"God save the Queen. We mean it, man."

 

I don't mean to put words in Johnny Rotten's mouth, but I never believed that his classic punk anthem "God Save the Queen" was actually railing against her, personally, even when he said "she ain't a human being". Yes, he literally said that, but the song was about a government and society that was seemingly indifferent to the struggles and suffering of its citizens. It was a song about the loss of hope, a sense of utter futility. Much of the punk catalogue is of/by/for the recognition of that very bleak perspective. Here is a quote from the video interview I've linked at the bottom of the page:

"That is a song of question. It is not an assault on any human being."

England of the 1970s was bleak in many ways. The UK was still recovering from WWII, with the food rationing that went on well into the 50s. Elizabeth II was a handy countenance at which to lob the petard that calls out an indifferent government that purports to represent all her citizens. I get where he was coming from when he wrote that song, even if I disagree with that oversimplification of the situation. 

Then again, I wasn't there, so who am I to tell anyone there what they lived through? I respect his right to express this in a way that he saw fit. 

On his website, John Lydon posted the following statement regarding other former members of his band The Sex Pistols who are reissuing merchandise and music related to their anthem "God Save The Queen" in an attempt to cash in on the death of Queen Elizabeth II. 

John Lydon wishes to distance himself from any Sex Pistols activity which aims to cash in on Queen Elizabeth II’s death. The musicians in the band and their management have approved a number of requests against John’s wishes on the basis of the majority court-ruling agreement.

In John’s view, the timing for endorsing any Sex Pistols requests for commercial gain in connection with ‘God Save The Queen’ in particular is tasteless and disrespectful to the Queen and her family at this moment in time.

John wrote the lyrics to this historical song, and while he has never supported the monarchy, he feels that the family deserves some respect in this difficult time, as would be expected for any other person or family when someone close to them has died.

However I may disagree with him on this or that point, I think better of him for disavowing an attempt to make money at the moment when so many people are mourning the death of a beloved sovereign. 

There have been many times he defiantly called out people in the public sphere who were horrid and exploitative, such as when he accused British tv presenter Jimmy Savile of abusing the young fans who came to his pop music TV shows. Lydon was met with shocked silence and was shunned for many years afterwards. After Savile died in 2012, many people came forward to say they'd been abused by him. It's ironic that Lydon was the lone voice who dared to speak out against the popular personality. He is a man of strong character in a world of changeable folk who simply run with the tide. 

Here's a video from a decade ago in which he talks about his career.

As for exploiting the idea of the old Sex Pistols classic, I've seen him perform as P.i.L. (Public Image, Limited) many times, and I have never once heard him perform any of the tracks from the Sex Pistols. I think he's far more intelligent than most people recognize. He has a strong moral code, is plain-spoken and unapologetic. This looks like strong character to me.

I respected him before for his integrity. I'm not calling him a saint, but I think he'd be mortified at that accusation, too.  I'm not saying that I agree with everything he's ever done. What I'm saying is that in this moment, I admire him a little bit more. And he is so good-natured. "Anger is an energy," but it matters how we use that energy. John Lydon sets a great example.

Almost Blogiversary

 Amazing. 

I began this blog on September 16, 2002. I wanted a creative outlet, and this seemed a good way to go. Oddly enough, I'm thinking back to that time, and remembering that I was feeling depressed as we were one year out from 9/11/2001. It was a challenging time in a changing and less-certain world. 

Some years I've blogged more extensively than others, but it's good to have a place where I can park ideas, or mark important moments. It's interesting to cast forward and consider how the world will change in twenty more years. Or one. In any case, I hope to make the best of however many years or weeks or days are left to me. :)

______________

Queen Elizabeth II died on Thursday, 8 September. She was a remarkable human being, and a unifying influence for the English people and people in Commonwealth nations around the world.  She was a jolly decent lady who always put her duty first. I pray her son will model his reign on hers. 

______________

This year has been so brutally hot (yesterday was in the mid-90s) that it was startling to leave the house this morning in 66 F comfort. Also, my Prairie Sage-- which I call my harbinger of Autumn-- was blooming this morning. I noticed yesterday the spikes of buds looked too ready too soon, but there they were this morning, blossoming and full of sass. This is two weeks earlier than when they bloomed last year. Make of that what you will.

_______________

My job is going well, and I'm loving the work. My office is big with tons of bookshelves. I had to build a heavy course from scratch at the last minute, so I've been taking time to get settled in, but it is coming along. I'm doing a little more fluffing of the arrangement every week. It should be in order by mid-term, hopefully. It's amazing that three full weeks already have passed. I'm hopeful for the progress of my students. 

One down, fifteen to go.

 First week of the semester went well. Oddly enough, one of my students is child of an acquaintance from town, so that is kind of neat. It feels like it is going well, and I'm so thankful for the job in general, and in particular that I'm doing the very job and at the very school that I would have chosen for myself. Meanwhile, I still have my fiction writing and online auction stuff bubbling away on back burners. I'm insanely busy-- I keep referring to it as chainsaw juggling-- but I obviously like being TOO busy. I will take it. This is all moving in the right direction. I expect to take an actual day off on Saturday or Sunday next week, a novelty.

Since I was a relatively late hire, I have only even been in my office for 11 days, and it was a mad scramble to get my ducks in a row in time for class. Hopefully most of the administrative stuff is resolved. 

I WILL NOT have an insane beginning to the next semester, though. I plan to begin the template for Spring 2023 schedules this week so they are ready to go prior to the time. Everything I can do now to reduce chaos in the future is time well spent.

I will try to check in again here to give updates. I hope that I'm teaching there again this time next year. That will be a blessing, indeed. :)

Today was a good day. :)

 In August 1971, I was a 5 year old little cherub in an adorable blue and white jumper with a wide red cotton sash belt and an sweet matching red/white/blue satchel. It was to be my first day of school. My brother, one year older and a bit, had gone the previous year, and when I found out about school, I began to chatter obsessively at Mom (and probably anyone else who would listen) that I couldn't wait to go to school, and wouldn't it be the most grand thing ever? So, properly be-cutened, I walked to first grade with Mom and Rob. When Mom met us at the end of the day, I told her "I'm never going back there."

LOL.

Anyway, today was another momentous first day of school, my first day as a full time teacher. I hadn't dared to hope that it would be wonderful and happy-making for me, but it turned out to be wonderful and happy-making. At the end of the second class, a student came up to me and said she'd tried to sign up for my class, but I wasn't on the course listing. (I was a late replacement for a teacher who took a job elsewhere). She said she was thrilled to find me teaching the class, because she wanted to thank me for being so kind when she took my course online previously* and had to drop for personal reasons. That was the icing on the cake. So many students smiled back at me, and I hope they are excited about the course. They seemed to be.

I love school. I love my school. I'm going back tomorrow. You can't stop me.

*I was teaching as a Graduate Teaching Assistant

To work, to work.

 I have landed a job, looks like. I am quite pleased, and this is a welcome development. I begin next week. Don't tell anyone. It's a secret. I will not believe it until I sign the contract on the 15th.

Onwards and upwards.

I have many sewing projects in mind, but I'm super busy, what with my chainsaw-juggling habit. Hopefully things will feel slightly less dicey with the exciting new additive of positive cash flow. 

The pressure dome that has been over this region of Texas for weeks and weeks is predicted to bugger on off starting tomorrow, and we'll have temps on Monday-Friday in the mere high 90 degree range. Fetch me my parka, Jeeves! Nighttime temps in the 70s will feel like a glorious reprieve. 

For now, I'm prepping for new job, and hoping to start some new container gardening for cool-weather crops for the fall. I'm planning on turnips, radish, and some lettuce in pots. I'm sure I'll bore you with the details as they develop, but I'm at least a month out on that development. 

I also would love to do some Ruth Stout method gardening. Our climate is mild in the winter, with the occasional snowmageddon, but I think if I started in late September, I could squeeze in one cycle of crops. It would be good to grow more of my own stuff. As it is, I currently have one beautiful fruit on my Ichiban eggplant. I'll probably harvest it tonight or Wednesday to go in the pot. It set many other blossoms, but they all disappeared in the last 2 days. Also, the plant is on my front porch and it is straining towards the light. I had help moving it over into a more full-sun situation, and I put a tomato cage in the pot, so hopefully it will pick up and thrive. We shall see. As it is, I claim the victory of a successful harvest even if the one fruit is the entire yield. We all must start somewhere.

I wrote a short story last week that was funny and skewed in a surprising sort of direction, and on that basis, I will soon announce a call for submissions of short stories on that theme for an anthology. I hope it will be fun and well-received. In any case, it is good to be writing again. 

It also feels good to blog again, even if I'm the only one who ever sees this. :)

Me:          "I'm blogging again."

Also Me: "I noticed!"

Me:          "Isn't this nice?"

Also Me:  "Yes."

Have a lovely day.

Thoughts on food, and food for thought.

 This is a serious concern.

Not sure how long this Redacted segment will remain available on the streaming video service, but I think it should be a wake-up call for people who have not considered whence come their foodstuffs. More of us need to start producing small bits of food for our own tables at the very least to supplement what is (currently) available in stores. 

The recurring theme they mention here is "control the food, control the people" and this is a concern.

Remember Live Aid in the 1980s? I'm not going to do a dive to find out the particulars, but it was a global concert fundraising event to generate funds to feed starving people in Africa. Years later, I read somewhere that much of the food had spoiled in ships off the coast of Africa, because regional warlords did not want the population fed, because hungry people are more compliant. This is creepy. 

I am particularly concerned about the fact that many homesteader content creators are having their videos or their entire channels wiped from streaming platforms. Wake up, indeed.

Vandana Shiva has popped up on my radar more than a few times in the past year, and I think what she has to say merits serious consideration. 

Workie workie.

     The heat continues. It was 113F here today. Yuck.

    It's hot now and has been for some many weeks, but this is not forever.

    Last night I watched a video of a guy in Japan clearing about 5' deep of snow off his roof from last winter. I'm thinking cooling thoughts. 

    I'm as busy as ever doing my usual chainsaw-juggling routine. A development is on the horizon that may be an answered prayer, so I'm hoping for the best. Hopefully, I'll have news to share with you soon on that subject.

    I have to say it's difficult for me to clear the noise of discomfort to be creative, but I need to be writing. I have a major deadline for my novel, and I need to shrug off the discomfort and tuck into the task. 

    In other, better news, I have to share this video of an adorable wee dachshund sneaking into bed with its person. This dog looks so much like Mochi that it melts my heart. At least unlike the heat, this is a good kind of melting.   <3

The hotness.

 The heat has been terrible this year, but it's not the worst. The worst was 2011 or 2012, whatever year it was that we had more than 100 consecutive days over 100 degrees F. And those hot days started in late April, so it was brutal. This year, April and May weren't too bad, so I'm not going to complain. We have had a few days over 115, and that, frankly, is astonishing. I mean, it's awful, but it is baffling.

We also had a bit of a reprieve this week, because it was overcast and cold (like 80-95 degrees) for two whole days. The break was nice. 

I am ready for cold weather. I can put on as many layers as necessary to stay warm, but there's only so many clothes one can take off. 

I find that I'm much more heat-fragile since I've had the 'rona twice, too, so it does get old. 

I'm mostly going to try to hold it together, stay as cool as possible, and think cooling thoughts. 

SURPRISE!

 What? 2 posts in one year?

Yeah, surprise. 

Just thought I'd yank yer chain.

Found a beautiful poem today by Manoel de Barros.

O apanhador de desperdicios

I use words to compose my silences

I don't like words that are tired of informing

I like the ones that are face down on the floor,

such as water, stone, frog.

I understand the accent water has.

I respect things that aren't important,

and beings who aren't important.

I value insects more than I value planes.

I value a turtle's speediness more than a missile's.

I was born with tardiness.

I was equipped to like birds.

I am deeply happy for that.

My backyard is larger than the world.

I am a waste catcher.

I like leftovers, just like the flies do.

I wish my voice were a song.

Because I don't like informing,

I like inventing.

I only use words to compose my silences.

~~

Alive and shuffling.

 Sorry not to write sooner. 

To my relief and disbelief, I submitted my Master's thesis earlier this year and my uni saw fit to grant me a degree in spite of it. I hope to publish the creative thesis as a novel later this summer. I expect my book to be included in the Big Ass Book Launch at FenCon in DFW in September. All the cool kids will be there. Watch this space and hopefully I'll have something to share by then.

Life has been quite busy. I am writing apace, which is where I should always have been. I'm hopeful that my writing is improving, as I am enjoying the process more and more. A wonderful writer/mentor guided me to Novlr, and I find it's a good platform for the task, except that it keeps yelling at me for the passive language. Because I'm sassy, I'm keeping some of the passive voice, but it's good to have something pointing it out as I'm in the moment.

I hope you all are well. I just moderated the comments that were backlogged here, and I thank all who expressed kind thoughts, and your prayers are much appreciated. I'm profoundly flawed and need the boost!

Wow, are we ever living in interesting times, or what? I'm trying to concentrate on the good, and to make daily process on the backlog of this-and-that flavored tasks that really piled up while I've been focused on full-time school studies and teaching. 

I have a shop selling on an auction site, and it's in the throes of a brutal summer slowdown. I'm hopeful to support myself entirely between online sales and my writing, so I'm elbows and poo-holes, lately(Mom reads my blog, and I don't want another mouth-washed-with-soap event). With the tenor of the times, and all the things on which I would not remain silent, I am hoping that I can make it financially without taking a job teaching. I don't even want to be involved in certain conversations*, and I will not join any crusade whose apparent goal is to dismantle civilization because they get their feelings hurt. They'll be shocked-- SHOCKED!-- when they find how sensitive to their feelings are the folks who run the gulags they so clearly hope to bring about. So, yeah, if you're a praying person, pray that I don't need to get a job, since I'd probably get fired tout de suite.

I will try to post updates more often. 

*For the record, I have no problem with people living as they choose. Consenting adults who do not impose upon anyone else's rights are fine with me. I strive to treat others with kindness and respect, and I expect them to requite that spirit. However, when shenanigans involve corrupting children, I will not hold my tongue. Harumph!

I was here.

 Life continues apace, incredibly busy, with many plates that I work to keep a'spinning. One of these days I'll bring you up to speed. For now, though, I am maintaining. I checked in. I was here.

Having lost all my mirth...

Lately I've struggled mightily with the grief of losing Dad. I seem to have waves of days in which I cry a great deal, and this weekend has been sort of a tsunami. Maybe it's because Father's Day is next week. My eyes just get dried up and they start leaking again.

I messaged my sister tonight and she said to read Ecclesiastes 7, and that was good advice:
A good name is better than precious ointment
    and the day of death than the day of birth.
It is better to go to the house of mourning
    than to go to the house of feasting,
    for this is the end of all mankind,
    and the living will lay it to heart.
Sorrow is better than laughter,
    for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.
The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
    but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise
    than to hear the song of fools. 
For as the crackling of thorns under a pot,
    so is the laughter of the fools, this also is vanity.
Surely oppression drives the wise into madness, 
    and a bribe corrupts the heart.
Better is the end of a thing than its beginning,
    and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.
Be not quick in your spirit to become angry,
    for anger lodges in the heart of fools.
Say not, "Why were the former days better than these?"
    For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.
Wisdom is good with an inheritance, 
    an advantage to those who see the sun.
For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money,
    and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it.
Consider the work of God:
    who can make straight what he has made crooked?
Ecclesiastes 1:1-13 ESV

I must be doing well, because I am SO so far from the house of mirth. But what a wonderful comfort to have my dear sister and brother and Mom.

I ran out of the house on an errand about 9 o'clock tonight. I got home about 30 minutes later and I saw something so beautiful that it felt like a little postcard from Heaven, the twinkling of Dad's eyes: the yard was aswarm with what looked like a thousand tiny fireflies emitting the visual symphony of their little phosphorescent semaphore. I haven't seen so many fireflies at once since I was a small child, and they were big green Ozark fireflies. These are so tiny that they are like little flashes of glitter, and you could almost doubt your senses if you only see one or two. Tonight they are out in force and emitting the glory of their species. I take a moment to hope and pray they will make lots of wonderful new fireflies that will hatch and bless the world a year from now. I am pleased to realize that I can still hope.

An inexcusable series of hideously avoidable events.

Things have got full sporty up in here.

On May 25 in Minneapolis, a gentleman named George Floyd died of positional asphyxiation in police custody, and this is problematic in so so many ways. He was detained for a relatively minor issue, so the police response to the situation was excessive. However, the outrageousness of the situation is compounded by the fact that Mr. Floyd repeatedly said he couldn't breathe, even as an officer's knee was on his neck for nearly 9 minutes. Bystanders and even a fellow officer told the officer to get off of Mr. Floyd, to no avail. This incident was recorded on video that has been widely shared and has sparked outrage around the world. There is no good way to slice this, and this video and ones like it fuel the perception that we have a field of law enforcement that is run amok and out of control.

Law enforcement personnel have tough jobs. They are the rough women and men who stand ready to maintain peace and order in a society where things can go sideways in the blink of an eye. They see the very worst of our society and have witnessed horrors the rest of us will only ever see in nightmares. They are usually the first on the scene of ghastly car accidents, tornadoes, murders, house-fires, and every flavor of brutality that people serve up to each other.  No one ever calls up the local PD or SO to say they are having a wonderful day. Is it possible that this barrage of grief and despair is warping for them? Surely it is so. However, I know quite a few people who work in that field, and I can say unreservedly that most of them are decent, above-board people who want to serve their communities. I can also say with no hesitation that these good officers want the bad ones out as much as everyone else in the community does. They need to clean their houses, seriously, and they need to reach out to their communities rather than defend the indefensible.

In the face of stories of Mr. Floyd and the murder of peaceful citizens like Breonna Taylor, an EMT who was shot in her own home by a Louisville Kentucky SWAT team who invaded the wrong house in the night, it is easy to understand why the United States would be perceived to have an ongoing and serious problem in which persons of color are under threat of murder by police on a daily basis. Incidents like the killing of Mr. Floyd on video only serve to fuel this perception. That Mr. Floyd and Ms. Taylor were persons of color cements the narrative that their deaths happened because of racism, but I will say this with absolute certainty: the officers in that house in Kentucky would have killed whoever they found there that night, of whatever color. Also, any person who has an officer kneel on their neck in that position for 8 minutes will die as a result of that action. The bitter pill of this is that our law enforcement agencies have some serious soul-searching to do about the rot they tolerate among their ranks. Were the murderous officers racist? I don't know. I think the murderous bit is the real problem here. I don't wish to control the mind of anyone else, but I do expect everyone to behave in a civilized and respectful manner.

After Mr. Floyd's murder, protests in Minneapolis spread to major cities all over the country, and even overseas. Unfortunately, nefarious hate groups from both ends of the spectrum seize upon this moment to fan the flames of unrest, even going so far as facilitating violence, property destruction, and physical attacks against people at what were planned to be civil protests. Opportunistic outliers will always be with us, and will always seize the opportunity to wreak havoc and chaos at such moments.

People who have a goal of a harmonious society that respects all citizens should not allow themselves to be derailed by agents of chaos. We need to talk this stuff through, but many here seem to have dug in their heels and have no plan to budge. We don't know where this is going, but we don't seem pointed in a direction that results in sweetness and light.

People who want a revolution are naive at best and are wantonly evil at worst-- the outcome would be mere ruination and the downfall of western civilization. About a third of the world's wealth is in US dollars(and I've heard higher figures), so if we collapse, so goes the world. All the people already living in mud huts will see little difference, except that the billions of vaccines we send around the world yearly will evaporate and life will become more deadly for the most abject poor on the planet. For those of us who like electricity, conditoned air, and clean cholera-free water in our homes, well, this is going to be a big and deadly adjustment.

My point here today is to gird your loins. The truth is that someone is not going to flip a switch and turn our society and its many cultures into Happy Rainbow Unicorn Land - people here have no idea how difficult life can be (and how difficult it IS on the daily in other places around the world). We need to figure out a way forward in which we can live in peace and respect with one another, but that will require everyone to be on their best behavior, even if they don't love their neighbor.

The book of I Peter is a series of letters to Christian exiles in which Peter admonishes them to not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, in all your conduct, since it is written "You shall be holy, for I am holy." And if you call on him as the Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. (verses 14-19, ESV)

Christians only reject this wisdom at our own peril(and yes, I'm talking to me here), and even people who are not followers of Christ would be wise to heed the warning that they need to dance at all times like someone is watching, and that they will be held accountable for their actions. The weirdly full-circle effect we are experiencing is the way that someone or something is always watching here in this age of technology that was the bill of goods of "liberation" wherein machines do everything for us, like calculate numbers, vacuum our floors, or even put our words into writing. The meter is always running, the mic is always on, someone is always filming. You can ruin your entire life in a moment of carelessness - it happens daily in this rabid mob-ruled social media age.

Behave.

I've watched and listened as people argue this topic from many differing perspectives, and I'm trying to lay out the facts here as clearly as possible. You are welcome to comment on this post, but my comment stream is not a forum for argument. If I have misrepresented a fact, I appreciate a courteous word to set the record straight, but I am not here for an argument of politics or class or racial warfare. This is not only a time of soul searching for people in law enforcement, but for every human on earth. We are accountable for our actions, and we should act accordingly.


The 'rona:
As of 10:32 AM today according to Johns Hopkins covid tracking site, Global confirmed cases of of Covid-19 are 6,789,313, USA - 1,901,416, Global deaths 396,131, and USA deaths 109,215

On Russiagate and Ukrainegate, and how media outlets and the Democratic Party squandered the trust of the public

Generally, I'm sidestepping politics, but sometimes it is unavoidable. Like most people, I have strong feelings about a great number of things. To be utterly frank, I was shocked when Trump ran for president and I was more surprised that he won the nomination than I was when he was elected. Let's just say this has been an era of a great many surprises. I've also been pleasantly surprised by some of the things he has done as President. On the other hand, I wish Twitter didn't exist, but I can appreciate the way he uses the Twitter to run his feline political opponents silly after the laser dot, but they just never seem to figure out they're being played. On the other hand, there are times when he's been quite Presidential and acted with dignity on important occasions.

What's been frustrating was to hear the constant drumbeat of Russiagate and Ukrainegate, only to ultimately (and unsurprisingly) hear that the whole thing was fabricated and merely wishful thinking.

I must warn that the clip below contains a fair bit of profanity, so if you are averse to coarse language, do not click on the video. I have some major viewpoints in common with Jimmy Dore and we differ dramatically on others, but I think he is spot on in this clip with Aaron Mate on this issue. I've watched the whole video several times, and the final ten minutes repeatedly, because they cut to the heart of what happened with this episode, and Mate perfectly verbalizes why many Americans are fed up with the media and cynical about arguments Democrats make against the President. On the basis of the bumbling around with manufactured crises that amount to obsessing over the Obama birth certificate times ten, the Democrats have handed Trump a second term, if no vote tampering is successful. And this is why:

Starting from the 22:37 mark  - 

Aaron Mate:  It made no sense, but of course the media outlets reporting this never could look at the facts in front of them and use logic and rationality, it was all in the service of putting forward a narrative and all that is happening now is the more evidence that comes out—from now it’s been nearly three years ago—all it shows is just how baseless this entire thing was and it only further embarrasses the people who propagated it.”

Jimmy Dore: But this shows that Adam Schiff knew, he was in this- he was the guy questioning. So Adam Schiff knew that this was bullshit, and still he went on with this anyway. That’s what happened, right? – am I missing this?

AM – Well, no, and what’s crazy is after that, and it’s not only on this Russian email hacking allegation, we also learn from these transcripts that witness after witness—James Clapper, Susan Rice—all these intelligence officials, all these people who came in said “yeah we saw no evidence of Trump/Russia collusion whatsoever” and despite hearing all this, Adam Schiff who was the head Democrat on that committee, goes out in public and multiple times says that he’s seen evidence of collusion, he just can’t share it with you yet. So the guy is a pathological liar and it’s been a disaster for the Democrats that he has been given such a prominent role. I mean it’s amazing that after the colossal failure of Russiagate, what did Democrats do? They gave him the keys to the next big fixation which is Ukrainegate, and Adam Schiff led that one, too. He was the impeachment manager. Rachel Maddow was tweeting that Adam Schiff’s speeches during the impeachment trial are going to be taught in Presidential history classes, and so all Adam Schiff did, he may have pleased his donors who come from the weapons industry by drumming up tensions with Russia, like Raytheon, but in the process he humiliated the Democratic party and he helped channel the so-called anti-Trump resistance into dumb conspiracy theories and chauvinist anti-Russia militarism. And it’s been a disaster. It’s been a big gift to Trump possible. And I can’t say for sure, but imagine if Democrats hadn’t wasted the first three years on telling people that Trump is controlled by Putin, maybe it would be easier to convince more people now that Trump has done a really bad job handling the Corona virus, but now people understandably don’t trust the media. They don’t trust Adam Schiff. They don’t trust MSNBC because these same people were telling audiences for three years that Trump is controlled by Putin, and that there’s a pee tape, and that Trump and () are communicating via a Russian server, I mean all this insane stuff. No wonder people are sick of all these people and don’t trust them, and Trump has understandably been able to exploit it and he’ll continue to do so heading into his reelection campaign as it goes on now.