Enter a post title, “Murder Weapons,” or word: love, money, guns, Trump, under “Search” at the upper right to see all references in this blog.

My other site is https://myexmoromon.com/.  

A hundred and fifty million ballots tallied and Joe‘s presidency secure, I determined to stop writing about America’s 2020 presidential election.  I shouldn’t be surprised that Donald’s shenanigans seduce me back to the keyboard.

Our President’s refusal to except the Will of the People has millions worldwide baffled.  For me, turning back the calendar three years demystifies this intransigence.

In The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, three dozen mental health professionals and others with firsthand experience agree that our Man in the Oval Office exhibits clear symptoms of a “Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder.”  Niece and Clinical Psychologist Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough How My Family Crated the World’s Most Dangerous Man backs this diagnosis from firsthand experience.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM5) defines Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) as, “a persistent manner of grandiosity, a continuous desire for admiration, along with a lack of empathy. It starts in early adulthood and occurs in a range of situations, as signified by the existence of any 5 of the next 9 standards,”

• A grandiose logic of self-importance
• A fixation with fantasies of infinite success, control, brilliance, beauty or idyllic love
• A credence that he or she is extraordinary and exceptional and can only be understood by, or should connect with, other extraordinary or important people or institutions
• A desire for unwarranted admiration
• A sense of entitlement
• Interpersonal oppressive behavior
• No form of empathy
• Resentment of others or a conviction that others are resentful of him or her
• A display of egotistical and conceited behavior or attitudes”

After three years of Trump, we don’t need the President of the America Psychiatric Association or Sigmund Freud to make this call. Self-importance, fixation on fantasies of greatness, feeling extraordinary and exceptional, desire for admiration, sense of entitlement, oppressive behavior, no empathy, resentment, egotistical and conceited, that’s 9 for 9 folks! Narcissistic Personality Disorder! A slam-dunk! 

DSM5 does not use “Malignant.” Campbell’s Psychiatric Dictionary describes Malignant Narcissism as combining characteristics of Narcissistic and Antisocial Personality Disorders with aggression and paranoia, making the patient not only delusional but potentially dangerous!

Identifying their roots and nature demystifies and points to the serious hazards—such complete failure to lead against COVID-19—which have arisen and continue to arise from Donald J. Trump’s behavior.  Now we see frivolous litigations leaving judges fed up.  Bullheaded refusal to cooperate with Biden’s team frustrating and complicating an orderly Presidential transition.  Holding back of essential information and intelligence leaving America, indeed the World, at serious hazard. 

At age 83 I’m continually conscious of how much energy it takes just standing, moving.  As a boy on the farm I hauled hay, shoveled ditch, pitched manure, climbed trees, walked, and ran a lot!  I was the fastest kid in South Emery High School.  A land surveyor, I hiked Nevada and Utah deserts, climbed Alaska mountains and slogged through swamps and tundra.  If you’ve not walked over tundra, imagine hiking miles on wet mattresses.  In middle age I took up running.  Over thirty years I jogged thirty thousand miles, over 160 races, 7 marathons.  Today just plodding around the house takes determination.

I’ve been tired, even exhausted, but until now given virtually no thought to a major cause of my fatigue.  When I’m not lying down I’m fighting gravity.  It is odd that only recently I finally confronted the culprit, the ubiquitous force tugging at my heels.  Of course I knew about gravity, experienced it, but real appreciation was academic, theoretical.  Curiously, at last looking the beast in the eye raises significant issues heretofore ignored or overlooked.

Back to theory for a moment, Albert Einstein said gravity is matter bending space.  When I don’t tighten my belt and my britches fall to my knees, it’s matter bending space.  Sure Albert.  Right.

In the fight against gravity sitting ranks next best to lying–more on lying later.  We say “sit down.”  We sit.  “Down” is superfluous.  Same for “sit up.”  Don’t need the “up.”  Except for kids.  Kids sit on their knees, one leg, one cheek, they slouch.  Parents and teachers order kids to “sit up.”  Adults slouch.  I never heard an adult told to “sit up.”

“Stand up.”  Here again no need for “up.”  If we stand it’s up.  Except for the military.  When a military maneuver ends the troops “stand down.”  As opposed to “stand up” I suppose.

When I lie down I don’t fight against gravity.  Which brings me again to the up and down business.  I lie.  No need for “down.”  After countless boring hours in high school and college English, friend Phil explained lie and lay.  When I “lie” I place my body in a supine position.  I “lay” an object on a table; a chicken “lays” an egg.  Phil pointed out, however, that when I place the soft material from between a goose’s feathers and skin on a table I in fact “lay down.”  Understanding even a small piece of this lie, lay business I feel kind of smug.

You can “lay over,” but it’s not about kids or the military.  If weather or terrorists close LaGuardia your flight may “lay over” in Gander, Newfoundland–Gander, I like that name; reminds me of laying down.–  But why “lay over”?  Why not “lay up” or “lie down” in Gander?  Maybe its “lay over” because the pilot lays the aircraft on the tarmac.  Passengers and crew may spend a night “lying”–not “laying”–in a Gander hotel bed.  I heard “lay up”; don’t recall where.  

I get side-tracked, better yet bogged down, by what my Harbrace College Handbook calls “appropriate form of the verb.”  Seven pages devoted to that mind-numbing lay, lie, laid, lying laying, sit, set, sat, sitting, setting business.  I’d really like to understand, but just seeing it my eyes want to cross.  I pity the poor folks who have to think about and write it down.  After passing a fifth grade grammar test Grandson Logan said, “Now I want to get that out of my mind as fast as I can.”  From the mouths of babes!

Fighting against gravity raises the business of beds, and it is business, Big Business!  Any evening on TV I see up to three or four bed/mattress ads: Mattress World, Bed Warehouse, BedMart, Tempur-Pedic, Sleep Number, not to mention JC Penney, Sears, Walmart, Costco, and dozens of other retailers.

There are couches, futons, and floors but mostly we sleep on beds.  Most spend a third of our life asleep.  It’s curious that despite buying, sleeping, and making love in them we give little thought or appreciation to beds.  Habitat is defined by beds.  A house without bedrooms is not a home.  Apartments have one, two, three, or more, and every bedroom has at least one bed.  Hospitals, jails, prisons, and hotels are defined by their numbers of beds.  Over a dozen Las Vegas hotels have thousands of rooms, and every room has one or more beds.  In American beds probably outnumber automobiles, even guns!  Consider the number of beds in Paris, London, Singapore, Tokyo.  Developed countries may have more beds than people.

The variety of beds is easily overlooked: twin, double, queen-size, king-size, bunk, rollaway, trundle, Murphy, sofa-beds, hide-a-beds.  Hammocks?  Hammocks are too uncomfortable for sleep, maybe a nap.   A nap is not really sleep.

On average we sleep seven to nine hours.  If I don’t get eight I feel hung-over, like when I used to drink.  It’s said President Trump gets something like six hour sleep.  President Trump needs more sleep.

Folks who travel: politicians, salespersons, entertainers, flight crews must sleep in many different beds.  Do they get used to it?  Do they wake rested?  In six months how many different beds does President Trump sleep in?

I just spent five nights in motel and relatives’ beds.  They were okay, but not my bed.  I love my bed.  I couldn’t be a politician, salesperson, entertainer, or in a flight crew.  Fighting against gravity I need sleep.

      “For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against our name,
He writes – not that you won or lost – But HOW you played the Game.”
Grantland Rice

I determined to lay this election to rest, but a late development prompts me again to weigh in, hopefully for the last time.

When I lost at Old Maid or Chinese Checkers, I cried.  Mama said, ”You have to be a good loser.”  I responded, “Yeah!  I’m supposed to say yippee, yippee!  I lost!” 

As always, Mama was right.  But, the vernacular of her era and culture, “be a good loser,” left a bad taste in my mouth.  I was still a “loser!”  It turns out there are more palatable, realistic and accurate, means to frame this losing business.  It’s not about “losers” or “winners.”  It’s about sportsmanship!  Being a “good sport!”

I can’t speak of Mama’s era.  But today, from high school to the NBA, from Little League to the World Series, after the last out, the final buzzer, players who, seconds earlier, locked in combat, give chest-bumps, high-fives, pats on the back, even hugs.  Some years back, when an American Presidential election was tallied, the tradition of a losing candidate calling to concede and congratulate the winner was born.  After the new President’s inauguration, on the White House steps, the departing President and First Lady greet the incoming First Couple.  Sadly, before and on January 20, 2021, these wonderful and civil gestures, this sportsmanship, may not happen.

Currently, Joe Biden holds 290 electoral votes and will get Georgia’s 16 for 306.  Donald Trump will add North Carolina’s 15 to 217 for 232.  Given Joe’s 77.1 million against Donald’s 72.0 million popular vote, the former Vice President enjoys a 5.1 million popular vote lead.  Nonetheless, might legal trickery swing the results?

Donald has long since made clear, if he does not win reelection he’ll fight!  Voters be damned!  Any notion of “be a good sport,” sportsmanship, gracefully and graciously conceding, is in not in Donald’s playbook.  Writing a sad and tragic epitaph for his Presidency, Donald J. Trump will take “We The People” to court!

I really do not want to hit the man when he’s down, but for any who may not have been paying attention, or still “don’t get it,” reminders of why the majority of voters rejected Donald Trump may prove instructive.  We needn’t trust Fake News, three dozen mental health professionals, or MSNBC.  Listen to the man.

• “Obama tapped my phone.”
• Mexico will pay to build The Wall U.S. for which taxpayers have since forked up $15 billion.
• Attendance at my inauguration ranks among the largest in history.  Photos show otherwise.
• Despite even Republican failing to find evidence of support, Hillary’s crimes are “worse than Watergate.”
• America’s military has not had a pay raise in ten years.  It has, every year.
• “I’m a stable genius.”
• We should buy Greenland.  Its not for sale.
• I am “King of Israel . .  .  the chosen one.”
• My healthcare plan (which Mitch McConnell had never heard of) is far superior to Obama-care.
• Following a campaign photo-op visit with Kim Jong-un, a claim that the Obama Administration’s “begging for a meeting” with North Korean dictator was rebuffed.  Before the Senate Committee On Foreign Relations, Obama’s Special Representative for North Korea, Glyn Davies, made clear that such an overture was never considered.   
• Presidential Dad, Fred Trump, was born in a “very wonderful place in Germany.”  Pop drew first breath in the Bronx.
• Facing scientific proof of global warming since the Industrial RevolutionTrump smiled, “It will cool down:”
• Thinking of giving himself a Medal of Honor: “awarded to recognize U.S. military service members who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor.” (my emphasis) Narcissism on steroids!
• Journalist with a three decades untarnished record, Jeffrey Goldberg, reports Donald calling members of our Military Services “losers” and “suckers.”
• And now COVID-19:
• We have it “under control.”
• A few cases, will disappear like a miracle.
• Churches packed shoulder to shoulder, Americans “rearing to go” by Easter.
• A vaccine “very soon.”
• As deaths and cases break daily records, “We are rounding,” and rounding, and rounding, the turn, i.e. Trump’s team is going in circles.
• After the election we won’t hear of COVID-19.  Tell Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, other West Wingers and tens-of-thousands diagnosed since the election.
• “If you count the legal votes, I easily win.  If you count the illegal votes they can try to steal the election from us.”  In two weeks since the election, no hint, no grain of evidence whatsoever suggesting a single illegal vote was cast.

Random rambling of an irrational, frightened mind.

Now refusing to concede and specious litigation against the Will of The People. There is no difference whatsoever in six-year-old Dean crying over not winning at Checkers and six-year-old Donald throwing a  tantrum over not winning an election. Be a good sport, sportsmanship, stepping back with grace and dignity are not in the man’s nature.

Which brings us back to Grantland Rice.  How might the One Great Scorer write against Donald J. Trump’s name?

How about?  Like you, Donald John Trump played to the very best of his ability.

                                 ____________________

Take heart Donald, despite defeat in the 2020 Presidential election, “the greatest infomercial in political history,” leading to an accidental President, may end up being your most profitable investment ever.

A pink caterpillar,
You crept across the freeway of childhood
–fragile, vulnerable, trusting.

Safely across,
You wrapped yourself in the chrysalis of adolescence
–and wondered.

Now, reborn a woman,
You unfold in the brilliant morning sun and fly
–on iridescent, Technicolor wings!

“What’s in a name?” Could Juliet inform Americans?

Joe, not “Joseph,” is a friend, the guy next door, on your bowling league, drives a Kia.  Donald, not “Don,” is your boss, lives in a gated community, belongs to the country club, owns Mercedes and BMWs but has a chauffeur.

For me the great mystery is, why do America’s Joes mistrust Joe and worship Donald?

*Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II
William Shakespeare

Think of all the windows you’ve seen.  Funny things windows; they’re often there but I seldom notice.  Windows let in light.  They keep out bugs and burglars–and the wind.

There are big picture windows that sit on hills and look out across meadows and creeks and oceans.  There are tiny widows with wood frames painted shut, windows that look up at brick walls, or down on rooftops with vent pipes and pigeon droppings.

Some skyscrapers are nothing but windows.  Other building have no windows at all.  There’s something wrong with a building that doesn’t have windows, something suffocating, even sinister.  I don’t trust buildings that don’t have windows.

Some windows have been painted over.  I wonder about that.  Why would you go to the trouble of installing a window and then paint it?  I suppose the fellow who installed it was not the one who painted it.  Then there was something to see, now there’s not–or there’s something to hide.

Whoever designed our home had no imagination at all–or didn’t care.  The big window faces the side of the neighbor’s house.  It’s a nice house but not something you sit and admire, like sunrise over Mt. Hood or a sunset at the beach.  The fireplace is where our picture window should be, looking at Karen’s garden.

I like windows.  They keep me in touch with the word.

I remember the old Moxim Hotel in Salt Lake City over seventy years ago.  The best windows were up front right above the street, great tall windows.  At night in summer Daddy would leave the windows  open and a soft carnival light from the hotel sign would fill the ten-foot ceiling.  I’d lie awake and listen to sounds of the street: car tires, horns, shoes on pavement, voices.  I’d eavesdrop.

Today I stay in much nicer, much more expensive motels with vinyl framed windows and air conditioning so you don’t have to open the windows and drapes because there’s nothing to see outside except cars in a parking lot.

There was something special about lying awake at night with the windows open in the old Moxim Hotel in Salt Lake City over seventy years ago.  Something magic.  Something extremely important I’d lost.  Now, age eighty-three, I see what it was.

Plan a place to hide. If Trump’s reelection fails, his Brownshirts (Google them) will go berserk!  No one will be safe.

The failed plot to assassinate Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer leaves no doubt Right Wing Crazies scheme to bump off Kamala and Joe.  For the survival of our Democracy, pray that the Secret Service, NSA and Law Enforcement are on their game like never before!

Amid the agony of a COVID-19 pandemic, a man who, for purely self-serving reasons, mocks doctors, social distancing and masks is certifiably insane!  

On a day when America recorded 88,592 new COVID-19 cases, with 229,698 dead and over 9 million infected—outstripping all other countries—as 17 sates report record COVID-19 hospitalizations, Donald J. Trump, Jr. told FOX Anchor Laura Ingram, America’s COVID-19 deaths have dropped to “almost nothing.”  And besides, Dad says we’re making the turn. 

That are these folks thinking?!

Into the End Game, Trumps chess pieces lie strewn like debris from a whirlwind.  No coordination. No organization. No leader.