Life is too important and Death too unimportant to waste time worrying about.

StoryWorth asks, “What was one of the bravest things you’ve ever done, and what was the outcome?”

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “brave” as: “1 (of a person) willing to do things that are difficult, dangerous or painful; not afraid  .  .  .  2 (of an action) requiring or showing courage.“  (My emphasis.)

Human Life is difficult, dangerous, and painful!  Human Life demands courage!  I’m brave!  So are you!  Each day, each of us exercises extraordinary bravery!  Unfortunately, doing so since birth, we don’t notice.  We fail to give ourselves painfully earned credit!

Most would be hard-pressed to deny that human life involves suffering.  How we manage suffering is crucial to ameliorating the pain in what Grandma Leslie called this, “veil of tears.”

Each morning, from the moment our eyes open and our feet hit the floor, we’re hoisted into a wheelchair, or remain amid an array of wires, tubes, monitors, and life-supporting gadgets, we exercise the bravery of a Warrior confronting hostile spears and arrows.

Switching metaphors, like a captain navigating her or his vessel over an uncharted sea, we trim the sails and grip the wheel.  We skirt sandbars and treacherous reefs, weather hurricanes, and keep constant watch for Sea Serpents.  With courage, luck, and masterful seamanship, most make it a safe harbor.  Less favored but lucky sailors are rescued.  Others watch the poop swallowed by the sea.  A few give up and drown.

Survivors of capsized ships cling to broken-off spars.  In homes, hospitals, and hospice, flotsam and jetsam of medical science keeps noses above water.  Despite physical agony and terminal diagnoses, they fight for one more breath, one more heartbeat.

Congressional Republicans scratched from the Infrastructure Bill a proposed increase in IRS funding to ferret out the $100 billion deficit between income tax wealthy individual and corporations owe and pay.  In other words, allow the cheating to continue.

Their greed is insatiable.  Have they no shame?

January 6, 2021, President Donald J. Trump called-up and commanded MAGA Minions to assault our Capitol, preempting Congress’s Constitutional mandate to certify the states’ electors.  Thankfully, hazarding physical injury and death, vastly outnumbered Capitol and D.C. police quelled the mob.

Upward of 140 were injured in the melee.  Four assailants and, the following day, one police officer died.  Three of those who defended the Capitol and Congress have died by suicide

Clearly, the failed coup was a “crime of doing something that would cause danger to your country  .  .  .”*  It was Treason!

An incomprehensible irony is, the folks who, on January 6, attempted violently to overthrow the Government of The United States of America call themselves Patriots!  By August 4, 2021, our Justice Department had indicted 555 insurrectionists.  Twenty-four have plead guilty.  Two are incarcerated.

I am astonished and bewildered that the man who ordered the attack, like a loose cannon, remains free to spread his seditious rants and lies.  Why, in the name of sanity and justice, is Donald J. Trump not sporting an orange jumpsuit, at the very least indicted for Treason? 

*Oxford English Dictionary

Regarding, I assume, masks, COVID-19 vaccinations, perhaps non-Fox news, and more, my neighbor tells me, “They’re pulling the wool over our eyes.”    

Who are “they”?  What are they doing?  Why?  Someone, please explain.

I vow to let it go.  Then, when I think I’ve heard it all, he casts a fresh worm on a hook.  Like a dumb catfish, I glom onto the bait.

In March Donald Trump advised Fox’s Laura Ingram he saw January 6 insurrectionists, “hugging and kissing the police and guards.”  In I Alone Can Fix It, reporters Carol Leonning and Philip Rucher quote America’s forty-fifth president as seeing “a lot of love” that ignominious day.

To my knowledge, no one else on planet Earth saw hugging, kissing, and love in America’s January 6 debacle.  How did Donald see what we didn’t?  How can this be?  Does Fox maintain a proprietary Oval Office channel?  I think not. 

It’s obvious.  All things Donald arise from deep-rooted Narcissism, a Monster Ego with an all-consuming demand to be recognized, praised, adored, in a word Loved!  How better could his “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) Minions demonstrate their Love than, on the Leader’s command, “be willing to march into Hell for a Heavenly cause,” attack the Capitol, Congress, and Constitution? 

Human history is punctuated with tribal leaders, warlords, Caesars, kings, emperors, monarchs, and dictators exhibiting egomaniacal hunger for praise and exaltation, for Love!  Across-the-board, such leaders exhibit a Sociopath’s lack of compassion, an absolute incapacity to appreciate human suffering and life.  In service to his egomaniacal need for praise and glory, for Love, Adolf Hitler tortured and murdered millions.  While the nature of Benito Mussolini’s demise suggests all Italians did not Love Il Duce, his bluster and Narcissism were flagrant.  In North Korea, over seven decades Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un established and perpetuated a brainwashed, mind-numbed, culture, marching in lockstep, extolling, and worshiping the “Glorious Leader!”

Closer to home, in 1978, having ordered the murder of California U.S. Representative Leo Ryan and four associates, James Warren Jones coerced 614 adults and 304 children to demonstrate Love for their Leader by drinking cyanide-laced Flavor Aid.  August, 1969, acolytes proved their Love of Charles Milles Manson by murdering seven innocent victims and attempting to assassinate President Gerald R. Ford.  In 1997, assured they would transport onto Comet Hale-Bopp, in a communal suicide 39 “Heaven’s Gate” believers exhibited their Love for Marshall Applewhite.  January 6, 2021, President Donald J. Trump saw Love in his True Believers’ assault on our Capitol, Congress, and Constitution.    

All of which, for me, raises the specter of “cults.“  Miriam Webster defines “cult” as a group of people, exhibiting “great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work  .  .  .  the object of such devotion.”  Cults, the root of cult-ure, suffer an undeserved bad rep.  Religions, political parties, civic groups, cities, states, and nations are, to greater or lesser degrees, cults.

A cult becomes misguided when followers act from unswerving, mindless devotion to a Leader.  In run amok cults, language and acts of adoration and service, in a word Love, feed the Leader’s hunger for power and bond the group.  Followers yearn for a Messiah, a Savior, on whose command they willfully commit morally and legally indefensible acts including murder and for whom, in the ultimate case, would die. 

The means and degree to which any Leader’s agenda serves the common good or his or her own ego distinguishes a Humanitarian from a Sociopath. “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) is a dangerously run amok, misguided cult.  A certified Narcissist and Sociopath, Donald J. Trump is its leader.

Marty set me up with “StoryWorth.” They offer a topic to write on. At the end of a year they compile them into a book. I did not intend to blog this. Karen suggested I do.

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My fondest childhood memory?  My initial impression was, from Daddy’s death, Friday, April 13, 1945, until I found Psychiatrist Dr. Eugene Chernel in late winter 1969, I have no fond memories.  I ran this by Karen.  Playing her Devil’s Advocate role, my partner pointed out I might be mistaken.  As usual, she’s right.

Convinced life was idyllic before losing my dad, I’m puzzled that I have scant memory of those eight years.  In my bog, “The Poachers” is a fictionalized “fond” memory.  Another time I helped Daddy drive sheep out of a pasture.  They ran around me back into the field, I cried.  Daddy knelt, put an arm around my shoulders, and reminded me of the picture show that evening.  We’d see Gene Autry or Roy Rogers, maybe both!

Five years later, for fifty cents a day, I was Uncle Grant’s “hired man.”  Like the escaping sheep, I let charging horses escape the corral.  My Boss threw a fit, cursed, and shouted at me.  I was terrified.  My first, but far from last, exposure to Uncle Grant’s rants.  I vowed then, I can take care of myself; whatever the sacrifice, I must keep other people happy.  In this mindset, I decide the only way I could help Mama was, “Be a good boy and don’t cause problems.”  This motto has served me well.

Karen reminded me of, not “fond,” but good-enough memories after we moved to Ferron in 1947.  April 3, 1937, I drew breath in Grandpa Leslie’s bedroom.  Four days later, catty-cornered across the street in Grandpa Nielsen’s bedroom, Stewart made his first wail.  A Major League center fielder could have thrown a baseball out my grandpa’s bedroom window into Stewart’s.  For over a decade Stewart and I were closest of friends.

At the mouth of Ferron canyon, desperados on horseback, bandannas over our noses, brandishing cap pistols, we attempted to holdup vehicles.  Our would-be victims honked, waved, and laughed.  No booty.

In the same vicinity, someone found a fallen-apart box of TNT bricks.  Left and forgotten, I assume, when they built the road.  Over following weeks, the explosives jostled in a gunny sack in bicycle baskets.  Someone, maybe Clifford, swiped a blasting cap, fuse, and half stick of dynamite.  With this detonator, we blew up the end of a bridge on a long-abandoned road near Moore.  A huge “boom” and column of black smoke! 

In summer, on the rare days I somehow escaped Uncle Grant’s iron grip, at “McKenzie’s” on the Molen ditch we swam in water with bacteria and pollution levels barely not much above sewage.  Which was not significant since the Molen ditch originated near the “settling pond” for Ferron’s drinking water.  Often tap water was barely clearer that ditch water.   

Fond childhood memories revolve around family and friends.  Forty at Mama’s house at Thanksgiving and Christmas.  On Ferron reservoir, fishing in a leaky WWII surplus rubber raft, one man rowing another manning the air pump to keep us afloat.  In Molen hunting pheasants with Uncle Seeley, Don, and Keith.  On the south side of Big Mountain, in the “Doctor’s Cabin” hunting deer with a dozen men.  And a lot more.

I can’t say when my “childhood” ended.  It just faded into “growing up.”  Very fond memories then became life with Karen, Bryan, Dawn, and Marty.   

Michel Wolff’s Landslide; Michael C. Bender’s Frankly, We Did Win The Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost; and Carol Leonning and Philip Rucher’s I Alone Can Fix It offer fresh examinations of Donald J. Trump’s presidency and lunacy.  On the internet I read a piece—which I cannot now locate—pointing out a common takeaway from these exposés: America’s forty-fifth president exhibits an obsessive, egomaniacal sense of self-importance and insatiable need to be extolled, if not venerated.

For those baffled by Donald’s exorbitant need for aggrandizement, it is essential to understand he really does believe “I Alone Can Fix It”!  I am, “The King of Israel  .  .  .  the chosen one.”!

This is not breaking news folks!  The fall of 2017, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump laid it out in precise detail.  Three dozen mental health professionals and others with firsthand experience agree that our erstwhile Man in the Oval Office exhibits classis symptoms of a “Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder.”  Donald’s niece and Clinical Psychologist Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough How My Family Crated the World’s Most Dangerous Man confirms this diagnosis.

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”

That’s 9 for 9!

What a poor, frightened, tortured soul.

A year and a half ago, I mounted my trusty Stamina stationary bike in Oregon City and peddled north on Interstate 205.  At Parkrose Heights I turned east on Interstate 84, crossing central and eastern Oregon and Idaho into Utah.  At Salt Lake City I took Interstate 80 east through Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

On or about July 8, 2021, at 2,673 miles my navigator, Karen, advised me I had crossed the George Washington bridge into New York City!  Whew!

Where now?  North on Interstate 87 to Canada and back toward home?

Slightly edited from a few years back. I like to think it’s worth a second look.

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I wish you would praise me.  I wish you’d say I’m wise and wonderful, even when I’m not.  I want to believe I’m okay but I’m afraid.  I’m not sure.  I need to hear it from you.  Without your assurance, an irrational passion compels me to earn your approval.

Do you see how hard I work, the indecency I endure?  I’m an entertainer, promiscuous, a prostitute.  Bisexual, indiscriminate, nymphomaniac.  To feel loved I’ll sleep with anyone—well, crazy it sounds, almost anyone.  I accept insult, abuse, whatever it takes.  I don’t whimper or protest.  I love my work!

You have reason to be puzzled, amused, annoyed by my act.  When I play the four-year-old vamp in Mama’s dress; pull stupid stunts like a fifth-grade boy; trip over my feet like a Keystone Kop; beat up on myself like the Three Stooges, how bewildering I must seem.

Beneath the acts and disguises I’m fragile as a butterfly and exquisitely cautious.  If you ignore or scorn me, I’m crushed.  So, I play the whore, the clown, the fool.  I humor you, make you laugh.  I seduce, trick, beg, and bribe you.

Confusing, irrational, silly as I seem, I strive for your approval the only ways I know.  Please understand—while I rarely do—with all my incorrigible antics, with all my strength, with all my heart, I work to earn your approval.  Because it’s absolutely essential!

More than eight decades down the road, I remember what I knew before I “grew up,” before I learned to fear you.  Relationship, love, is all that matters.

Should I apologize?  You don’t know—or do you?