Can't resist starting with a joke.
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An airplane is about to crash. There were 4 passengers on board but only 3 parachutes. The first passenger said, “I am Steph Curry, the best NBA basketball player. The Warriors and my many fans need me. I can’t afford to die.” He took the first pack and left the plane.
The second passenger, Donald Trump, said, “I am the U.S. President, and I am the smartest President in American history, so my people don’t want me to die.” He took the second packet and jumped out of the plane.
The third passenger, the Pope, said to the fourth passenger, a ten-year-old schoolboy, “My son, I am very old and don’t have many year left to live. You have more years ahead of you, so I will sacrifice my life and let you have the last parachute.”
The little boy said, “That’s okay, your Holiness. There’s a parachute left for you. America’s smartest President took my school bag.”
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I finally had too much of a need to write a letter. This was the result:
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Intriguing how the mind can flit from one image, fact, or event to another.
I was moved recently by a scene from the HBO drama “Chernobyl.” The entire population of a large area around the exploded core of the Soviet nuclear power plant had been evacuated. Animals had to be exterminated and buried under cement. In one sector three workers had to shoot cats and dogs, craving human contact. Across the TV screen dogs ran toward their destruction.
My mind jumped to the thousands of Latino children that were separated from their parents at the Mexican/American border. We know now that the Trump administration had planned approximately 26,000 separations, despite lacking the technological means to effect reunification.
Another jump. We have Donald Trump’s scheme to accuse Joe Biden of corruption during the upcoming 2020 presidential election, set up by Trump forcing Ukraine’s new prime minister to declare that Ukraine would investigate Biden and his son’s supposed participation in Ukraine’s supposed involvement in the 2016 U. S. presidential election to get Hillary Clinton elected, this to render false rock solid evidence that Russia had interfered to benefit Trump.
Next jump. Trump is supported by at least 40% of the voting public. A good friend of mine years ago noted: ”People believe what they want.” Every day GOP mouthpieces vilify, falsify, incite. Emotion trumps fact. We have a divided country and, alas, Trump, the worst of their worst.
Dishonesty, cruelty, lust for power, incompetence, ignorance, and stupidity endanger us all.
Printed December 7, 2019, in The World
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Then, this one.
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I need to rant.
Is it stupid to expect those who legislate and administer the law to be honest, caring people?
Is it naive to want our elected officials to represent our values, not exclusively the selfish wants of large corporations and the very rich?
Is it wrong for me to judge as traitors to our country media outlets (Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting, Breitbart, etc.) and individual commentators (Limbaugh, Hannity, Carlson, Levin, etc.) that manipulate the ignorance and emotions of their uneducated audience into believing, fervently, that Democrats are evil and today’s Republican Party and its leaders are America’s saviors?
Is it okay to let pass blatant violations of the law – for instance, the destruction of the postal service -- designed to benefit the political fortunes of a president if you support that president?
If you are white and, especially, male, what gives you the right to believe that minorities are not entitled to the same rights, opportunities, and respect that you yourself are provided?
Is it that easy for you to accept the response “There are always a few bad apples” when confronted so repeatedly with instances of police brutality toward and the murder of African Americans, none deserving aggressive confrontation?
I recall vividly every one of the 14 or 15 Republican Party candidates for President on the stage of one of the Republican Party debates in 2016 not raising their hands when instructed by the debate moderator, “Raise your hand if you believe that climate change is real and caused by human behavior.” Which is more important to you: loyalty to your party’s dogma or the survival of the human species?
Lies, lies, lies! Which you take as fact if they adhere to your political beliefs. Are you that sort of person – believing the present excrement offered by Republicans today, Sunday, September 20, that it is perfectly okay to rush through the nomination and acceptance of a new Supreme Court justice when there are less that 50 days left to the next presidential election when during President Obama’s last year in office (10 months before the 2016 election) Mitch McConnell refused to hold a hearing to consider Obama’s nomination to fill a sudden Supreme Court justice vacancy?
The least among us should never determine our country’s fate. Trump and his enablers would have us be Putin’s greatest accomplishment.
Printed in The World September 21, 2020
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Election time. Caddy McKeown and Arnie Roblan were retiring. New candidates (both parties) were running to fill their positions. Again, I felt obliged to support the Democratic Party candidates. I submitted the following letter to the Siuslaw News September 29 knowing that Editor Ed would meddle with it. The letter was mild in tone. He did meddle, made several middling changes entirely unnecessary in my opinion, done, I concluded, to rouse my ire. The letter was printed in the Siuslaw News October 3. I sent my original letter (below) to The World immediately thereafter.
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We Democrats know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two.
A minority party nationally and here in Oregon, the GOP will do just about anything to get its way.
Senate majority leader McConnell stole a Supreme Court justice for Trump in 2016 and is doing it again less than 40 days before Joe Biden’s probable election. Trump plans to use the resultant 6 to 3 conservative majority to kill the Affordable Care Act and to have Roe v. Wade declared unconstitutional. Many media analysts predict that after the election Trump will challenge in the courts Biden victories in key swing states and the Supreme Court will declare Trump president.
We who live along the central Oregon coast will be deciding who will represent us in the state house and senate. The recent fires that have ravaged the state should have made blatant to all one major consequence of climate change. In 2018 senate Republicans, by leaving the state, denied Democrats a quorum to pass a cap and trade bill that would have reduced the emission of global warming causing pollutants. In 2019 GOP senators and House members did it again for the same purpose.
Choose Cal Mukumoto (House District 9) and Melissa Cribbins (Senate District 5) – go visit their websites – to represent us. We need visionary, not reactionary public officials, to move this state (and nation) forward.
Printed in The World October 5, 2020
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I sent this email to the editor of The World October 6.
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Dear editor,
This is not meant for publication.
I want you to know how much I appreciate your policy of allowing each letter writer, regardless of his educational background, regardless of the discomfort he exhibits selecting words to communicate easily his thoughts, to say his piece without interference. You value free speech.
Not every newspaper editor does this. The editor of the Siuslaw News in Florence does not. He deletes, he rephrases; in so doing he changes the force and tone of your message and he destroys your voice – usually to dissuade partisan division, sometimes to demonstrate his perceived superiority as a writer. I have told him that rather than include my name under any letter that I send him that he should print “Based on a letter submitted by Harold Titus.”
Again, thank you. Excellent newspaper practices should be acknowledged.
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