About

August 2017
 

THE WEBSITE AUTHOR

Welcome to my website! Given the unfortunate highly polarized and toxic political environment, I have decided to remain anonymous in order to avoid personal harassment and possibly worse. However, my relevant demographics include that I very recently retired from a 30 year career in the medical field in a large Northeast city and am in the upper few percent financially, though not what I would consider rich. I am a registered Democrat and consider myself a social liberal/progressive, although I do share several positions typically espoused by Republicans, including supporting strong border security, tight immigration control and adequate national defense. Aside from periodic political contributions, I have never been politically active, but vote in all major elections. Like most of my friends, colleagues and like-minded urbanites, I was shocked and appalled by the 2016 presidential election results. As I have never done anything like this project before, I share something in common with President Trump, a major difference being that unlike him, my website has no potential for major disruption and harm to our country and our planet!

This Website

"Oh no, not another liberal left-wing blog!"  Well, yes, I guess so…sorry about that!  I bought this domain name shortly after the 2016 election (the .com version of the same name that I intended to buy had just been purchased for a much higher price) as a potential investment without any clear plans of what to do with it. The idea of a blog soon developed, but my work schedule prevented any action on that until my recent retirement. With the plethora of incredible events since the inauguration, I have often wished that it was already up and running! Of course, I am no political expert. I realize that I probably have nothing unique to say about our ongoing political saga, and don't want to be just another cell in the left-wing echo chamber. Like so many others, I just feel the urge to make my voice heard, and I hope I can facilitate that for others as well as myself with this blog.  I would like to avoid the vitriolic nature of the current poisonous political climate, and intend to weed out responses I deem offensive (see Contributors).  I have also been interested in political cartoons, and since I cannot draw, I commissioned one cartoon based on one of my ideas in March (the first/lowest in the cartoon column with octopus-Trump).  I believe cartoons are a great and creative way to comment on events, and am also soliciting cartoons to post.

What to say about Donald J. Trump? So it turns out you actually CAN insult and lie your way into the White House! Like so many Americans, I was shocked and appalled by his electoral win, and it still seems surreal. I do share the opinion that the federal government (especially Congress) is deeply corrupted by powerful special interest groups and is overall grossly dysfunctional, wasteful and inefficient. I also understand the frustration, resentment, alienation and sense of betrayal by the political establishment of large segments of the population related to this and particularly to the progressive loss of manufacturing and other blue-collar jobs over recent decades. However, electing a businessman and showman with no political or military experience as president and commander-in-chief is as ridiculous as hiring a career politician with no business experience as CEO of a failing large corporation! Trump is without question the least qualified president in modern history, and probably ever. Equally if not more disturbing is his character: insecure, immature, narcissistic/egomaniacal, unprincipled, unscrupulous, inherently dishonest (reportedly actually incapable of distinguishing his self-promoting claims from objective reality), deceitful (quite likely sociopathic), bullying, misogynistic, etc. etc. These and his chaos-promoting management style are all invitations to disaster in a presidency, and we have already witnessed many of their effects, including disruptive staff turnovers and a dangerous loss of credibility of the current White House. 

I do have to acknowledge his and his campaign's skills at tapping into the vast dissatisfaction and insecurities of his supporters and his ability to work up his rally crowds (with scary shades of dictators of the past!). I am continually astonished by his ability to hoodwink such a large segment of the population into believing his many hollow promises and lies (blatantly obvious to so many of us, and likely also to Trump himself, if he even thought about it) and to induce so many presumably ethical people to overlook or rationalize his numerous deficiencies, faults and offensive statements. I also understand that many people who voted for him were equally or more motivated to vote against Hillary Clinton for a variety of reasons, and/or would vote for a Republican monkey over any Democrat for ideological/cultural reasons.  So many of his interviewed followers appear alarmingly cult-like in their adulation and blind unconditional support, despite the incessant stream of lies and disturbing attacks on perceived opponents as well as on our fundamental democratic institutions, particularly a free press, emanating from the president and his spokespeople and surrogates. And of course there is always that Russia thing (please stay tuned)!  This is also a sad commentary on the sorry state of our political and educational systems, which often fosters politicians playing to the gullibility, desperation and baser instincts of the "masses", dumbs down political debate and promotes apathy and disillusionment, contributing to low voting rates. Of course, this is nothing new in our political system, but it is being amplified by our alarmingly increased polarization. Trump's election compounds the series of geopolitical and other domestic and international events since the beginning of this century which make me increasingly pessimistic about the fate of our republic and the world.

I do not expect my efforts to convert any diehard Trump supporters or narrow the seemingly ever widening and deepening chasm separating liberal from conservative, urban from rural, etc. factions in this country. I would consider it a success if this site can promote a reasonable and thoughtful discussion of ideas and encourage greater participation in our political process.

This website is an experiment for me in all respects. I will endeavor to devote a moderate amount of time to it, but do not intend to have it become another full-time job. I hope to have frequent if not daily posts, depending on events as well as my other activities and commitments. I also hope to review and post contributor comments within a day or so, depending on their volume and my available time. There will probably be intermittent hiatuses, e.g. when I am traveling.  I hope readers and contributors will enjoy this site, and I welcome input and suggestions. Thank you in advance for your participation!
 

the DISCLAIMER

Just to state what should be obvious, the opinions, comments, links, cartoons, etc. contributed to this website by anyone other than myself do not necessarily reflect my personal views or those of the website, which assumes no legal responsibility for the content or accuracy of said material. This all constitutes the exercise of our First Amendment right to free speech!