New Observations Off The Top Of My Head

If you followed this blog in the past I wanted to address those thoughts and questions of some potential interest that popped into my head on an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis. I also said the blog would not be political. There's the rub.

My apparent hiatus was actually me attempting to remain true to my original premise. You see most of my more recent observations have been political. Obsessive you might call them.
I have been devouring information available through media outlets ranging from the internation press to local and national news sources as well as cable and web based organizations. I have also been reading books regarding the US Constitution, biographies of the founding fathers and Presidents Lincoln (Team of Rivals) and Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft (The Bully Pulpit) all in an effort to gain some basic understanding of what makes American Democracy tick and how it is being perverted to serve the will of the few...(I didn't say the privileged few...yet).

In recent years I wasn't  engaged in the politics of the nation feeling like one whose voice would be lost on the vast ocean of lobbiests and PAC's spreading money and peddling influence across the congress and political parties.

Sounds like I would be the perfect trumpite, right? Or I could be pigeonholed as the anti-Hillarian voter! Nope on both counts.

I'm more of a Jeffersonian...smaller Federal Government guy so that makes me a Republican kind of voter...however (and that's a HUUUGE however) trump and his MAGA gang aren't my kind of Republican...I'm not sure they ascribe to the tenets of reason much less any semblance of cogent policy.

To me Hillary was damaged goods and, though trump promised some stupid stuff, I never considered his being able to win the office in the first place. I was left in a quandary in November 2016 and then was shocked by a Twilight Zone result.

Two years into the debacle of the trump presidency I have become more and more interested in the clown show known around the world now as the American political system of democracy...or what's left of it in the age of trump. The US is a nation of immigrants whether by choice, indentured servitude or enslavement. The only ones native to the land have been displaced by being driven out by settlers, tricked by corrupt officials or simply killed.
Those surviving indigenous people...many still live in squalid conditions on tracts of land tendered by treaty (remember I said tricked) by the federal government. There is an inscription on the Statue of Liberty about immigrants we once held dear. Don't get me wrong every country should protect their borders and prevent illegal entry. But paranoia solves nothing.

Attacking the 4th Estate is also insane. One must not confuse news reporting with your twitter feed, Facebook or any single outlet. Journalism is not biased by opinion. There is no "I" in journalism. Obviously there is, but the writer is not to offer his or her opinion nor point of view. Objectivity is at its core. The NY Times, Time Magazine, Fox News, Washington Post all report the news. Each might feature different lead stories and each has columnists with partisan leanings but the talking heads on TV only read the news and provide commentary based on their and/or their editorial department's POV. Read US News and World Report for an example of a news magazine.

For Gods Sake do not use twitter or FB for all your news. It decides what you see based on your clicks and what your friends are clicking on and sharing. Look at the ads you get as proof. You are being force fed. Who knows whether you're getting truth or Rudy's "alternate facts" or perhaps a little something from overseas.

So you see, I have gotten involved and I suggest you do too. Read. Keep an open mind. No side is completely in the right. But right now trump is deconstructing our unity in his lame attempt to curry favor with his base. He can only do that through instilling fear and inciting mistrust in our institutions that protect we the people from those wishing our form of government and our ideals to crash and burn.

Do not let yourself be led. Think for yourself. Do the research. Then vote with your heart.