Saturday, June 16, 2018                                           5:09 PM

No Kidding   (2018Jun16)

Just a couple of things. Trump said he wished he could be a dictator, like Kim Jong Un, and Steve Doucey of FoxNews (Why are they still legal?) responded with a shit-eating grin (as if to say, “Well, who wouldn’t?”—anal speaks to anal). Later, a real reporter asked him to confirm what he had said, and Trump said, “I’m kidding.” Then he proceeded to make his unfortunate remark the reporter’s fault—you know, for taking the POTUS seriously and, I guess, not having any sense of humor about human rights abuses.

But then, when asked about the families being ripped apart at the border, Trump said, “Oh, that’s a Democrat bill—they have to work that out.” And I felt it was heartbreakingly unfortunate that no one in the crowd said anything like, “Mr. President, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about—and you don’t make any sense.” See, it’s times like these that the entire crowd should be laughing in his face—the guy is hilarious, except when he’s ‘kidding’.

Besides, I don’t think ‘kidding around’ is part of the job de-fuckin-scription. Can we please impeach this criminal?

Tuesday, June 12, 2018                                            5:02 PM

Free Speech vs. Dishonesty   (2018Jun12)

Let’s review: Voting is a freedom—we are free to vote for our leaders—but voting is also a responsibility—we are expected to think like adults and vote for the best person to fill each office. Faith is a freedom—we are free to worship however we please—but Americans have a responsibility not to inject their personal faith into our public services and laws. Free Speech is protected by the Constitution—but Americans have the responsibility to be able to tell the difference between an opinion—and a big fat lie.

We cannot protect Free Speech from those who willfully abuse it to spread false information, such as Fox News. Did you know Fox News is banned in Great Britain? They are not such purists about Free Speech over there—and they were able to prove to the court’s satisfaction that Fox News did a disservice to any Viewer foolish enough to mistake it for Journalism.

As the domestic news continues—an endless river of dishonesty, whatabout-ism, hateful and stupid tweets, idiotic foreign policy, the dismantling and disrespecting of virtually every aspect of America’s institutions and policies, the blank-faced, empty-headed stupidity of a 70-year-old egotist who will actually tell you, “I’m very smart.”—I just don’t know what to say.

Americans—you have a responsibility to see all the way through this bullshit—to face up to the fact that that flabby bastard is lying to you—to everybody—that’s what he’s good at—that’s how he tricked you into voting for the worst (but most ‘popular’) candidate we’ve ever seen. Half his campaign staff have pled guilty—and he still calls it a ‘witch-hunt’—does that sound like an honest man to you?

Wednesday, June 06, 2018                                               6:42 PM

Oh, I Hope So   (2018Jun06)

Some people are born with impressively large and powerful bodies. Some people are born with sharp and powerful minds. Some are even born with both. My first reaction has always been to envy such people—but I have learned to turn away from envy, or try to.

They have their roll of the dice, I have my mine—we are all somewhere on the human spectrum. And those placed at the high end can have difficulties and sorrows equal to those placed at the low end—just as we in the middle have the troubles of those in the middle.

We should admire such people honestly—after all, if we could be Adonises or geniuses, we wouldn’t say no—but we should save our respect for people whose wisdom is tempered by love.

‘Tough guys’ like to laugh at the ‘Boy Scouts’ of the world—and, in honesty, there is nothing so ridiculous as a failed Boy Scout. I have played the part—and, while I wasn’t laughing, everyone else surely was. But real character is nothing to laugh at. It has a strength that cuts through the ‘tough guys’ like butter. It has the ability to demand the respect of strangers—who won’t even necessarily know why—they’ll only know that they’re witnessing power.

People, whether lazy or ambitious, will usually scruple to put themselves in danger—people of character have no such qualms—you have to put them down to stop them. When you threaten people of character, you only confirm their decision that you must be opposed.

In the early days of the Revolution, the American colonies would seem to have been a target-rich environment for character—how else could a rabble have improvised such an unlikely military victory—and followed up, not with a new tyranny, but with the embryo of a global empire based on Liberty and Democracy? I fear that today’s America does not lend itself nearly so well to building persons of character—but I hope to be proved wrong. By my son, by my daughter, by my granddaughter, by all my nieces and nephews, and by their whole generations—oh, I hope so.

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Question: Why not grant clemency to ALL non-violent first-time drug-offenders unfairly sentenced to life in prison—who have already served two decades of their sentences? Why on earth stop at the celebrity’s grandma (bless her heart)?

Question: If the only thing that stops a bad man with a gun, is a good man with a gun, should all good men with guns head for the border-facilities where HSA is keeping all those children in cages?

Question: Paul Ryan—how long does ‘unfortunate’ remain acceptable in a sitting president?

XperDunn plays Piano
June 4th, 2018

Improv – with the Hand-Maid – Part 1

Selections from Musick’s Hand-Maid – Part 2

Improv – with the Hand-Maid – Part 3

ttfn.

Monday, June 04, 2018                                            12:13 PM

And God Laughed   (2018Jun04)

The SCOTUS ruled in favor of the pious baker who cringed at making a same-sex couple their wedding cake. SCOTUS opined that all lower courts, and the civil rights group that brought the suit, were too derisive and dismissive of the man’s faith. By reaffirming simultaneously, paradoxically, the rights of gay people to be respected and treated equally, they avoided making any lasting legal statement—other than urging people to ‘get along’ without bothering the courts. Only people with iron-clad tenure would castigate the people for requesting SCOTUS do their jobs—nice work if you can get it.

We must ask if deciding a ruling, based on disrespect of a man’s faith, is somehow different from deciding a ruling based on respect for a faith? Serious practitioners of American law insist on the separation of Church and State.

In the eyes of one who shares his beliefs, the baker’s faith is dignified and profound. In the eyes of one who does not share that faith, it is an unfounded, albeit popular, delusion—a hallucination that only the baker can see. To ask Americans to show more respect for a man’s faith than for the rule of law—even when they don’t share it—seems to gnaw at the roots of ‘separation of Church and State’.

I support good manners as much as the next guy. When my late Grandma Dunn used to use the epithet ‘darkies’, I eventually chose to stop correcting her—because it simply confused her—and there were no African-Americans in our dining room to be offended in the first place. My commitment to the family of man did not require me to badger Grandma about the way the past had shaped her thinking.

I not only avoid being rude to the faithful, whenever possible—I even feel it is cruel to purposely remove someone’s belief, if it makes them feel happy and safe. But that is just good manners.

I don’t even want see religion go away entirely—for some people it is a great comfort. Ah, but the sharks are always circling—religion, as rationale for anti-social or hateful action, ranges from ISIS—to a bi-curious middle-schooler being bullied in the hallway.

As with the Trump-era claims of ‘reverse racism’ (Ha!), SCOTUS’s claim that the religious zealot was subjected to undue derision—ignoring the fact that it’s the same faith that once brought you the auto-da-fé—appears to take issue with ‘separation of Church and State’, under the guise of ‘rudeness’. Rust never sleeps.

Saturday, June 02, 2018                                           3:27 AM

Rachel Maddow and Me   (2018Jun02)

Wouldn’t you love to see me on Rachel Maddow? There’d be the guest-who-makes-sense and Rachel, the host—then me, and the Trump-apologizer. It doesn’t need to be me, specifically—just anyone off the street with a scintilla of decency and a good set of lungs.

See, everyone else there is constrained—Rachel is a journalist, which bars her from expressing herself beyond the facts—the other guest will have a media reputation to protect, not to mention a commentator-circuit rice bowl that must be respected. Those people are not free to speak their minds.

I think it would offer great relief to the entire nation, if someone like me was sitting next to a bloviating Giuliani, or a drawling Conway, and could turn to them and say how I really feel about their torture of the Constitution and common sense. The media pretends they are trapped into reading out Trump’s daily tweets, no matter how ugly or ignorant—and politely begging to disagree with the downright criminal inhumanity spewed from the mouths of these Trump-zombies. The political-news shows don’t need to be so maddeningly obtuse in their format.

All they have to do is add one more seat at the dais—the ‘laypersons viewpoint’ person—someone who can just walk on for one show and walk away afterwards, opinion given, no strings attached. All of this insanity would be so much easier to digest if a normal person had a chance to respond to the face of, in real-time, these professional haters and skeeves. Even if it’s just to, say, call one of them a POS, and walk off set—even just that would help a great deal in suppressing this ‘amnesty-on-bullshit’ Trump’s got going.

We could do something like it at press conferences, too—have some pompous ass give a mealy-mouthed half-true answer to a simple question, then turn to the designated ‘laypersons viewpoint’ person—and ask him or her what they thought of the spokesperson’s response. In this way, we could begin to leaven all the bullshit, with frequent instances of regular folks calling bullshit.

Everyman-Reactions are a time-honored component of broadcast news—there’s nothing unprofessional about taking the pulse of the ‘man on the street’. But in the present media environment, we need those truth-tellers right on the spot, every time the people who are eroding our society open their yaps.

You’re thinking, ‘What about the yahoos?”—right? That’s the beauty of it—if a real Trump-supporter ends up in the everyman slot, it’ll still work out—because there’s nothing more embarrassing and futile than two idiots trying to agree with one another.