Some of us are new to this
world, this World Cup of Fútbol.
This world-uniting, crazy,
wild, quadrennial
world-has-gone-nuts-time.

Others knowingly accept
us novices and explain
offsides, yellow and red
cards and corner kicks,
calling it a beautiful game.

In a matter of a few weeks,
we novices are suddenly experts
giving our considered opinions
on stupid coaching errors,
flops and officiating misses
and all things Fútbol.

We are suddenly experts
on what is a foul, and what
is a just a normal mugging.
And we amaze that a striker on
a PK could miss what is
literally the side of a barn.

But it is a beautiful game,
if politics would just
stay the hell away. We
love the athleticism,
the gracefulness, and
glimpses of sportsmanship.

And then the crazy fans!
Is this who we are?
The beautiful people
who row in sequence,
who sing Country Roads,
who drink all the Sam Adam’s
beer in Boston, and so much more!

Small nations made us notice
them. Stars came out to shine
showing us greatness. There was
jubilation of wins, sadness of loses,
but this is sport, never one
without the other.

Yes, it is a beautiful game,
especially when it brings
the world together, for
there is too much that
seems to tear us apart!

The Women’s WC is just
next year.  We don’t have
to wait four more years!

A president gives a prime time address which promises to come with the release of previously classified materials.  In any other time this would have been an astounding event, covered by every network in full, then analyzed repeatedly.

But these are not ordinary times.  The much hyped Trump prime time speech was on Thursday this week.  I watched it, and found it disgusting.  ABC, NBC and CNN did not cover the speech live.  CBS interrupted it with fact checking and sandwiched the broadcast with rebuttals before and after.   Fox, part of the president’s propaganda mill covered it but their chief anchor Bret Baier said Fox News “is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president’s statements and claims at this time.”  Even Fox and Friends the next morning never mentioned the speech.

The speech was full of lies and conspiracy theories clearly designed to undermine the country’s faith in the integrity of elections, with the intent to provide a pretext for interference in the up coming mid-term elections.  It ended with a demand for congress to pass the so called “Save America Act” which is designed to suppress the vote of American citizens while claiming it is for ensuring non-citizens don’t vote… which has never been a problem, as it is illegal and the penalties are high for fraudulent voting.

The president cannot give up on his conspiracy that he won the 2020 election, but it is not just about his vanity, it is about staying in power, and doing everything he can to cheat and win the next election.

The president gives a major prime time speech… that everyone knows is a lie.  No one wants to give it air time, and yet his cabinet does nothing.  Congress does nothing.  We all try to ignore and suffer through.

This would be really funny, if it weren’t dangerous and we didn’t have a delusional president, willing to do anything to hang on to power.   He is willing to disrupt and sow distrust of our election systems so that he’s not impeached.  Attacking the media, claiming their licenses should be revoked for not aiding in his lies and spreading his propaganda.  Attacking the judiciary for not bowing to his will.  Creating a pay for play government, and using the military to attack Iran to avoid further inquiries into the Epstein Files.

We have a third world despot of a president attacking and destroying the underpinning institutions of our great democracy… We can only win back our country through an overwhelming victory at the ballot box in November.  A win so big as to deliver a complete repudiation of Trump politics this fall.   A win so big, that he cannot find a way to deny or disrupt the results.

We must win big, or lose everything!

Here we are starting our next 250 years with hope that it’s not reduced to some 250 days.  We believe, we persevere because the alternative is too terrible.  In that alternative we would still be called Americans but we won’t feel the same, and no one would look at us the same.  We will be viewed as the ones to fear and/or to be bought off.  Freedom and liberty may be a concept that is based on ones financial situation.  Likewise migration will be based on money, maybe talent, and religion or skin color.  Bring us not your huddled masses and down-trodden, but your wealthy and talented.  We’ll send back the down-trodden.

But this ugliness, this un-American world can be avoided with the strength of our institutions.  The brilliance of the founders that elections would be the domain of the states.  The beleaguered but steadfast free media of the press, and the courts, sometimes defending liberty and sometimes giving in, but nonetheless a roadblock to tyranny… and you!  You who will vote and trust that your state will count it, trust that it matters, that a legislation of true representatives of the people and not the billionaire class will check a rouge executive branch.

Yes, I believe we will survive into the future due to the courage of this generation.  Just as we are here, as proud Americans, because of the great generations that came before us, those that fought tyranny, that created a country that is forever striving to be better.

Someday we will look back on this moment and know it to be a turning point, a moment when we said no to autocracy, and we reaffirmed our principles of fairness, justice and freedom.  Long live the democratic republic of these United States of America!

The following is a post from 2 years ago.  I just re-read it today, as I was considering what to write, and found myself feeling that it remains so very relevant on this our 249th Flag day.  Even so, there is so much that has come to pass in those two years, we are at a war of choosing, we have threatened planting our flag on our allies soil, and we are imprisoning and oppressing people without due process for the reason of their birth nation, and we are celebrating with a cage fight at the White House!  We have an Administration trying to distance us from the principles which made us that “shining beacon on a hill” the principles so clearly called for in our Declaration of Independence. 

This flag was adopted June 14, 1777 to be the flag
of the United States of America!

This flag has found itself on a hundred foreign battlefields and yet never as a conqueror of distant lands.   It has been saluted with pride over the last 247 years by hundreds of millions of people in the service of this country, and by many billions out of love for this country.

It flies, as it should, topped with a blue field of white stars
as a reminder of our democratic freedoms, never to be
overturned by autocrats who’d rather enslave us to
their image of an America of conformity, as they enforce
their religious white nationalism, one-size-fits-all tyranny,
rather than the spirit of liberty, rights of self-determination and
rule of the people and by the people we cherish!

We are Americans!
We fought for the rights to worship as we wish, for equality
of race, gender and to keep government from telling us who
we can love.  We fought to be free of the dictates of tyrannical
leaders and for the opportunity of commerce, and for the
right to advance our lives and our children’s lives
in the pursuit of happiness.  We don’t seek retribution
and revenge from our leaders, rather we revere justice
and service to the causes of freedom!

We are strong!
We can protect our freedoms as well as, support the
weak who are fighting for the freedoms and liberties of self-determination we enjoy.

May our flag fly (right-side-up) over this land and always
represent freedom, liberty, and justice for all!

Imagine a time in the near future where all work is done by automation, by machines who could think faster and work faster than any human.  What if in this world all dangerous work, all tedious work, all diagnostic, corrective, everything is done more efficiently by robotics using artificial intelligent agents?

Imagine there is no work needed by humans, other than to ask their automated world for the continued sustenance, entertainment and recreation desired?

What would become of wealth?  Why would it matter?  Would we have a completely egalitarian society where everyone could pursue their creative potential, their sports, their entertainment, so the only winners and losers would be found in games we play?

Or would we find ourselves in battle for dominance and wealth over others which would be ultimately fruitless, because another bigger, badder machine could always be envisioned and come to pass through the availability of an ever-growing intelligence?

Would this ever-growing intelligence continue to find us interesting enough to continue to support our ambitions and liberties, or would it find us superfluous to a successfully run and optimized Earth?

These machines can only be a reflection of ourselves, for what they have learned is everything we have ever discovered and learned, all available all the time and all at once.  So then, the question it seems, is what have we learned?  What have we made available to these machines?  For is this not the soul of humanity?  Is it good, is it bad, is it creative and loving or waring and greedy?  Certainly all of these things.

So what will we ask?