Good versus evil: It shouldn’t be that hard

There was some talk last week on Facebook about Humanism versus Christian Fundamentalism. I admit, I had never thought about Humanism, but after reading the description of it and its fundamental beliefs, it got me to thinking, especially when my wife asked me if I knew anyone named Jonah. I said I only knew about the guy who was swallowed by a whale and survived.

Now tell the truth. Do you believe that story, or the one about a guy who parted the Red Sea, or the one who built an ark big enough to carry two of every animal, or someone who lived to be 969 years old, like Methuselah? And of course, there’s Adam and Eve who were the first people created and supposedly lived alone on the earth until they somehow found a way to create an entire family of sons and their wives that spawned all the rest of us. How did they do that, I wonder?

If you believe there are good angels who live in heaven and bad angels who descended into hell, tell me this: Where exactly are these places? If I fly high enough in an airplane will I get to heaven, because we’ve sent rockets into space and they didn’t find it. If I drill deep enough into the earth will I find hell, or just the molten core of the planet?

I’m pretty sure that people don’t go to these places after death, because 117 billion people have inhabited the earth for all time. Assuming that only 10% of them were good enough to make the grade, that’s a lot of people bumping around in heaven, wherever it is, and even more crowding into hell. Even if it’s just their souls, they must need a place to go, right?

Don’t get me wrong. I was brought up to be a Christian – a Baptist, in fact – until one day when I was in high school I asked our minister a question he couldn’t answer: If Baptists and Methodists and Catholics are all Christians but have different beliefs, who’s right and who’s wrong? He didn’t know what to say.

So I drifted away from the Baptist Church and its belief that committing a sin automatically condemns you to hell. Instead, I believe my life is governed by an unseen power within myself that guides me to be a decent human being, one who obeys the law, treats all people with dignity, respects the earth, acknowledges cultural differences and accepts reason and science over superstition and fantasy. Sometimes when I ask for help, I call that “praying to the universe.”

That said, I think I could create a religion that teaches its believers how to live good, clean, respectful lives, choosing good over evil, right over wrong, morality over immorality, empathy over apathy and hatred over love, without burdening them with a litany of supernatural stories that mainly serve as warnings about the consequences of sin. Choosing the right path shouldn’t be that hard.

My religion wouldn’t have whales eating humans and coughing them back up. It wouldn’t rely on fantasy and superstition to frighten its followers into being good people or else face the fires of hell for all eternity. It would just teach that being good is better than being bad, and if everybody believed that, the world would be a much better place to live.  

Of course, I’d have to give my new religion a name. Maybe “Humanism” would work.

Real or not real? Only the algorithm knows for sure

My unsanctioned research has concluded that as much as 50% of everything on Facebook is questionable, repetitious, unwanted or completely fake. For example, thanks to AI you can watch talking babies, talking dogs, squirrels pushing lawn mowers and the heads of beautiful women attached to someone else’s body, generally with huge…well, you know what they are.

There are countless posts that promise something that isn’t available unless I click on the link in comments, so that hackers can infect me with a Trojan virus and steal my password and contact list.

My news feed is filled with images of scenic bedrooms offering lake or mountain views, tables with pastry and coffee looking out a window into the rain, or foggy images of railroad stations waiting for a train. They’re attractive images and I like looking at most of them, but they just aren’t real.

Then there’s the lists of Top 10 actors who got old, stayed young, were actually lesbians, lost all their money, hated their costars, will never work again or (fill in the blank), each read by narrators who aren’t real people and can’t pronounce everyday words.

I see revolving but fake posts about sports heroes and celebrities who gave $10 or $20 million to rescue pets, each with a different photo but usually with identical words.

Daily there are at least five reminders that it’s the Gulf of Mexico, maps of interstate highways that might not even be there and countless memes of something stupid Trump said today on Truth Social.

I’ll get a dozen photos of Maria Sharapova in various states of dress (not that I mind) and the female celebrity of the day. Today it seems to be Susanna Hoffs. Or is it Kate Beckinsale? Or Marilu Henner? Linda Ronstadt is a given, and I’m guaranteed about six photos of the Eagles.   

Like the kid in that movie, I see a lot of dead people. That’s alarming, because most of them are approximately my age.

Several web sites purport to offer news on WVU athletic teams, but the content is either someone’s off-the-wall opinion or it’s flat-out wrong.

Don’t get me started on conspiracy theories, comments from imaginary pro-Trump bots, reels that tease everything from sex to people injuring themselves to missing music videos, or clips of Trump’s press secretary echoing today’s latest lies, and on and on.

I admit I like the AI photos of Halloween and old fashioned Christmas and spooky people in the fog. I’m chalking up most of the rest as just so much B.S.

And finally, there are several strings of people I might want to know. Note to Facebook: I know how to befriend people. If I wanted to know them, most likely I already would. 

There’s a whole lot more, but if you have read this far, you probably wonder why I even go to Facebook every day. That’s a fair question. I’m not really sure, except that I’m old, retired and bored most of the time, and it’s a hard habit to break. Plus, I have friends there. It’s like going to work every day and chatting with co-workers, except I can skip that whole “work” thing.

Anyhow, I’ve decided to establish a baseline: Everything on Facebook is fake until it’s not. That should simplify things. Meanwhile, I can pretend I’m sitting in a Paris café, drinking coffee with a young Linda Ronstadt and looking out at the rain. We’ve got an hour before we have to catch our train, somewhere out there in the fog. We’ll be heading up to our cabin by the lake. Or is it the mountain? 

Sorry. I forget.

History of the world wars in the giant brain of Donald Trump

Let’s say you’re the President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, but you never served in the military. Instead, you’re a five-time draft dodger who conjured up a phony case of “bone spurs” to keep from answering the call to duty.

Nevertheless, you got the job as president (twice) and have suddenly become fascinated with all things military. You’re planning a multi-million-dollar Washington, D.C., parade to celebrate your birthday on July 14, complete with marching soldiers, tanks, helicopters and all manner of military hardware.

They do this in Russia and North Korea and other authoritarian countries that you admire, so you want to have one here, too, so you can bask in its contrived adulation and praise.

And now you’ve decided to start renaming military holidays, including one that has existed since 1919, when it was founded as Armistice Day by President Woodrow Wilson after the conclusion of the first world war. You want to rename it “Victory Day for World War I,” ignoring the fact that its name was changed to Veterans Day in 1954, and it became a federal holiday to honor the millions of veterans who have served in all branches of the U.S. armed forces at any time.

And what’s worse, you’re also thinking about declaring a holiday on May 8 to be called “Victory Day for World War II,” recognizing the end of fighting in Europe while ignoring the fact that the second world war did not end until September 2, 1945, with the Japanese surrender following a bloody and extended battle in the Pacific islands.

Apparently you were absent from school the day we learned about the fighting in places like Guam, Guadalcanal, Midway, Okinawa and Iwo Jima, or that time we ended the war by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan? Maybe you should look that up. You see, World War II did not actually end until four months after our victory over the Nazis in Europe. VE Day, as it was called, was just a part of the history of the war. 

So that brings up a question. There are about 500-600 people working in the White House, plus an entire U.S. military (about 3 million people) under your command. Before saying something so colossally stupid as the war ended on May 8, couldn’t you have asked somebody if that was true? Had someone look it up for you? Watched the History Channel? Or picked up a book? Or called a fifth grader somewhere? Or just used Google?

See, here’s the problem. In the fantasy world where you reside, you believe that you know everything about everything, when in fact you know very little about our country, our history, our people and the way the world works. Your malignant narcissism prevents you from asking anybody for help, so you blunder through your days spouting one ignorant idea after another.

I’ve come to believe that you aren’t a real person, Mr. Trump, but rather a bloviating bag of blubbering fat cells that managed to con their way into a position of power. Your recent interest in military history is an insult to the real people who sacrificed themselves for this country and in whose honor our holidays are commemorated. My father and my father-in-law both fought in the Pacific during 1945, and you dishonor their service with your ignorance and your self-conceit.

If I were you, I’d stay away from issues involving military history and talk about things you actually know – such as how to make questionable real estate deals, defraud the IRS, cheat at golf and the proper application of hair products and spray-on tan.

The new Trump economy: Just make everything ourselves

So let me see if I have this straight:

As the result of our new tariff policy, somebody (who?) is going to reap billions in revenue from foreign countries and use the money to build massive factories that will begin operating in six to 18 months to manufacture all the products we current import from abroad.

This will create job opportunities for an army of robots that will operate the machinery inside these massive plants, plus additional jobs for a handful of humans who will be required to service the robots and repair them when they break down, sort of like George Jetson did when he added oil and lube to Rosie the robot maid.

Once these massive plants are operating, we will never again have to import anything from another country because we will make everything here in America, and this will somehow be good for the global economy.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, first off, tariffs do not produce revenue from foreign countries but instead raise taxes on citizen consumers, make products more expensive and raise costs for small businesses, many of which will go bankrupt because they can’t sell their products for enough money to cover their additional costs.

Next, it’s doubtful we could build massive manufacturing plants in six to 18 months. More likely, it would take several years, during which our economy would fall deep into recession waiting for the economic renaissance to begin.

The companies that (theoretically) could afford to build new factories probably wouldn’t do it, because any time extra money falls into their hands – through tax breaks or shrinkflation – it is used to do stock buy-backs or increase the salaries of their CEOs and other top executives. The cost of new, modern factories would be so massive, it would probably be cheaper to continue importing goods from overseas. 

Next, these fantasy factories would turn out products – say cars, for example, or cell phones or electronics – that require parts made in (wait for it) foreign countries. Before American manufacturing could become self-sufficient, we would need to build factories to make the parts which would then go into the products we expect to make with robots in other factories here at home.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

If this sounds like a big joke, it’s not. Sadly, it’s what Trump and his lineup of economic “experts” are saying out loud in interviews, congressional committee hearings and on TV. This is their plan, believe it or not, and they want all of us to get on board and wait patiently – buying $10 eggs and watching Walmart prices double – until the stock market rallies and tariff deals are made and everything works out well for everyone.

Of course they do.

Meanwhile, President Trump has taken up the notion that the United States should harken back to the 1890s when William McKinley was president, claiming that McKinley “made our country very rich through tariffs.” Trump talks about this period in history as a kind of golden era for the United States, but he fails to mention a few facts about McKinley.

For one, in 1890 as a member of Congress, McKinley pushed through a bill that placed an average tariff of nearly 50 percent on imports into America. The tariff was not well received by Americans, who suffered a steep increase in prices as a result. (Sound familiar?)

Nor does he mention that in elections that same year for the House of Representatives, Republicans suffered big losses, losing their majority to the Democrats, or that two years later, the incumbent Republican president was dumped by voters in favor of a Democrat.

He also must have forgotten to explain that McKinley's unpopular law was repealed in 1894.

Or that McKinley was assassinated in 1901.

I’m sure it just slipped his mind.

We’re gonna need some new words

Thanks to the man we now know as Agent Krasnov, we need to create some new words. That’s because your basic dictionary has no words that adequately describe him and his ilk.

To wit:

* The man is way beyond evil and its synonyms, such as nefarious, malevolent or vicious. We flew past those words years ago. The things he says and does amount to evil on steroids, but even that terminology doesn't work too well. (Don’t take my word for it. Google “Trump evil” for examples.) Someone needs to create a new word that is worse than evil. I'm open to suggestions.

* He is light years beyond hypocritical. Hypocrisy has become so commonplace in his administration that the word has virtually no meaning in today's world.

* Deplorable, the word that got Hillary Clinton in trouble, might still refer to dangerous or unhealthy living conditions in places around the world, but it no longer shames Krasnov and his supporters, who have adopted “Basket of Deplorables” as a badge of honor. They even had t-shirts made.

* Malignant narcissist is an accurate description, but the poorly educated don't understand it so it's semi-meaningless. They also don’t understand benign narcissist, which is slightly better but still bad. I think that they think that a narcissist is just a cool guy who likes them as much as he likes himself. (Hint: He doesn’t.)

* Pathological liar used to mean something until you-know-who carried it to extremes. As I posted elsewhere, we need a word for someone who lies so much he forgets the lies he has already told, then starts to lie about the lies he is lying about. We need new words for both the lying liar and the people who believe him.

* Career criminal. This was a legitimate descriptor until the Supreme Court ruled that crimes committed by a president during official acts are no longer crimes. So if not a crime, then what? You tell me. I don’t think “oopsie” or “my bad” is gonna work

* Con man, grifter, scammer, swindler, fraud – These used to be bad words until they became part of the everyday lexicon. Now when I hear them my psyche drifts toward Robert Redford's lovable rogue character in "The Sting." When that happens, I am forced to accept that those and similar words been normalized by Krasnov and his minions.

* Impeach, indict and convict were all rendered meaningless when we discovered there would be no consequences. I’d suggest they have been replaced by run out the clock. I’m open to better suggestions.

* Incompetent would have been a problem word if we had learned our lesson during his first term, but re-electing him made it just another qualification for the office. It probably appears on the job application for all cabinet and executive staff positions, as in, “On a scale of 10, how incompetent are you? Seven or better required for consideration.”   

* Total exoneration is right up there with witch hunt, false, fake, hoax and Russia Russia Russia among words that lost their meaning during the Mueller investigation. Since none of those words is true, I’ve got no suggestion for a replacement (see lying liars above).

* And finally, Russian asset. We already have some alternative words for that, such as traitor, spy, useful idiot, Putin’s puppet, collaborator and turncoat, but you can only see those words on the left side of the page. If you look for them on the right-hand side, they get converted to leader, patriot, nationalist, strongman, ruler, savior-sent-by-god and king.     

Years ago I described Agent Krasnov this way:

Donald J. Trump is a shallow, childish, vacuous, narcissistic, misogynistic, xenophobic, racist con man tax evading sexual predator who’s also a pathological liar with dangerous, Fascist-inspired ideas and a probable mental illness. He was twice impeached by the House of Representatives and found guilty of obstruction of justice by Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. He would be in prison today if not for a dubious Justice Department memo that says a sitting president can’t be indicted.

All of those words seem to have drifted out to space in a puff of smoke the day he was elected to a second term, which is why I think we need new words to better describe his incompetence, wickedness, historical stupidity and unconstitutional behavior. I don’t know who writes our dictionaries these days but I suggest they get to it immediately. If he does ascend to the title of king it could be too late.  

Don’t sell your iron lung stock just yet

In 2023, the West Virginia Legislature passed and the governor signed the Equal Protection for Religion Act, which prevents the government from placing excessive limitations on the exercise of religion.

It’s sort of like the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prevents the government from restricting an individual's religious practices.

See the difference there? Neither do I.

The problem is this: This redundant and unnecessary law is now being used as a hook on which to hang other legislation, some of which endangers the health of the state’s men, women and especially children. On his second day in office, before he had even put away the paper clips and pencils, newly-elected Governor Patrick Morrisey announced a religious exemption for childhood vaccines among his first executive actions. It means that any parent can opt out of mandatory childhood vaccinations by simply exercising this so-called religious freedom.  

Morrisey’s announcement on Day 2 of his administration was quite clear. The vaccine exemption is necessary in order to enforce the Equal Protection for Religion Act. He believes that existing vaccine mandates for public school children violate that law, and he wants a plan in place to allow for religious exemptions by February 1.

“We are directing the Office of Public Health to set up a process,” he told reporters. “We believe that the Equal Protection for Religion Act strongly argues in favor of religious and conscientious exemptions.”

At present, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends a fairly long list of vaccinations for children, starting at birth and continuing into adulthood. Certain vaccines are recommended for various age groups according to this chart.

The most common vaccines that most people will recognize prevent polio; chickenpox; measles, mumps and rubella; smallpox; DPT (diptheria, tetanus and pertussis or whooping cough); hepatitis B; RSV; Covid; and the flu. Some of these diseases have theoretically been eradicated, but a nurse told me that even polio could re-emerge under certain circumstances. Medical professionals have argued against religious exemptions because of the risk of the spread of these diseases. 

“It opens the door,” one doctor told a television station. “It’s like unlocking one door of a four-door car. (The car) is no longer locked.”

Before enacting this new vaccine policy, Governor Morrisey might have consulted the state’s medical experts or at least conducted a little research on disease prevention and treatment. If he had, he might have learned that there is no effective treatment to defeat a measles infection, smallpox outbreak or rubella. Over-the-counter fever reducers can help with measles symptoms while the virus runs its course. Smallpox sufferers can drink fluids, take pain and fever medication and antibiotics, but there is no quick and easy cure. And rubella? Well, no treatment shortens the course of a rubella infection.

THIS IS WHY WE HAVE VACCINES.

Instead, Morrisey plans to unleash a herd of opt-out religious anti-vaxxers into the state’s public school system, where one sick, unvaccinated child can infect other unvaccinated children who go home and infect others in their family, who then take the disease to the theater or church or the supermarket or sporting event or birthday party or any gathering of similarly unvaccinated people, and before you know it, there’s a measles epidemic under way.

It has been common practice for the deep red West Virginia Legislature to pass legislation without ever consulting professionals in the field, or – if they do consult professionals – ignoring their advice. It’s also part of West Virginia’s steady march backward into the past, guided by Trumpism, conservative lobbyists, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) or other wealthy donors who control governments in the 21^st Century.  

It’s bad enough that they passed a dubious law made unnecessary by the Bill of Rights, but now they’re spinning it off into more dangerous legislation that ignores qualified medical opinion and expands the risk of disease to our children. If Morrisey persists in driving this agenda, I’d suggest they apply this religious exemption only to private schools or home-schooled children where parents already have a choice and not to public schools that are taxpayer supported.

I’d also suggest that Morrisey’s office put in an order for a shipment of iron lungs, because without vaccines, even polio could be waiting just around the corner.

Don’t take my word for it. Read this: 

When our wants vastly exceed our needs

If your net worth was between $420 and $480 billion, and you earned $1.6 million every hour of every day, imagine what you could do with such enormous wealth. Instead of flying rockets to Mars or building a tunnel to England, you could completely erase homelessness in this country, feed every hungry child, vastly advance research to eradicate childhood cancer and other diseases, build shelters to house every discarded pet, pay teachers a substantial wage supplement which would improve the quality of education, subsidize the salaries of underpaid first responders and help create better health care alternatives for all Americans.

And there are other opportunities far too numerous to mention.

The thought of someone being worth $480,000,000,000 is staggering. Check this out: If I had earned my top salary every year that I worked, instead of building up to it over time, my lifetime earnings over 50 years would have totaled what Elon Musk makes in 3.2 hours. And I only earned that "top" salary one year out of 50. Leading up to that, I had years in which I earned $4,400, $8,000, $12,500 and $24,000. Compare those annual salaries to the $26,667 that Musk earns every minute. As I said, it’s staggering.

But there’s more. Looking beyond the billionaire oligarchs now running this country, there is so much money being thrown around on professional sports, entertainment, luxury cars, designer clothes, guns, hobbies, recreation and donations to megachurches  – the list goes on – that it’s hard to explain how any child could go to bed hungry every night, yet 1 in every 5 children do just that.

Here’s one example: Did you ever watch the credits at the end of a movie? Why does it take so many people to produce two hours of film? The average seems to be in the neighborhood of 700 but could be as many as 4,000 or more for a blockbuster with special effects.

I once watched an hour-long documentary where two people sat in chairs and talked. The closing credits went on for several minutes and had to include at least 300 people. To film two people sitting in chairs. Talking. I could have done it with a couple of stage lights and an iPhone.    

And then there are the salaries. Established actors on popular TV shows can earn between $100,000 to $1 million per episode. Movie actors like Keanu Reeves ($30 million), Johnny Depp ($35 million), Robert Downey Jr. and Will Smith ($40 million) also do quite nicely, thank you very much.

At the same time, I watch a lot of older movies on Turner Classics that are just as good if not better than current offerings, but were made by 30 people and little to no budget. Humphrey Bogart earned an average of $750 a week for his work in movies while Barbara Stanwyck earned around $100,000 – for an entire year. I contend that movies aren’t getting better, just more expensive.

And then there’s sports. Major League Baseball salaries in 2024 ranged from a high of $315 million (New York Mets) to a “low” of $62 million (Oakland A’s). Shohei Ohtani of the L.A. Dodgers was signed for $700 million, but deferred $680 million for 10 years.

The National Football League has a salary cap of $255 million per team, and there are 32 teams, so 255 million x 32 = $8.1 billion (give or take a couple of bucks). Most starting quarterbacks are in the $50-60 million range. The minimum salary for a first-year NFL player in 2024 was $795,000. The minimum increases to $870,000 in the second year and $940,000 in the third year. Seems like a liveable wage to me.

And then there’s basketball, hockey, tennis, golf – all of the other sports – plus college athletics with head coaches earning upwards of $13 million and players now eligible for thousands, tens of thousands or millions under the Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) provision. Now that’s staggering as well.

So what’s my point?

My point is that there are millions, billions even trillions of dollars out there in the world for the myriad things that people want – and a willingness to spend every last dollar – but we somehow find it difficult to dig up any money whatsoever for the things that some people really need, such as food, shelter, clothing, health care, transportation, education and prescription drugs. Doesn’t it make you wonder why that is?

Why are people willing to spend hundreds of dollars on football tickets or concert tickets or the latest iPhone or this season’s fashions or (getting political now) gold boots or leather-bound Chinese Bibles or commemorative coins but unwilling to help fund a school lunch program in their home town?

Why can’t some of those billions of dollars be put to better use? I believe they can.

Now I know what you’re probably thinking, that what I’m proposing amounts to outright socialism. You know, equal distribution of wealth among all of the people. But that’s not the case at all. A socialist government would require that all wealth be pooled and handed out equally to every citizen. My suggestion is that owners of so much wealth have virtually unlimited opportunities to benefit society and to do so voluntarily while still maintaining much of their accumulated net worth.

My liberal mind can’t understand why a fabulously wealthy individual wouldn’t WANT to do good things for society instead of throwing away money to try and bring it down. Wouldn’t that benefit the rich guy to surround himself with good things and happy people while setting forth a legacy worth pursuing?

"Here lies Richie Rich. He had more money than Croesus but he helped a lot of people."

Why can’t a football player live a nice life on $795,000 a year? I know I could. Why can’t 200 people make a movie instead of 700? Is there some redundancy there? And why can’t voters understand that they can get what they want as well as what they need if they’d just stop voting against their own best interest?

Somewhere in the background I hear the voice of Gordon Gecko saying, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good,” but I think he is wrong. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins, and that can’t be good in any context, religion or belief.

You can call me naïve and probably I am, but I’ve lived 74 years with the belief that it’s easy to know the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, wise and foolish, intelligent and dumb. I can’t say I always did the good, right, wise and intelligent thing … but I’m pretty sure I knew what they were.