Another Quiet Sunday

It is a quiet Sunday. Mrs. Lion is mowing the lawn. This may be the last time she has to do it until fall. The grass goes dormant here during the dry summer. Our summers are a delight. We get almost no rain, and the daytime temps are usually in the 80s. Nights a great for sleeping. They go down to the low sixties or high fifties. Air conditioning isn’t standard in most homes.

Last night we went to the local Mexican restaurant. Mrs. Lion loves their Arroz con pollo. We had margaritas, weak and watery; deluxe nachos, tasteless; and I had carne asada, tough and tasteless. The only happy camper was Mrs. Lion. There’s a much better Mexican restaurant about six miles away. They don’t have good Arroz con Pollo, but everything else is great. Mrs. Lion promised that we can eat there next time we do a Mexican food cheat. [Mrs. Lion — I offered to go to the other Mexican restaurant last night. I could have tried their Arroz con pollo or eaten my other favorite meal from there. I don’t remember what it’s called, but it has bacon-wrapped shrimp. Yum!]

We had planned on getting my new two-meter ham antenna up today. The weather is perfect, but unfortunately, the new chimney mount isn’t arriving until Monday. Maybe Mrs. Lion can do it after work. I can assemble the antenna–it’s ten feet long–while she is working. I’ll do it on the front porch.

blind men describing an elephant

The way Julie from strictjuliespanks.blogspot.com sees the world is so different from mine that I wonder if we are on the same planet. At my suggestion, she started listening to The Trump Tapes, an audiobook by Bob Woodward. It contains the unedited interviews that Woodward did while preparing for one of his books. Woodward adds context-setting remarks as well as fact-checks on what Trump said. Julie likes hearing her hero and commented on how polite Bob Woodward was. She objected to the fact-checking and context setting. She claimed that the fact checks were lies and the context setting a way to put Trump down.

I suppose that if you believe that the Washington Post fact-checking department is in the business of creating political fiction, and that dozens of other independent think tanks and news agencies are also conspiring to assassinate Trump’s character, then Julie’s position makes some sense. The simple reality is that every single fact-check was independently verified. My friend Julie chooses to follow the fake news (exposed by the firing of two senior correspondents) from Fox and others.

I have to admit that Trump sounds reasonable in his interviews. He’s even likable. The problem is that he is lying most of the time. Of course, most politicians of either party lie. It’s just that Trump’s lies are more outrageous than others. He refuses to admit when he’s wrong. He still insists he won the 2020 election. Julie agrees.

Julie also thinks that Trump kept the world at peace. She, or her sources, forgot that Russia attacked and annexed part of Ukraine during the Trump administration. Trump is a big fan of Vladimir Putin. He also likes North Korea, and its insane leader. He says so in his book and the Woodward interviews. Trump is most recently claiming that he didn’t have any trouble with the debt limit. He failed to say that he increased the national debt more than any other president in recent history.

Of course, beyond her blog, Julie can’t help Trump get elected. She’s Canadian and can’t vote in the US. It’s also a violation of Federal law for foreign nationals to help elect American candidates. Beware, Julie. What bothers me is that I know that she is a smart, honest person, yet she can’t seem to see the facts when it comes to the American far right and Donald Trump.

Julie, Trump lost the AMERICAN election in 2020. Endless law suits and investigations have verified that Biden won. You and Trump refuse to accept that fact. It doesn’t matter if you believe Trump won. It does matter that Trump won’t admit he lost. Even if in his heart of hearts he is sure he should be president, if he cared about his country, he would graciously admit defeat and end any remaining controversy. He won’t because he benefits from a divided America. He can isolate his followers from any hope of reconciliation with the rest of the country.

The truth is that Trump wants a sharp division. The far right is his base. The recent debt limit crisis is a direct result of keeping our people divided so sharply. If he cared about America, he would work to unite us. Sure, there are big disagreements. That’s fine. We can compromise and sort them out. Before we can do that, our leaders and pretenders for the presidency have to put the country ahead of their personal ambitions. That’s something that Donald Trump has always refused to do.

Listen to this post.