidates will remedy these ills and
reduce the impact of the next viral invader.

As the glaciers are melting, so too is our Federal government
imploding. Instead of our government being a mechanism for bettering
“the general welfare” it has become a twisted engine of
self-aggrandizement for our President and his wealthy cronies.

We have already seen the capitulation of the Vichy Senate and the
politicization of our so-called Justice Department.

This is a government that is as we speak trying to force upon us a
rapid return to expanded economic activity regardless of the terrible
cost in lives and suffering that is certain to result.

Unless we dethrone this would-be monarch and evict all of his pathetic
enablers we will be at the mercy of these thugs without mercy.

This may be our last chance. Let’s not blow it.

In a previous impeachment episode ca. 1974 there was talk of “a cancer
on the Presidency”. This has been supplanted by an actual cancer on
our Democracy.

The currrent malignant inhabitant of the White House has just been
given a free pass to violate laws and engage in extreme unlimited
perversions of justice with no accountabiity.

Once the Senate votes, as expected, to acquit its party leader despite
mountains of evidence to the contrary our Nation’s future will be at
the mercy of a power-crazed Criminal-in-Chief.

As a cancer sufferer myself I know that this cancer at the core of our
Democracy must be removed.

G-d willing this November our citizens will provide the cure.

In the Tollkien fantasy Lord of the Rings the evil tyrant Sauron rules over the dark land of Mordor.

I find eerie parallels between Sauron and our current President*. As Sauron casts a malevolent far-seeing eye that targets his enemies from afar, so does Trump spew venom via Twitter to zombify the brains of his followers.

As evil wizards do, he takes vicious rumors and toxic innuendoes and pulls them into our reality by publicizing the most vile conspiracy theories in order to besmirch his enemies.

Finally, his policies of environmental destruction echo Tollkien’s description of the land of Mordor “where the shadows lie”. I just hope we don’t go “full-Mordor” before we can end his evil actions.

We are living in interesting times. I liken them to the first few
minutes of the TV mini-series “Chernobyl”. Today, the core of our
Democracy is exploding, not a reactor core. But the consequences may
be as tragic.

Just as the first moments of Chernobyl were marked by a complete lack
of understanding of what was occurring, so today we have a cabal of
Republicans protecting an authoritarian president bent first on
destroying Constitutional government, then implementing the one-man
rule we founded this nation to prevent.

Just as Hitler began with exterminating disabled people, then waited
to see who would protest, and finding none began the Holocaust, so
today does Mr. Trump turn the Justice Department into an instrument of
vengeance against “traitors” who pursued malign interferers in our
election process.

The time to rise up and protest is now, not when the
GeheimStatsPolizei arrive at your door.

Liberal and progressive values are in retreat everywhere. Is this
process irreversible? Not if we we understand how we came to this
point. We are seeing the results of a decades-long war by wealthy
individuals and corporations against gains made in the late 1960’s,
gains which briefly limited their freedom to exploit nature and
oppress marginalized peoples.

If we hope to recover from this relentless attack then we must be
fierce and strategic. Unless our zeal for human rights matches their
zeal for their suppression we lose. Unless we can focus our efforts
and forge unity of purpose we cannot achieve a critical mass to move
this country forward and advance the interests of all citizens, not
just the over-privileged elites.

You have only a few days left to register and vote. Do it as if your
lives depend on it. With onrushing climate change, they do.

In the late 1850’s Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner fought as a
radical Republican against the “Slave Power” that he felt was
extending slavery into newly forming states and even into existing
Free states by dint of its ever increasing political power.

Today we face the onset of “Corporate Power” which is insidiously
taking over statehouses, courthouses and now our beleaguered Federal
government.

This Corporate power has a single goal; to reduce workers to a state
of complete powerlessness.

We are no longer represented by our Congress; instead the oligarchs,
“malefactors of great wealth” select and support bought-and-paid-for
legislators who will dance to their paymasters tune.

We must support candidates who are free of the influence of money. We
must reverse tainted decisions (like Citizens United) by passing a
Constitutional amendment that says corporations are not people and
that money is not speech.

A goad is a sharp tool which inflicts a painful stab. It is used to
both gain an animal’s attention and spur it on to greater effort.

I received just such a goad this week. I learned that more animals
were admitted to the local Wildlife Hospital after a single record 106
degree day in San Jose than any other day in the last twenty five years.

This fact spoke brightly to me that even if we humans can hide in our
air-conditioned caves, wild animals have no such refuge. Their
suffering is clearly a strong function of outside temperature, and we
are turning up the global thermostat every day by our actions,
economic and technological.

I re-affirmed my commitment to fight global climate change, not just
for future generations of humans but for all animals alive today
and tomorrow.