There’s psychotherapy, which is talking
and aroma-therapy which is smelling
and sleep-therapy which is sleeping
and cognitive-behavioral, which is
thinking before acting (seems a good idea),
and then there is dialectical behavior
therapy which is merely accepting
what one is thinking and feeling.

Then there is exposure-therapy, which
is exposing us to what we are afraid of,
then there is interpersonal therapy,
which seems to be helping us realize
when relationships are not good for us.
But wait there’s more… mentalization,
psychodynamic, emotion-focused, and
animal-assisted therapies.

If you cannot get help from animals then
maybe family therapy is for you, if
family makes it worse, there’s group therapy,
and if this isn’t working you can work
on me, myself and I in mindfulness therapy.

More fun is creative-arts therapies,
and even better are play therapies.
And we have not scratched the surface of
pharmaceutical therapies, and physical
therapies, all arrayed in front of us
because it seems we somehow get
broken in this world between the
womb and where we are.

And thus, I offer a dose of
poetic therapy!

For adults in the room… specifically the house of representatives in the US Congress is the room I speak of… to come together and show long-missing leadership putting America ahead of respective party.

The opportunity is a pending government funding crisis, a thin Republican majority in the house, and malcontent wacko-extremist MAGA handful who want to burn it all down.

The leadership we need is Democrats to support a weaken speaker, Kevin McCarthy, against the MAGA extremists… and for Kevin McCarthy to swallow his Republican-pride and seek help from the other side of the aisle.   Yes it would be a mess in his party, but it would be leadership much needed for Americans to see, and it might just signal a sea-change in how representative democracy can work.

Can you imagine a house of representatives in congress showing leadership and accomplishing meaningful bipartisan legislation in a hostile divisive environment?

I know… I’m such an optimist!

I was sent an article called The Great Divide, from the Magazine Wired, written by Paul Ford.  It was interesting, suggesting that there are two ways to the see the world using computer processing analogy of batch vs. loop processing to compare the two; and a need to reconcile the differences.

In short, the premise is that like the early days of computing where you fed carefully prepared punch cards into the computer and awaited a response (batch) versus the interactive way we use computers today (loop)… the computer now waits for us to respond, whereas in the past, it was us waiting for the computer to answer.  Applied to current events, congress – our law-creating body in this country operates in a batch fashion… yet us as constituents we mostly operate in a TicToc, Facebook, Google world which is decidedly  loop.  Our institutions move slow, we input our concerns, our issues, our desires and we wait to see how the system may respond, if it does at all.

But there is another aspect of batch vs. loop to consider which I think is very important.  In the past, as well as present, the concepts of conservatism, of liberalism, or socialism, or any other form of thought operated on the basis of writings and debated ideas by philosopher’s, politicians and even religious leaders who hoped to lead our thinking in preparation for the batch processing that is governing, the batch process which is the basis of civic involvement.

Yesterday, speaking with some young people, and some not so young, I found them conditioned to loop processing in our highly interactive world.  We shop for something online and the ads get pushed to us. We push a button, and arguably batch but still very fast-loop a product is delivered to our doorstep.   We stream entertainment, with a switch from one platform to another and then another until something grabs our attention.  And so too, we and they are attracted to populism, the interactive relationship with political leaders is sought after, they react to the ones articulating and responding, however unreasonably, to grievances and fears we share.

There is little-to-no batch processing, such as reading opinion pieces or seeking data on performance and history, rather we respond to and quote the latest heard in the interactive world of the loop.
As an example, on the left, I heard affection for Marianne Williamson, not for any specific position, but because she’s popular on Tic-Toc… and on the right, affection for Vivek Ramaswamy, because he was demonstrably communicative, and quick on the debate stage, not for specific positions… with the exception of a position for raising the voting age to 25 which was surprisingly illustrative of what they thought about their generation’s attention to this batch-world of governing… and blindness to the obvious positioning of a right-wing which is demographically older and whiter.

Populism is winning because it fits the  nearly single-minded “loop-mindset” prevalent in our world today.   There is no reconciling batch vs. loop, the only solution is to value and enhance both.

MTG says there should be a national divorce… laughable, it would be if it weren’t for the fact there are so many people who would agree with her, and send her money.  That such an outlandish and imminently impractical idea (if you give it just a moment of thought on how it would work) should gain purchase with millions of people suggests a dearth of understanding and of leaders who can articulate what makes this country great.  Those who can show how our strength is derived from the unity of our purpose.  Specifically our dedication to democracy, and the principle that people can govern themselves through representative government for the benefit of all the people not the power of the few.

Divorce is called for by the people who cannot win a majority, and maybe, just maybe it is because they have  failed ideas, policies, and ignorant thinking and they should lose…  We must not listen to unpatriotic charlatans who live in an echo chamber of extremist and ignorant thinking.

Hopefully the voters in her misguided district will find themselves more patriotic than their representative and will divorce her at the next earliest opportunity.

Sorry for frequent readers about the repeated theme, but I feel I must express my fervent concern over the continued rise of autocratic forces (fascism in reality).  The slippery slope away from democracy toward dictatorship starts with populism.  Populism which is anti-policy, anti-plans, and pro-grievances and pro-fears finds the underbelly of society, the hatred and fears which is being tapped into.  The themes are tested in rallys and then exploited further… todays themes are deep-state (the swamp – holding us back, coming for our guns, etc.) and immigration (latent racism, economic fears, safety fears)… populism successfully gets a large part of society to vote against their own immediate and long-term self-interest.

The GOP strategy book says we cannot win the economic argument on tax reductions for the rich, or on reduction in social benefits (smaller government)  so we’ll pursue culture wars and further a divisive populist agenda.  But populism leads to a worship of the culture warriors, and as the populists feel besieged, especially by the state, they want fighters who claim to be right, never wrong.  To get past reasonable doubt, to get past reason, alternate facts, conspiracy and blatant lies are needed to migrate from populism to cultism.  Cultism … always right… gets us to power makes right, and intolerance to opposing views, and if power makes right, who needs compromise.  If you don’t need compromise for governance, what is the point of democracy… a very slippery slope from democracy to autocracy.

Watch the House of representatives. Jim Jordan the insurrectionists who sought pardons for himself and other congressmen will be given the gavel to investigate the government, to issue subpoenas when he had not honored subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee investigation.

The attacks that will come, the attempted weakening of our government’s justice, and democratic institutions (including voting rights)… the idea that power is all that matters, tolerating cheating to get in office, like Santos, just so they have the additional vote.  Taking over government through violence, Jan 6 Coup attempt.  Exportation of these ideas to Brazil and other countries, make the rise of fascism a global problem.  We are in a true Orwellian time.   Beware what lies ahead on this very slippery slope.

The Red Ripple… not a Wave…

Election deniers, those embracing Trump’s big lie, and conspiracies, lose big.   Voters stood up for democracy and against unfounded conspiracy theories.  Thankfully reason and sanity prevailed!

How can Republican strategists and donors not be rethinking the party’s engagement to Trump?  Hopefully the GOP begins to move away from a Trumpism populist movement and back to financially conservative and socially compassionate leadership.

The center, is where America is, and it’s time leadership moves there, and the parties both start working for the benefit of the American people, and protecting democracy.

I was just thinking… why would Trump keep classified documents which he had to know would create a legal problem for him?

Ignorance is not a possible answer, as he moved them in a vain attempt to hide them, and there is no possibility he wouldn’t notice the clearly marked Top Secret labeling.

Espionage is not likely, and quite unbelievable, for if it was for profit or otherwise, the documents would never have been found, they would have been flown out of the country or destroyed after the information was sold.

Trophies and trappings of the office is possible, in that it would likely feed his insatiable ego, however, there are too many documents to even begin to show as trophies, so all though believable at a small level, it is not believable on this scale.

Everyone who has had top secret clearances, and has handled such documents, understand the sensitivity of these documents and the information to our Nation’s security… we all know anyone else would find themselves incarcerated within a day of taking such documents.

The reason which makes some sense to me, is Trump is intentionally creating this turmoil for the simple purpose to force the Dept. of Justice to indict him, and to do so at a time when Trumpism is on a rise, post-midterm elections.  Wins in the midterms will further institutionalize trumpism to the Republican Party.  There will be actions post midterms to impeach President Biden… as Trump claims he is the rightful winner of the 2020 election and as he is still the president and cannot be denied access to government documents.  He aspires to cause an uprising to reinstall him either through a special election he’ll call for or otherwise into the White House.  He is not giving up, he is still fighting and is extremely dangerous.