The Brief Life of A Buck, a Dummy’s tale of a dollar:

New York Federal Reserve Bank creates and loans one dollar to Citibank which it in turn loans to Ford Motor Company.  Ford includes the buck in line worker Jerry Scudnick’s paycheck.  Jerry’s wife, Ann, passes the buck to Safeway for Enfamil.  Safeway moves it on to California Produce Co-op for tomatoes. The Co-op pays it to migrant picker Juan Garcia who wires the dollar to Juanita, his mother in Mexico City.  Juanita pays pharmacist Roberto a dollar in pesos for heart medicine.  Roberto passes the buck to Eli Lily Pharmaceuticals who include it in Connecticut Research Chemist Mike Young’s salary.  Mike hands it off to Wells Fargo in his $1225 mortgage payment.  Part of a loan payment ,Wells Fargo passes our dollar to the San Francisco Federal Reserve.  Depending on the economy, The Fed may loan it back out or erase it from the books.

For me, three snap-shots leap from the photo album publicizing President Donald Trump’s Narcissism: Descending, as from Heaven, on a Golden escalator, posing like a cardboard cutout holding a Bible in front of a church and, most recently, posturing like Mussolini on a White House portico, swiping off the detested mask to reveal grim determination in place of the trademarked grin, directing a Presidential photo op for Red Cap Minions.  All to maintain the image of a man who, today, feels his back to the wall.

What began as “The greatest infomercial in political history” and led to the Oval Office, may prove Donald Trump‘s greatest curse.  Citizen Trump may well have continued skating around ethics, morals and the law, to a posh retirement at his Private Golf Club.  Presidency drew increased exposure and focus to a lifetime of blurred shenanigans and felonies.  As polls show diminishing hope for a second term, a potentially out-of-office Donald Trump faces litigation and indictments which could lead to financial collapse, even prison.

The tragedy of our forty-fifth President lies behind the photo ops and charade, the bluster, bullying and name-calling.  In the most inaccessible recesses of Donald Trump’s heart a sad little boy yearns and schemes for Love he never knew and has no notion of how to get or give.     

If President Trump may lean on the United States Department of Justice to dig up dirt on his opponent, Citizen Biden may request likewise. The individual most devastated by the findings of parallel, impartial, in-depth investigations lies beyond question.

They show the finger to Dr. Fauci and fall with the Autumn leaves.

Abe Lincoln founded the Republican Party and freed the slaves.  A Racist President who refuses to condemn White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis is not a Republican.

The Atlantic Editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reports that, among other derogatory comments, Donald Trump referred to  American’s Armed Services personnel as “losers” and “suckers.”  Employing his trademarked kill-the-messenger attack, our President labels Goldberg’s allegation “a disgraceful situation by a magazine that is a terrible magazine, I don’t read it but I heard about it.  They made it up and probably it’s a couple of people who had been failures in the administration and I couldn’t get rid of them fast enough, but, or it’s just made up  .  .  .”  Who to believe? 

Founded in 1857, James Russell Lowell its first editor, what evolved into today’s The Atlantic numbers half-a-million readers.  Named American Society of Magazine Editors’ 2016 Magazine of the Year, The Atlantic remains an unchallenged standard of journalistic excellence.  Inevitably, radio, televised and print journalists will misconstrue or get the facts wrong.  But to insinuate Jeffrey Goldberg would deliberately concoct a report is outrageous as labeling The Atlantic a “terrible magazine.”

Writing instructor James Frey counsels authors to employ the “Would he or she really?” test. Would a character really speak or behave as I want her or him to?  Would fifty-five year old, Nebraska wheat grower Abner Brown really abandon a wife of thirty years, children and grandchildren to run off with an Exotic Dancer?  Would International Consolidated Coffee heiress Priscilla Vanderwood really become a Methodist Missionary in Darkest Africa?

Would a journalist with over three decades unchallenged veracity, whose accolades include the National Magazine Award and Overseas Press Club’s Joe and Laurie Dine Award, would Jeffery Goldberg really concoct and publish a lie?  Would a man with countless, easily disproved assertions and distortion of fact, who claimed sore feet to dodge military service, who refuses to call John McCain, and by extension all POWs, a “Hero,” who admits lying about the lethality of an impending COVID 19 disaster, would Donald J. Trump really label America’s Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guard “losers” and “suckers?”  Is the Pope really Catholic?

Wrongful Death: “A civil action against someone who can be held liable for a death.” (Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute)

Bob Woodward has Donald on tape saying early on he saw the disaster impending from COVID 19 but failed to act and lied to Americans.  ACLU or someone, please file suit against Donald J. Trump for the wrongful death of Americans from this pandemic?

“Guardian” US tech reporter Julia Carrie Wong calls “QAnon a wide-ranging and baseless internet conspiracy theory  .  .  .  whose followers believe the world is run by a secret cabal of Satan-worshiping Democrats and Hollywood celebrities.”

The roots of conspiracy and conspiracy theory extend to the deepest soil and darkest history of human relations.  Without looking further into QAnon—What more is there?—nor suggestion a connection, I see today’s Right Wing trotting out a six-and-a-half decades old, Ronald Reagan rant indicting Big Government Democrats for stealing Americans’ freedom.

With President Lyndon Johnson in the Oval Office, Reagan claims “a little intellectual elite (Democrats) in a far distant capital (are) trading our freedom for security.”  Ronald is emphatic in opposition to remarks by Democrat Senator Fulbright that, “the President as our moral teacher  .  .  .  must be free so that he can do for us what he knows to be best.”  This in mind, how might our fortieth President view Red-Cap minions applauding, cheering, virtually genuflecting at every utterance from forty-five’s lips?

I fail to find facts supporting President Reagan’s implication that, trading “our freedom for security” Democrats have thrown Common Folks to the wolves.  Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal rescued Common Folks from the disaster brought on by Republican Herbert Hoover’s blind faith in Jowl Street.  Missouri haberdasher and Commonest of men, Democrat Harry Truman pushed forward Roosevelt’s commitment to put Common Folks back to work and paychecks in their pockets.  Laying Presidency and Party on the line, Democrat John Kennedy went all-in pushing Civil Rights legislation and women’s right to choose.  Like Truman, Common Folks peanut farmer Democrat Jimmy Carter proved too moral and honest to survive the bureaucracy and hypocrisy of D.C., and continues into his nineties doing hands-on carpentry with Habitat for Humanity.  Democrat Bill Clinton balanced our budget but was unable to overcome Republicans’ hard-headed refusal even to consider basic health care for Common Folks.  Against decades-long Republican opposition, Democrat Barack Obama expended enormous effort in finally achieving affordable health care for Common Folks.

By contrast, under Republican Donald Trump a handful of Billionaires gained power in America.  His consumer-funded tariffs and tax giveaways to those who already held enormous wealth loom huge in ballooning our national debt as over ninety percent of America’s wealth gravitated to less than five percent of its population while Common Folks sleep on the sidewalk and scramble for nickels and dimes.

Who holds power in America, a democratic Government or Billionaire Oligarchy?  QAnon’s and other nameless, faceless “conspiracies” notwithstanding, it is clear that with Donald Trump the latter took over.

Please!  Before voting for POTUS view PBS’s “The Choice 2020: Trump vs. Biden.”

In Rage Bob Woodward reports Jered Kushner’s advise that, to understand Donald Trump’s Oval Office and West Wing read Alice In Wonderland.  Regarding the Presidential father-in-law, Kurcher quotes the Cheshire Cat, “If you don’t know where you are going any path will get you there.”

Context makes this guidance more instructive.

.  .  .  a large cat which was sitting on the hearth and grinning for ear to ear.

‘Please would you tell me, ‘said Alice, ‘ .  .  .  why your cat grins like that’?

‘It’s a Cheshire Cat,’ said the Duchess  .  .  .

‘I didn’t know that Cheshire cats always grinned; in fact, I did not know that cats COULD grin.’

‘They all can,’ said the Duchess; ‘and most of them do.’

(Later)  .  .  .  she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree as few yards off.

The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice.  .  .  .

‘Cheshire Puss,’ she began, rater timidly,  .  .  .  it only grinned a little wwider.  .  .  .  ‘Would you tell
me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’

‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.

‘—so long as I get SOMEWHERE,’ Alice added as an explanation.   

‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if you only walk long enough.’*

The Cheshire Cat’s defining characteristic, first to appear and last to disappear, the Grin.

Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland*
Lewis Carroll
Cheshire Cat by Sir John Tenniel, original 1865 edition.

See my Facebook, Edward Conklin, for pictures.