Random Notes of a Political Nature

In a straw vote held the other day at the predominantly “white” and only senior high school in this rural Virginia county where I live, Trump was preferred over Clinton by a large margin.

This does not augur well for the moral and informed existence of that segment of the American population in times to come.

My guess is that those teenagers see Trump only as being a TV star.  I have the feeling that “The Apprentice” still runs on TV, plus I understand that there has been heavy coverage of his rallies on CNN.

I don’t know what I would do if I, too, was still only six years old.

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On the short stretch of road that my wife and I "integrated" in 1976 and where we are still the only "black" residents, the majority of households have no yard signs.   Then there is a retired Navy guy who is a relative newcomer, though his wife is not, and they have a Trump sign.  There is also a really new family, and they have a Libertarian sign.  Finally, including ourselves, there are three (count them – 3) households all with considerable seniority here, and they all have Clinton signs. 

Despite our senior status, I  guess that shows who the upstarts are!  . . .Though I would prefer to say that we are only -- what should I say?   --Oh, I know.   --We are only somewhat more informed.

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Nothing illustrates the astonishing moral decay and rotting away to nothingness of today’s Republicans than the spectacle of the several Republican Senate leaders who for close to a year have blocked any consideration of President Obama’s nominee to replace the Supreme Court justice who died from just desserts several hundred days ago.  These leaders hope to get one of their own installed as President in the current election, though if that bird doesn’t win but their party hangs on to the Senate, they have vowed to still prevent any Democratic nominee from taking the seat, for as long as it takes.   They couldn't care less about thereby seriously damaging and maybe even destroying the Supreme Court, which is set up to have always an odd number of justices, namely nine instead of today’s eight, to break ties, just as the ancient Romans would not have thought of having dinner parties with an even number of guests.

Can those guys do that?  Block for years if need be, until they get their way and the Court goes back to having a conservative majority?  They justify themselves by claiming that the Constitution does not require the Senate to act in any set time.

That threat strikes me as just the kind of thing that one of the Republican divinities, the infamous Senator Joe McCarthy, used while trying to railroad numerous innocent people into misery and jail, on charges of trying to subvert the U.S. Government, and in the process he terrified the whole country,  before he, too, like Antonin Scalia, was suddenly rendered null and void, also by his just desserts, first by being brilliantly told off.

One might wonder why Democrats have not unleashed a gigantic outcry against that ludicrous and totally obscene idea.  The answer must be that they are content to keep that picture going of those GOP senators lined up all in a row on a broken branch, while howling like drunken chimps.

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The word is that a thief who was going around here in this county in Virginia stealing yard signs has been caught by the sheriff and jailed.   There could be others, but lately we have been able to keep our signs up for well over a week without their being grabbed.  The man was caught by means of a camera, though not the one used by G.J.

Meanwhile G. saw that no less than eight Trump signs had been placed in the median of the highway where it runs alongside the high school.   He called the police and said that he thought that was illegal.  The police agreed, and a short time later the signs were gone.

Maybe everything will continue to be okay until the voting, though my wife is not so sure, and she suspects that a lot of Trump signs have been put in what she calls “iffy” places where that is not allowed.  Maybe the local Trumpistas hope to turn this county red, instead of it continuing to be shown, in maps published after elections, as a lone, cheerfully blue spot in a large, bright puddle of blood.

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With Election Day almost here, the white supremacists have decided that they no longer need to stay in the shadows, and, overcome by their love for the Trumpisser, they are coming farther and farther out of their burrows.  David Duke, famous for having been a KKK Grand Wizarder, is using the Gross One’s popularity as cover to run once again for office in Louisiana.   Meanwhile in their magazine called “The Crusader,” a nationalist group has openly published its plans for intimidating “black” voters.  And in Mississippi -- that ultimate cotton hellhole that has Never Been Too Far From Here and is rivaled in its historically murderous acts toward people of my kind of ancestry mainly by its two sister states to its immediate left and right, Alabama and Louisiana -- some number of right wing criminals has done their time-dishonored thing.  They bravely set fire to a “black” church at night, during which the perpetrators left no doubt of their Presidential preference, by slashing the words “Vote for Trump” on one side of that place of Christian devotion.

“A man is known by the company he keeps.”   That old adage could be accurately amended by sticking the words “his fans” in there somewhere.