The American metaphor has long been admiration of the "Real Man" whose guiltless use of raw power is inherently equated with heroism. We refused to join the League of Nations until after the catastrophe of WWII when we obtained what we wanted under the U.N. -- partly because we agreed that our military would only be unleashed with a semblance of international due process.
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Donald J. Trump is continuing his performance art with only some minor variation from the persona that won the presidency. While Candidate Trump's act could be dismissed as vacuous bluster, by his missile attack on the Syrian air base he has shown that he now controls the thermonuclear arsenal that he actually could unleash, not after all means of negotiation are exhausted, or even concurrence with any other part of our government, but by his own will.
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We are a religious people who proclaim being a nation under God. When will it occur to us that President Trump's arrogation of the right to destroy the world is the ultimate blasphemy, as such power is His alone and not to be usurped by any mere mortal.
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Al Rodbell
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I’m on a streak, two weeks in a row of letters printed. This one is my favorite, which is only a submission right now, and the editors get hundreds of quality letters every week to choose from, But I like this one. It’s not insulting to believers, but points out that some things, like the decision to destroy the world like God did during Noah’s time, are his prerogative and not delegated to any of those mortals.
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Getting the attention of Dailykos readers is getting harder for me, but what the hell. I’ll share a story of a real event that happened on the public tennis courts of my town that fits a political website. But this is not going to stoke the ridicule and anger at the Trump devotees, in fact it’s to break the mentality that exists here.
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I wrote
this diary a month ago about my nose to nose argument with a Trump supporter, including how it was resolved. He and I see each other on the courts and our humanity, or compassion for fellow sufferers of the human condition transcends partisanship. Today, was sort of like that, but the “enemy” was a man whom I like and respect. A retired physician who was a department head of a major hospital who brilliance from a young age I recognized, as we both lived in N.Y.C. where getting into those special high schools was more difficult than being accepted to Harvard
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Over the years we had our dust ups, as he was a strong conservative, blaming Jimmy Carter for the Iranian Revolution. My tennis games at the public court of our California City are my refuge, my experience of pure pleasure like that of a child playing with friends. We developed a mutual respect, and he paid attention when I refuted some of his truisms, but usually we enjoyed our mixed doubles round robin tennis games.
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Today, as we were walking out together when he spoke the forbidden word, “Trump.” I was ready to explode, as you might gather from the letter to the Times that I sent. Then Arnold started talking about how Susan Rice had lied about Syria's possession of poison gas. At that point I confronted him with “do you know the difference between a mistake and a lie?” I was now pinning him down, and made him agree that a lie is an intentional untruth, and we can't know that that happened. Then I asked him, “Did George W. Bush lie about WMD in Iraq? He hesitated, saying that was a long time ago. But that response seemed evasive, so I said more emphatically, “You are telling me you don’t remember when that administration said it was certain that Saddam possessed Weapons of Mass destruction?, “You are telling me you don’t remember Collin Powell at the U.N. making this statement !”
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His expression started to change, and he said “Al, I’m going to tell you something that I've not told anyone outside of my family." I realized that we were getting into something more than politics. and didn't encourage him to continue, but he wanted to. Then he said it, “Al, I have Alzheimer's.” He wasn’t pretending not to know what occurred in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, he really could not recall it.
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At that moment everything changed. He was a friend who was in emotional pain, and our differences of politics no longer mattered. He shared the depth of study he had done of the disease, being a physician himself, and told me that he was partaking in an experimental program using stem cells. I reminding him of my own vulnerability to this disease, but that I had taken a different route, that of CRS rather than MCI, the medical condition of Mild Cognitive impairment. I made my case that given the condition is incurable I chose to go with the ironic CRS, “Can't Remember Shit” diagnosis that defines a community of those dealing with this condition with humor and camaraderie .
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We shared some of the distress of this condition, and how it affects our spouses. When I told him of how the evening usually brings depression, tears came to his eyes, saying, “ you could be like my brother, as we are going through the same thing.” By the end of our conversation our differences in politics was the last thing on our minds. We were two guys each facing similar fates who were for a moment giving each other comfort.
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I guess this doesn't belong on a political web site, but maybe it does.