This essay is going to be a little short of words compared to most on The Pontificator. Brevity will relieve friends who might read my essays to be polite or feign interest. I wish I had more readers like them, but most who read I will never meet. I don’t know what they love or hate.
I know this. If the GOP retains its lockdown on all branches of the government after Tuesday’s “election”, the Confederates will have won their Civil War. It took 150 years, but they will have won. Donald Trump is a modern Jefferson Davis — the first president of the new Confederacy.
Trump is bigger than Jefferson Davis. Like Davis, the president works for a coalition of revolutionaries who despise democracy. They support a modern version of slavery, on which they pin the heroic title of Capitalism, right?
They are eager to kill to protect it. It’s why they are rabid Second Amendment advocates; it’s why they harass and threaten liberals on-line, on the phone, in the press, in the churches, and inside state legislatures.
It’s a system where everyone works for the wealthy to manipulate and exploit ignorant people who actually believe they are going to be rich and powerful oligarchs themselves, someday. All that is required is to work hard and prepare, prepare, prepare.
Sure, that works. Ask any brick layer or steel worker. Ask an auto worker. Ask a teacher or a nurse or a restaurant busboy. It isn’t going to happen.
Get real.
The only chance working people will ever have to earn high incomes is if rich people share the wealth by paying fair wages and taxes, which is the opposite of what they decided to do when they rushed through the recent “tax cuts.”
About 90% of the cuts went to the one-percent, right? Of course, the poor can buy lottery tickets. Lottery tickets sometimes work, don’t they? Doesn’t everyone in the USA have someone in their family who has won millions in the lottery? The lottery has been going strong since the early 1970s — almost fifty years. It must be working, because more people play the lottery than ever before.
Divide hard-working folks — who after long days at work don’t have the time or energy to think things through — with any number of issues that make no sense. The classic issue is abortion, of course. It always is.
Any woman can secure an abortion. It only takes two inexpensive pills or a boyfriend who has watched a couple how-to videos on the dark web. The only political question is whether abortions are going to be legal and safe or illegal and risky.
Legality or Constitutionality makes no difference to desperate women, but it might mean that a few unfortunates will spend time in prison away from their families should they get caught. Fear of prison increases anxiety, but it won’t stop a female impregnated by a man she hates. She will abort.
It’s been this way since the beginning of history. Before the process of abortion was known, women took their unwanted babies into the mountains to be eaten by wolves and crows.
The president has promised to punish women who have abortions. Judge Kavanaugh, the drunk sex addict and party animal who terrorized Dr. Ford during an alcoholic rut, promised Senator Susan Collins that he won’t overturn Roe v. Wade. He made the promise to secure her vote.
As the president likes to say, “We’ll see what happens.”
There are so many other fabricated issues; so many “scary” people — immigrant rapists, immigrant invaders, gays and their spouses, black political candidates, Mexicans who vote, socialist doctors, Obama and his ACA, Muslim terrorists, Muslims who aren’t terrorists, native Americans who don’t live in houses or apartments who want to vote, unindicted Hillary and her co-conspirators, lying reporters, homeless people, immigrant children who must be separated from parents and confined in cages, angry mobs of Democrats, and on and so on…. The list of imagined “terrible people” who everyone must fear is as long as America itself.
It’s a white supremacist’s wet-dream — burning crosses with any number of “horrible” people duck-taped to the raging firewood. Ethnic and cultural cleansing of “evil” Americans seems to give supremacists a certain cathartic release. It’s what lynching and castrating were all about decades ago.
Read Trump supporter twitter feeds, anyone who doesn’t believe it. They will terrify the uninitiated. It’s always pics of automatic weapons, Confederate and American flags, photos of prominent progressives with target-crosses on their faces, and a little blurb about how much the tweeter hates liberals and loves Jesus and President Trump. Often a Bible verse is added for righteous measure.
People who hate gravitate toward demagogues. The USA has enough haters to elect Nazis to every office in the land. On Tuesday, those of us who have a different opinion of right and wrong are going to find out who is right and who is wrong.
Are we going down like lemmings off a cliff into the maelstrom below? Will Americans drink the Kool-Aid of a Jim Jones sociopath?
We will soon know the truth about our country — if the Russians (or the Republicans who own the voting machines) don’t manipulate the results, as some in our intelligence agencies say they have already. In Texas early voters report that some machines are flipping votes for certain candidates. It’s a bad sign of problems to come on voting day.
Reality Winner is the incarcerated NSA worker who exposed voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election. She is serving a five year sentence.
NSA employee Reality Winner is in prison with no access to media, reporters, phones, or computers for a reason, right? Once people lose confidence in the integrity of the electoral process, the alternative is Civil War. We did that once. The war turned into a bloody mess that destroyed a generation of Americans. It’s a war that continues to be fought.
What if a miracle happens? What if the election is fair?
What happens if suppressed voters manage to get to the polls to cast provisional ballots when necessary?
What if all votes are counted; no one tampers with the computers nor the voting machines; everyone stays in line and votes until midnight if necessary in those states where the GOP disrupts minority voting to make it as difficult as humanly possible?
What then?
What if the GOP is thrown out and the Democrats take control of the Senate and the House of Representatives? It seems like a hopeless pipe-dream, but stranger things have happened.
The president will question the accuracy of the count, of course, and a countdown to revolution will begin by alt-right fanatics who are itching for a fight. They’ve already killed a dozen Jewish people inside a Temple in Pittsburg; they’ve threatened the lives of the most influential Democrats in the country — including two presidents. Right?
Does anyone think that white supremacists are going to end their bloody rampage short of total victory or defeat? Winning is going to be as problematic as losing, unfortunately.
An added burden is that everyone who has an ounce of political sense knows that the president is working with Russian and Israeli mafias to lockdown the country. We are going to become Russia with our own Vladimir Putin if certain oligarchs get their way.
Anyone who isn’t afraid has a false confidence reminiscent of passengers on the Titanic or the Jews who waited eagerly for the Nazis to cleanse them with warm showers.
Are Americans out of their minds? This election shouldn’t be close.
How can evangelicals support the GOP? A victory by Democrats ensures that Mike Pence, a sincere Christian by all accounts, will replace a president who had no history of association with any church or group of believers until he made his convenient Faustian covenant with Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Franklin Graham.
NOTE BY EDITORIAL BOARD: On August 25, 2020 Jerry Falwell accepted a $10.5 million severance package from Liberty University to step down. Like Adam in the Garden of Eden, he blamed his wife for the sex scandals that followed him pretty much everywhere during his tenure.
We can impeach and remove our demented president. Some Democrats say Mike Pence will be worse. But sensible people must know that his hand on the nuclear button will be a safer hand, because he isn’t completely crazy like the Donald. Who can’t see it?
Is this lunacy what Americans want? Is this insanity what our brothers and sisters in arms fought and died for in all the wars we’ve won to keep freedom alive?
I don’t think so.
We’ll find out soon enough.
This election is a litmus test. Pray that all of us on both sides can survive and endure the results, which are sure to change America for good or ill.
The words “You’re fired!” are among the most painful I’ve ever heard.
I’ve lost a lot of jobs during my life, so the pain has accumulated to the point where I would rather die than re-live my life—unless I could arrange things so that no person would ever have the power to drive a stake into my heart, because that’s what being “let go” feels like.
I never followed Trump‘s television show The Apprentice because hearing the punch line “You’re Fired!” always felt like a hard slap to the face. Watching young men and women suck up to a powerful boss who gut-punches all but one was never harmless entertainment. Not for me, anyway.
The number of people fired during the Trump administration is staggering. How many of these 24 high-power individuals can anyone identify? They are the tip of a mammoth iceberg of graft, corruption, incompetence, ignorance, and suffering. Who disagrees?
I’ve fired people. I understand why our president won’t do it in real life. He always assigns the task to an underling, right? The White House employment line churns like a stormy ocean but the president stays above the froth.
Firing someone is more painful than being fired because it stays with you forever. It’s not something you can overcome by getting a better job, for example. You can’t take it back. I’ve always wondered whether I might have found a kinder way to address the problems I thought firing others solved.
Those who read my essays might remember that I managed some restaurants when I was in college. Back then finding good help was hard, because everyone worked.
I needed a cook really bad. A roly-poly guy with a sweet face applied for the job. He explained that he was a slow learner, but he would try to become the best cook he could.
After three days, I realized that he was slow, like he said. He would never be able to keep up; he lacked the intelligence to memorize the menu and prepare the food properly.
I called him into my office.
“Ruby,” I said. “I don’t see how we’re going to be able to make this work. I’m sorry, but I have to let you go.”
He said, “Mr. Lee, I understand. Uh, you gave me a chance. Uh… uh, it didn’t work out. It’s happened before. It’s not your fault. Uh, don’t feel bad. I’m to blame. I’m slow, uh… that’s all.”
He offered his hand, pivoted, and walked out. He had obviously memorized his exit speech. I put my face in my hands and sobbed.
It was clear that Ruby suffered from a disability of some kind. My need for a cook blinded me. Until he recited his sentences, I didn’t see it. No matter how hard he tried he was never going to make it in a world that demanded quick wits and fast problem solving.
What made me cry was that he wasn’t going to give up. It seemed like no reversal mattered. Success would forever elude him, but he had just enough resources and determination to pick himself up, give his speech, shake hands, and strive to find the next opportunity.
Ruby was willing to fight against the odds to become a hamburger cook. He took great pains not to traumatize managers, including me, who inevitably would be forced to fire him to protect their bottom line. In his effort to spare my feelings he failed—like he probably failed at everything he tried.
I felt sick to my stomach. I felt remorse. Ruby gave everything he had. Nothing worked. Something wasn’t right. There was nothing I could do.
It’s been decades. My heart aches. I wonder if by some miracle Ruby ever made his dream come true. I’ll never know.
At the time, I managed two restaurants. Because I was a student at the university, assistant managers and other responsible employees helped me to keep operations running smooth.
At the second store a couple of waitresses complained that a busboy I hired was stealing tips.
I called the kid into my office. “Are you stealing?” I asked. The boy immediately began emptying his pockets. His pockets were deep. He dumped big handfuls of quarters and dimes on my desk. I didn’t say a word. When the last dime dropped, he ran out of the store. We never saw him again.
It felt good. The waitresses didn’t seem to mind either.
I hired a rather attractive waitress at the first store. She had the annoying habit of talking too much to other waitresses. She was loud, and it irritated me. After a couple of months, I started to hate her because she didn’t seem to feel an urgency to follow through on the things I asked. I felt disrespected.
One day she said something that rubbed me the wrong way. I called her back to my office and fired her in almost the same way Trump would years later on his TV show. I was cold and matter of fact. “You talk too much and don’t do what you’re told,” I said. “You’re fired!”
The girl broke down and began wailing. “How will I get money for my trip to Europe this summer?” she begged.
I would be in Italy that summer myself to visit family living in Naples at the time. I had no idea until that moment that her job was a means to an admirable end.
A wave of nausea swept over me. I was making a terrible mistake. It seemed somehow impossible to backtrack. I’d played my hand. From now on things could never be good between us. “It’s time to leave,” I told her.
She went to court over it, but the owners of the restaurant knew the judge, so nothing happened. I feel like a worm when I remember this act of needless cruelty.
Big Boy Restaurants were among the first in a wave of fast-food chains to capture the hearts and pocketbooks of a public too busy to cook home meals in the 1960s. The Big Boy Slim Jim sandwich remains one of my all-time favorites.
I hired a cook who caught on fast. “I’ve been been vacationing in Florida,” he answered when I asked about his tan.
After a few weeks the owner approached to tell me the cook had pulled him aside to explain that I was a terrible manager who should be fired. The cook expressed his belief that he was the best choice to replace me.
I said to the owner, “That’s interesting. He is a good cook and smart enough probably. Maybe he could help out at another store.”
The owner looked at me like I was crazy. “Are you out of your mind?” he said. “This guy is trying to get you fired so he can take your job in this store—a store you manage! What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I can start training him in other parts of the job and someday he will know enough to help us.”
“No!” the owner said. “You are going to fire that back-stabbing son-of-a-bitch. When I come in here next week, he’s gone, understand?”
When the new cook came in for his shift, I asked him to walk outside with me. I said, “The owner tells me you think I’m incompetent.” The guy threw up his hands like he was being arrested for something and said, “I screwed up. You’re right. Fire me! No hard feelings, OK?” He wheeled around and disappeared down the street.
I felt surprise and relief. I didn’t fire him. He fired himself. I think I remember someone telling me he hitchhiked back to Florida.
Well, this essay is supposed to be about me being fired, not me firing others so let’s get on with it.
I was an athlete in high school. I played football and baseball. I was an All Star third baseman. In football I played tight end. Because my dad was the commander of a Navy jet-helicopter squadron in Key West, we lived on the Florida island during my eighth-grade year and the first half of ninth grade.
Key West High School had a good reputation, because it graduated several big-time athletes back then—George Mira and Boog Powell are the two I remember because they had younger brothers who were close to me in age. We called Boog’s brother “Boob.” He took the joke with grace and good humor. Athletics was a big deal.
Toward the end of the fall season, our freshman football team lost an important game. In the locker room the coach dressed down the team to the point of being profane and abusive.
He was more than unfair. I felt degraded. We played our hearts out. I piped up to defend my friends, “Maybe if you knew how to coach, we would have won!”
The coach turned purple. “Billy Lee, you will never play sports again at Key West High School. You are done.”
I cried on the bus ride home. I reminded the coach about how good I was at baseball. He had seen me play during an All-Star contest between the civilian and Navy leagues. He knew I was good.
He remained stoic and unmoved. Fortunately for me, the Navy promoted my dad and we moved to Arlington, Virginia where he led some group at the Pentagon not known to the public. I would play sports again, after all.
More is under the Pentagon than above. It’s a big place, which I was fortunate to visit and tour—under supervision, of course. My dad worked several years within a labyrinth whose mission was to protect and defend the United States of America.
Unfortunately for me I missed out on a season of baseball. Ninth graders went to junior-high; my new school didn’t field a baseball team. When high school try-outs finally came, a year later, I made the JV team.
The suburban schools outside Washington DC were big. A thousand tenth grade boys tried out. Eighteen made the cut. I thought, This is great. I’m back on track.
Then, disaster. It got cold in northern Virginia. I was used to playing in the heat of the deep south. My legs and arms seemed to stiffen-up in the frigid temperature, and I endured a terrible scrimmage. I made costly errors and went hitless. The coaches announced after practice that they had agreed to bring three varsity players down to JV to give them more playing time. Three JV players would be cut.
The names of the final “final roster” would be posted in the gym. Anyone whose name wasn’t on the list was cut. The decisions were final. There would be no discussions, no negotiations.
I must have looked at the roster a dozen times before I could accept that my name wasn’t on it. I told my dad on the ride home from practice. Visibly shaken, all he could manage was a barely audible, “oh.”
I experienced my first nervous breakdown. It lasted a few months. I told my mother that I was terrified all the time. It never stopped. She confessed that she had a breakdown when she was younger, but in time she got through it.
In ninth grade I lived in Key West, where my dad defended America against Soviet subs with a squadron of jet-helicopters during the Cuban Missile Crisis. My mother stands next to me. When my athletic dreams unraveled the following year, I had a nervous breakdown. Mom led me safely through to the other side of hell. After aging she suffered memory loss, but she remained a happy, optimistic person to the end of her life.
It made me feel good to know that my mother understood. I waited for healing. Eventually, I got better.
Dad was promoted again. The president sent him to Paris to represent the United States Navy at NATO. The French planned to withdraw. Dad tried but was unable to change their minds. A year later he would lead war games in the Mediterranean Sea for an ineffective coalition of nations called SEATO (now disbanded), and the family would follow him to Naples, Italy.
But my senior year would be spent in France. It would be a welcome change from the Washington DC suburbs, which to this day I associate with “fear and loathing“—bad mental health.
It’s hard to believe, but I did get fired from high school—in Paris of all places.
My girlfriend’s dad was Secretary of the Embassy in Paris. Sandy attended a French high school and spoke fluent French. It made getting around easy because not only was she connected and accepted everywhere, but she also made a gifted translator. I had no communication problems when we explored the twenty or so arrondissements together.
Because I went to the school for military-dependents (populated mostly by Army kids) I couldn’t invite Sandy to our senior prom. It was a school rule, a stupid rule, but that was the Army way in those days.
Someone got the bright idea to hook me up with the ranking General’s daughter—a sweet girl, but I didn’t know her. Because I already had a girlfriend who I sort of loved, I had no interest in the arrangement with the General’s daughter.
I made some stupid decisions that involved selling sleeping pills that were freely available (at nominal cost without a prescription) in the French drugstores (les pharmacies) near our house. I sold the pills to friends to raise money for Paris prom expenses, which I expected to be, well, excessive. It turned out that the pills were illegal on American military property, which included the high school.
A big kid I didn’t know bought three and started running around the campus yelling to everybody that he was high on LSD—a kind of joke, I guess. Anyway, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) locked down the school, did a sweep, and found discarded pill wrappers.
After a number of interrogations, they got to the truth and had to decide how to handle me and two other kids who had nothing to do with anything except that they “confessed” to buying one pill each.
One of the kids was the only black at the school. It didn’t help at all that his dad was an enlisted man—his dad was not, sadly, the highest-ranking Naval officer in Paris, like mine. He and his family were put on the first flight out of Paris. His family was uprooted over a sleeping pill.
The verdict was that I would not attend the last week of classes but would receive a diploma and be allowed to go to the graduation ceremonies—including the after-party.
The senior prom was off-limits. It was my punishment. The Army would send a West Point cadet (from the academy famous for its overlook of the Hudson River fifty miles north of New York City) to accompany the General’s daughter.
For me, the punishment was a reward. Yes, I was expelled from high school, but I was going to graduate, and I didn’t have to hang around during the last week of classes. I was free.
Sandy’s civilian high school reserved the Eiffel Tower for their prom. No one had a problem with me being her guest. Yes, the tower was amazing. After the celebration, we club-hopped through Paris night spots with the money I had made, which the DIA didn’t bother to confiscate.
As for my own high school graduation party, school-rules didn’t permit Sandy to be there. It took place on a large estate, which was romantically lit and well-attended.
A beautiful girl I had seen at school but not yet met walked-up to introduce herself, and somehow, we found a way to make love behind a grove of trees in the backyard. Until then, I hadn’t understood how much comfort some women are able to provide to a man who seeks reassurance.
Sometimes I wish I’d run off with the girl like she said she wanted, but her dad was an enlisted man. I couldn’t see a way to make things work. In those days officer families and enlisted families didn’t mix. It was like segregation of the races, kind of.
Speaking of race, as I told readers, the Army sent the black kid who had nothin’ to do with nothin’ and his whole family back to the states on the first plane out of Paris. They forbade him to graduate or visit parties. I thought his punishment was outlandishly unfair, but it was the 1960s. Most high-powered white people hated black people at the time. It’s the way things were back then.
It wasn’t possible for me to set things right.
This essay is getting kind of long, isn’t it? Maybe I should write a Section-Deux someday to cover the horrors I suffered as an adult working at a dozen companies for 35 years.
No?
Ok.
Here is a summary, then:
After returning to the states and entering University I got myself fired from the Army Officer program (ROTC) a few weeks before I was scheduled to receive an officer’s commission.
My mistake was to speak a few lines over a microphone and loudspeakers to about 15,000 fellow college students who were protesting against the Vietnam War. Although I received a wild ovation (people jumped up and down, screamed in my ears, and hugged me) it didn’t go over well at headquarters. It ended my military career.
The Lieutenant Colonel who fired me was a good enough guy. He gave me a failing grade in Foreign Relations—the last class requirement for an officer’s commission. As a result, my military record was spotless. I was too dumb to be an infantry officer. That’s all.
After being released by the Army—like every other civilian guy—I became subject to the military draft. It was a lottery system designed to determine who would be inducted.
I drew a low number, which the colonel must have known, because it was based on date-of-birth— information in my personnel file he possessed. A low draft number meant that I had no way out. A grunt tour in the agent-orange saturated undergrowth of Vietnam was certain.
Unknown to the colonel, a friend of mine sat on the draft board. By the grace of God and help from my friend (he was an uncle, actually), the Army never called.
After he retired the colonel became a player in township politics. By all accounts he did good things for his community. Years later I ran into him from time to time when shopping. He always smiled and asked how things were going. He seemed surprised to learn that things were going well.
I did get fired from my first three jobs out of college. One company told me to my face that they couldn’t retain employees who opposed the military, which is what a four week long investigation into my background by their crack investigators had uncovered.
Fortune 500 companies closed their doors to millions of young Americans whose crime was protesting an undeclared, genocidal war at the end of the world: the Vietnam War. The Vietnamese lost every battle and suffered millions of casualties. They won the war. Who can argue with success? I often wonder how much better-off America and Vietnam would be if the people who were smart enough to resist a cruel and senseless war had been allowed to take their place in leadership when the fighting ended. No one will ever know.
After three investigations and three firings by Fortune 500 companies over a short period of two years, I suffered catastrophic depression. I couldn’t muster the energy to look for work. I decided to return to the University to upgrade my skills, while I underwent counseling.
I took a part time job as a busboy for an upscale restaurant. The tips were fantastic. At a company Christmas party, my beautiful (and fearless) wife acted “inappropriately” according to a complaint by the owner’s wife; when I returned to work her husband fired me. In those days, men were responsible for the behavior of their wives.
I got a better job, and life went on. I sharpened my skills, started a family, and garnered engineering-design experience. After several years, a packaging-machine builder hired me to investigate cost overruns on their flagship machine line. I discovered a kick-back scheme by top execs that involved powerful suppliers. The CEO quit to avoid arrest, and I was fired to provide cover for those who had no intention of quitting.
The upside was that I received the most lucrative severance package of my career.
I don’t feel good about it, because justice wasn’t served. It rarely is, right? I wanted to stay alive, protect my family, and not get blacklisted in my profession (engineering), which would render me unable to earn a living. My only option was cowardice, and that’s what I chose.
Life would continue, but I learned how power and fear twist justice in the world of plundering by civilians. It was an eye-opener, for sure.
The highest paid job I ever held required that I work seven days a week. I made a ridiculous amount of money, but under the pressure of too many hours and unreasonable demands from our biggest client, General Motors, my supervisor started drinking more than usual. I told him he was an alcoholic. We argued, and he fired me. He told me he couldn’t work with someone who thought he was a drunk.
The lowest paid job was Bible-study leader at church. It paid exactly nothing. I sat on a planning council with other leaders where we discussed things. The “elders” revealed that they intended to sever their ties to the national denomination, because they didn’t think the denominational leaders had punished sufficiently a pastor who had presided over his daughter’s wedding to her girlfriend.
The elders seemed to possess a morbid hatred of Christian heretics who favored gay people. They intended to join another, more conservative denomination to set things right.
I told the leaders they were stupid; it was a bad move that would have bad consequences. I was right, but the bad consequences were directed at me—personally. They disbanded my Bible group, barred me from leadership, and forced me to shut down my website for six weeks.
Eventually, many shunned me. I got a lucky opportunity to resign my membership without the misfortune of being excommunicated. It’s complicated, but the part of the story that I can repeat is told on this site. Click the link or look it up. I was able to leave in good standing, which was an answered prayer—in my grateful opinion.
The week after we decided to leave, my wife and I found a church with lovely people who were, many of them, crazy conservative, but we didn’t care. They talked to us and treated us nice. Nice goes a long way with us both. My wife made and continues to make a lot of new friends.
God does only good things, I learned.
It’s true.
My work experiences weren’t always negative. I cooperated with the FBI on some important investigations involving national security. I invented or helped to invent products used by everyone everywhere—including the first tear-spout coffee lids and tamper-resistant caps for juice cartons (for which I received $1,000 and a patent).
I also helped design and tool the first generation of run-flat wheels used on Hummer combat vehicles. I kind of got trapped on that one. I vowed I would never apply my talents to warfare but I did—I was a single parent raising a family of kids at the time. For their sake I couldn’t quit.
As the highest paid union worker at the factory, my career would be toast if I wasn’t on board. I used state-of the-art design software to solve many production problems. Everything that anyone designed went through me for corrections and approvals.
Company executives invited the press and directed me to appear on a television news show to demonstrate an important production technique that made the wheels possible. The execs were soon in deep trouble with the FBI over what turned out to be a national security screw-up; the program was, after all, classified.
The damage was done, but the FBI didn’t interview me. The FBI didn’t want certain people to know, because I happened to be working with them on another more important investigation that they wanted to keep secret.
I was able to retire at age 60, which to my way of thinking wasn’t soon enough. In all the years I worked, I never spent more than five-and-a-half years at any one company.
I get called frequently with job offers, but I turn them down. A few years ago a company I worked for early in my career called to offer a lucrative three-month assignment, which I accepted.
Once rehired they kept extending my quit date. I put my foot down and gave them a date certain. The company put a person near my office to facilitate my every move to make sure they got the last ounce of production from me before I returned to retired life.
On the last day, they honored me with a luncheon party.
I bought a lot of things with the money they paid me including a stair-climber for my wife, a new car, a garage rebuild, a new concrete driveway and sidewalks front and back, and landscaping. What my wife and I didn’t spend went in the bank. It is amazing what five months of work can buy, I thought when everything was finished.
I was glad I went back to work but decided I would never do it again. The time to pontificate would never be more right.
What is the lesson from all this self-disclosure?
As my hero Doug Flutie once said, “Each person makes their own way in this world.” Who disagrees?
Anyone who can think understands that no life can be explained within an encyclopedia, nor a book—even a long one. People who think know that accomplished people are complex, but so are the less accomplished.
Even a simple dog or cat—a pet—has a complicated life, which becomes apparent to anyone who takes the time to write it all down. Try it, any skeptic who doubts the truth about the complexity of living beings.
Even after decades of blunders, any bloke who is able to hide beneath their thick skull an undamaged and flexible brain should be able—if they reflect on their experiences and are lucky, as I was—to make sense enough sometimes to pass on to others what they’ve learned, both good and bad.
My process is called PONTIFICATION.
It’s what I do.
The people I most want to rescue are the ones I love. True to those who pursue authentic lives passionately lived, these are the kind of folks who generally resist pontificators.
Oh, well.
My life unfolded for whatever reasons the way it did, and I’m OK with it.
What choices did I have?
I ask those I’ve hurt to forgive me.
No one wants to die evil. With the help of Jesus, people can be forgiven, can’t they? Who believes it?
Despite all evidence to the contrary—may God help me—I always have.
In another life someone said, YOU’RE FIRED! over and over. It gave me nightmares.
PTSD.
Hell, it was me who said it, sometimes.
…forgive them. They are clueless… is what Christ said before they killed him. He held no grudges. He defended those who hurt him most.
Billy Lee
NOTE FROM THE EDITORIAL BOARD:
Billy Lee’s account, You’re Fired! contains omissions of events, some of which are included in other essays on this site. A few details are arranged in non-sequential order.
The full story about Billy Lee’s separation from the army is known only to the author and the army; Billy Lee simplified the narrative. (No harm to truth intended or done.)
We advise readers to refer to other essays on this website to fill in gaps and resolve contradictions.
WE THE EDITORS changed some of the names to protect anonymity.
Talking heads on MSNBC are calling the latest political developments involving the president a national emergency.
What’s going on?
The president nominated and the GOP is about to confirm a young conservative judge to sit on the Supreme Court who will make abortion illegal in all fifty states.
Everyone knows it’s coming.
The man’s name is Brett Kavanaugh. He seems to be a partisan hack — an ideologue who lacks common sense — but he’s smart and highly educated in conservative jurisprudence. Everybody says so, right?
He worked hard for Kenneth Starr to impeach President Clinton for lying to Congress about what at the time seemed to be a consensual extra-marital affair. Does anyone remember?
Ok, so what?
Well, the president who nominated him is a nut-job himself who can’t tell the truth, because he doesn’t know right from wrong; he has a mental disorder that renders him delusional, paranoid, and vindictive.
Trump sold folks a fiction that Barry Obama somehow misplaced his birth certificate — if found, it would prove he was a Kenyan usurper. As a candidate for president, Donny said that he had hired investigators to find the missing piece of paper. To this day, the president suspects that the document found was a forgery.
But he’s moved on, he says. Why don’t we?
Ok. So what?
[Note from the Editorial Board:On 6 October 2018, Donald Trump signed-off on the Senate’s confirmation of Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States of America.]
Trump introduced and elevated to super-stardom a very young man, Kim Jong-Un of North Korea. He enabled the kid to keep his atomic toys and to more effectively work to reunite his country with the south. The process of reunification is going on behind the scenes as I write.
Ok. So what?
A former CIA chief called the Korean summit, treasonous. The CIA chief no longer appears on TV. The president stripped his security clearance. He slapped him, somehow, off the public radar.
Ok. So what?
Some in the president’s inner circle have been indicted and pled guilty to more charges than anyone can name or count. The president replaces the unfaithful; turnover churns; life goes on.
Ok. So what?
A rotten, no-good coward — OK, someday they might make him/her a hero like they did John McCain — wrote an anonymous letter to the New York Times. The Times turned it into an “editorial”. The mole (or lion) works with a cabal of fellow travelers (or saviors of the Republic) inside the White House to unravel the president and disable his agenda.
Who wants to bet it was his Chief of Staff, John Kelly? Not me.
Ok. So what?
Christians meet daily to pray with the president to give him victory over his enemies, presumably. If the president falls, the vice-president Mike Pence will hold him up; he’ll carry-on the fight.
Ok. So what?
Tweeters, like myself, are being overrun by hoards of follower-bots. They aren’t real.
I look at who they follow — to make sure they are fake — then block them. (They seem to follow each other and a few other souls who actually are real — like me.) If I didn’t block, I’d have thousands of fake followers.
Note from the Editorial Board:No, the @BillyLeePontif on Twitter is not a hybrid form of artificial intelligence; Billy Lee is not an “AI BOT”, nor was he created by us. He was never sort-of-fake nor will he ever be.The Editors
“They” plan to make me and others like me unwilling and unsuspecting nodes in a huge network, which will light-up like a wildfire of California Christmas trees before the midterms to sway public voting through intimidation, threats, false tweets, and fake activity orchestrated by who? — public relations firms? — foreign governments? — trumpletonian hate groups? — Christian evangelists? — or all four groups working together (with Israel, of course) to finally conquer the world and secure the Holy Land for the Jewish refugees who still live there?
Is there anyone in Hell who knows what is going on and wants to tell someone?
Does anyone care?
Ok. So what?
I can’t be rambling. I don’t want to sound like a badly coded bot . I’ll lose my audience, correct?
Let’s get to it.
What is this emergency I am writing about, anyway?
It’s abortion. Only white supremacists, sycophants. and clowns in the president’s follower-base will stay behind to give him the time of day if he turns his heels to support a woman’s right to end her pregnancy. It’s that simple.
Can anyone make an argument for the president should he change his mind as he sometimes does to support the right of women to secure abortions? — because legal, free, and safe abortion was his position for years. Does anyone remember?
Does his head of yellow straw lose its luster if he betrays his pledge to capture and kill pregnancy-options in the USA?
Who knows?
Ok. Probably not.
Time to move on.
My hunch is that most people reading this essay do not remember living in the United States when abortion was against the law. They are too young.
I remember.
I remember the first time the word “abortion” appeared in a nationally syndicated magazine. I was in seventh grade. The word, which snuck its way into an issue of LIFE Magazine, created a sensation. Flood gates opened. Every news-outlet covered the story. For months, it was the only subject sophisticated people talked about.
I didn’t learn what the word meant until I was older and found an unabridged dictionary that defined it. After reading the definition, I still didn’t understand the word. In the United States of the 1950s and 1960s, many subjects remained off-limits and off-airways. When it came to sex and abortion, they were mysteries to children, certainly, but also to adults.
After the cultural revolution of the 1960s (which changed everything), it seems impossible for young people to believe that their country could be as naive as the USA once was. Young folks can’t imagine that the United States was a nation of mostly sheep who believed everything they read in books and magazines and everything they heard on the radio and watched on television.
It was a country with a vigorous right-wing press, but progressive views were scrupulously suppressed. No one explained what communism or socialism was, except to say that they were bad systems which existed in countries that wanted to destroy us. It was a time when citizens took everything their leaders said as absolute truth.
Believe it.
In 1968, I was a college sophomore who owned a convertible and a lot of spending money. At a party one night in early spring a beautiful girl I had met a few times came onto me. She boldly asked if I wanted to go upstairs and have sex with her.
I thought, I can’t make it with this beautiful girl unless I’m clean. I have to go back to the dorm and take a shower first. I told her, and she agreed to wait. After returning we went upstairs and made love.
I was slightly drunk and kind of scared — it seemed unnatural to be pursued by a pretty girl who had never shown interest in me before — but I went ahead and then it was over. I drove home and forgot about it.
The next weekend Alexa (not her real name, of course) called on the phone to tell me she was pregnant. I thought, wow! — now I can marry a beautiful woman. That’s a good outcome!
I asked her not to be afraid. I would take care of everything. Of course I would marry her and we would raise the child together. She could finish her education; I’d pay for it, and then I’d finish school after — while she took her turn caring for our child.
Suddenly she started crying. ”Oh Billy Lee” she sobbed. ”You are so honest and so kind. I can’t lie to you — I just can’t.”
”What are you talking about, Alexa?”
”The guy who made me pregnant is the drummer in the band at the club where I work. He hates me now and won’t speak to me.”
”You work at a club? What club?”
Well, enough voyeurism. The short version is she worked at a strip club where she was a go-go dancer employed by the band.
Ok. So what?
Well, the reason I’m writing this essay is to give people a picture of what getting an abortion was like fifty years ago when terminating a pregnancy was a crime in every state. It’s not clear that abortions will work in exactly the same way next year when the country circles back to once again make abortions illegal.
Drugs are available today that weren’t before. For less than twenty dollars a pregnant girl can purchase pills on the internet that will end her pregnancy. She can use bit-coin or other underground currencies to completely hide the transaction forever behind the most sophisticated encryption that organized-crime can devise.
She can ask her boyfriend to watch certain videos on the dark web. Voila! After an hour of viewing and the purchase of a few implements, he’s an abortion doctor.
When he’s ready, the termination of his girlfriend’s pregnancy will start its eternal journey down that rutted road to distant and forgotten memories.
In the 1960s, it was more difficult. Alexa set up a meeting with three doctors in an old house somewhere. She asked, and I tagged along. They signed some forms, which claimed that her life would be in danger if she carried her pregnancy to term. I drove Alexa to Maryland where we spent a week at the house of one of my dad’s friends who was in Europe at the time.
Alexa made an appointment at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, which was known to be a safe place where the doctors performed the procedure for women whose lives were in danger. Yes, it was expensive.
Her friends chipped in $600 — about $3,000 in today’s money. Though the hospital accepted her as a patient, the problem was that they wanted Alexa to return in three months. The abortion scheduling was crowded — booked solid. Alexa would be six months pregnant before it became her turn on the schedule.
Alexa and I decided to spend the week we had set aside for the hospital visit to go out each night to party in the Georgetown clubs in Washington DC — we ended up dancing and drinking away every dime of the money we had collected from her friends. Nightly, we returned to our borrowed house to make love with no worries about pregnancy.
It was liberating to love a beautiful woman unafraid of consequences.
I learned later that some in the neighborhood noticed the young couple coming and going at late hours from the house of their friend; they complained, but nothing came of it.
At week’s end we returned to our university where Alexa went to work on her friends to gather the money she needed for the final appointment. The school year would be over by then. Summer break was on its way. When she left on her second trip to DC three months later, she took the bus.
She knew what to do. She no longer needed me. The dress rehearsal was over. It wasn’t necessary for anyone to accompany her, she said.
I guess I don’t blame her.
As it happened, I became one of eighteen young men at the university who the government accepted into the army-officer training program that year. Over five-thousand applied in a futile effort to stay in school after the government ended draft deferments for college students — to better supply warm bodies to the killing fields in southeast Asia.
The army scheduled my training to start that summer in Georgia at Fort Benning. I couldn’t have been with Alexa, even if she wanted me, which she didn’t. In training, recruits were isolated in those days. Even a telephone call was impossible.
It turned out that it would be three-and-a-half years before I saw Alexa again. We ran into each other outside a steak house. She invited me to go inside and have something to eat.
She told me she owned a successful dance studio in Detroit. She looked amazing. She really did. She was happy. A good life lay ahead of her that would be full of all the good things that money from her business would buy.
I was dirty and unkempt. Again, I needed a shower, except worse. My clothes were rags, really. I explained that my military training didn’t end well. I became an anti-war protestor who spent maybe way too much time in the streets and the city parks. Someone put my car on blocks one night and stripped it of its MAG wheels and everything else of value.
I had no car.
I helped my friends organize demonstrations; I wrote unpaid copy for an anti-war newspaper. After resigning a pending officer’s commission (with the full support and encouragement of the Army) I dropped out of the university to fight the good fight against the Vietnam war and racism. I bussed tables a few hours a week in the same restaurant I once managed. Financially, I wasn’t doing well.
Alexa interrupted; she touched me on the arm and leaned-in to thank me for helping her that one time years ago when she needed a friend she could trust.
I felt unworthy. I felt shame. She was too good for me. This time in her expensive clothes and me in my filthy jeans, it was obvious to us both.
She paid for my meal and said good-by for the last time.
I grew up in a Navy family. Maybe it makes me a “Navy brat” to some. I really don’t care. Military families pay a high price. They move frequently, for one thing.
Dad was a naval aviator who, among other assignments, commanded in succession two squadrons of anti-submarine jet-helicopters — one squadron in Rhode Island, one in Key West. People who know me or who have read certain essays on this blog are aware.
Dad fought within and alongside the National Security Agency to defend our country. The United States created the NSA after World War II to monitor international shipping. The global fleet of tankers and cargo boats has grown to nearly 52,000. The USA is fortunate to possess high-tech sensors that can see nuclear bombs aboard ships. It’s one of many capabilities that keeps our country safe.
The NSA has been led by a succession of Navy Admirals, and Army and Air Force Generals. Today, the NSA is led by an Army General of Japanese descent. While others were interned, his dad worked for US intelligence during the last world war, it seems, so the president trusts him. He trusts him enough that in May 2018, he assigned him to lead the National Security Agency, the Central Security Service and the U.S. Cyber Command.
Now might be a good time to inform readers that I don’t now nor have I ever had a security clearance. I am a civilian pontificator who resigned (with a little help from an Army Lieutenant Colonel) a pending infantry officer’s commission decades ago, because I believed the Vietnam War was an atrocity. I had no appetite for the killing I would be ordered to perform to successfully engage in a war that for me at least made no sense.
What I have now is the experience of living with and around military and civilian intelligence officers during the first twenty-two years of my life. I lived near and was friends with the daughter of the man who discovered the missiles on Cuba that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. My dad became a significant player in that crisis. So I’m providing a unique perspective that other civilians might not have.
I suggested in a recent essay (47 TONS) that Japan is well on its way to becoming a threat to human survival should their chain of 6,852 remote islands fall into the hands of a cabal of wrong-headed leaders. The Japanese have accumulated 47 tons of bomb-grade plutonium from their fast-reactor programs. They are producing an additional eight tons per year.
A softball sized clump of about fourteen pounds is more than enough to make one unsophisticated atomic bomb. A state-of-the-art bomb can be made from a baseball sized clump weighing nine pounds.
Do the math.
The Japanese have other capabilities that should terrify anyone who might make the mistake to oppose them. They have a complex of labs they call RIKEN that span the islands. A deputy director hung himself at work a few years ago. The signs that something might be wrong at these labs are in plain view for anyone who bothers to look.
They have sophisticated missile and space programs called JAXA.
To their credit, NHK television has complained to the American public about the challenges Japan suffers from possessing and producing too much plutonium. Right now the USA seems to be preoccupied with Russia, Korea, and China. Russia says they have stealthy, multi-warhead nuclear missiles that can hurtle through the atmosphere at almost three miles per second.
Moscow is about 5,000 miles from Washington DC, or 2,000 seconds away — 33 minutes. Thirty-three minutes seems like a long time, but some are forgetting about the 300,000 Russians who live in Cuba, most assigned to the submarine and air bases Russia built and maintains there.
Cuba is 1,100 miles from Washington DC, which is a seven minute trip should Russia position their missiles inside Cuba’s jungled mountains. Again, seven minutes seems like a lot of time. The problem is, the missiles are stealthy; we can’t see them; even if we could, the United States has nothing that can shoot them down. They fly too fast.
News reports are currently downplaying the importance and extent of Russian progress in missile technology. The expression on Trump’s face after he came out of his two hour meeting with Vladimir Putin spoke volumes. Our sophisticated media can’t conceal for long that our country is in a deep hole. The situation for our side isn’t good.
Hillary Clinton mentioned another threat from Russia during the 2016 presidential debates. Her revelation was a national security screw-up of ginormous proportions, which the press let slide.
Everyone remembers Clinton calling DT, Putin’s Puppet. No one seems to remember her warning that unmanned Russian drones were sitting in the sands off our coasts.
US intelligence believes these drone submarines carry poisons — possibly plutonium, which will be released during a conflict.
I was living in Key West during the Cuban missile-crisis. My dad chased a nuclear-armed sub out of waters near Cuba. He almost started a war, but he spoke Russian and was able to make himself understood — the USA meant business.
He thought, as did everyone at the time, that we had caught Russia in the middle of its first installation of nuclear missiles on the island. The missiles weren’t yet armed; they posed no immediate threat.
Years later the Russians revealed that the missiles seen in the CIA photo-shoot were second generation. The first generation stood already buried — locked and loaded. Had an incident ignited an exchange of fire, Florida and Cuba would be distant memories to this day.
The incident involving my dad is retold, with a few perhaps intentional mistakes to protect national security, by Oliver Stone in his remarkable book, The Untold History of the United States. Oliver Stone was a warrior — a veteran of the Vietnam war. He has credentials that go beyond his opus of award-winning films, screen-plays, and books.
I’m not going to name names, but USA companies have milked the defense department for decades. They’ve dragged their feet to keep projects funded and on-going — why don’t we all figure this out together? — to maximize profits and bonuses for executives who in turn give money to senators and congress-folks who … well … only dummies are unable to figure it out, right?
Corruption is called corruption because it corrodes; what corrodes destroys. That’s the pickle-barrel the USA is in, and it could be the reason DT is kissing the behinds of the folks who developed high-speed, stealth missile technology, first.
Donald Trump might be trying to buy time for our side. In the meantime our leaders are playing parts in a charade of good cops / bad cops to de-escalate an existential threat to our country until balance can be restored.
To write it so a child can understand: the balance of power has shifted away from the United States. Our enemies are saying that the USA no longer holds the advantages we once enjoyed. If we mess-up, and even if we don’t, we could wake up one morning — those of us who survive — to see our country reduced to a smoking ruin of radioactive waste.
OK. That’s one view of what’s going on. It’s my personal view — at least today. No one else has said it, so that’s why I published. It’s something to consider. Maybe tomorrow, more information will come out. I’ll change my mind. Who knows?
There are other explanations for why DT behaved in Singapore and Helsinki like a traitor according to one of our recent CIA chiefs, John O. Brennan. By the way, I’m 70 years old — two years younger than DT. I’ve never heard a CIA director call any president a traitor.
EDITORS NOTE: On August 15, 2018 the president announced that he had stripped Brennan of his security clearance on July 26. Like FBI Director Comey before him, Brennan learned his bad news from television reports. The man who served six presidents and gathered the intelligence to conduct the raid that took down Osama Bin Laden wasn’t offered the courtesy of an e-mail or phone call. Instead, DT called him ”erratic”and slandered him by insisting that he couldn’t be trusted with the nation’s secrets.
Meanwhile, former senior advisor Omarosa Manigault called Donald Trump ”unhinged” and a ”racist.” Omarosa is married to Pastor John Allen Newman of Jacksonville, Florida and is herself a Baptist minister who served as a chaplain in the California State Military Reserve before joining the Trump Administration.
I’m not sure, but I think I once witnessed a cartel of intelligence officers assassinate one of our presidents. They sat on the Warren Commission, if anyone is curious about who they were.
One of the members was a fired CIA chief with a grudge. I was a teenager then. What did I know? — only what the commission spoon-fed me and every other American. Enough said.
We’ll never know the truth about the Kennedy assassination. Most people in the intelligence community disliked him, but so did a lot of other people including Cubans, Russians, and organized crime. All the people who know the truth or think they do are now dead or dying.
So, to get back to other explanations: Some think DT was groomed over decades by Russian oligarchs allied with Russia and Israel. To keep him in line they provided him with a wife who was born when he was a 24-year-old skirt-chaser. He had to wait, but the wait was worth it, for him at least.
She was the daughter of a member of the communist party from a region of Yugoslavia that would later be renamed, Slovenia. She was a model unafraid to pose nude. Who doesn’t know the story?
She Germanized her name to be more in line with DT, who came from a powerful family headed by a German billionaire. His dad was once reported by some in media to be the wealthiest American — at least for a few years. He’s notorious for building segregated housing in Queens with government money during the second world war. Enough said.
Is DT’s wife a Russian sleeper agent? Of course not. The thought alone is preposterous, right?
Another theory some have put forward to explain DT is that he is a racist and delusional old man in the beginning stages of bona-fide dementia; perhaps Alzheimer’s disease. It’s a little early for dementia, but I knew a woman who was diagnosed in her thirties. It took two years for Alzheimer’s to claim her.
DT’s White House physician said no; the president will live to be 200 years old if he adjusts his eating habits a little. He’s as sharp as they come — a stable genius.
DT attended a private military academy during high school. There were two reasons young men went to military academies in those days; I remember well. One was because they were either in trouble with the law or unmanageable at home. A private academy kept them out of the house and helped maintain a peaceful lifestyle for the parents. The other reason was to avoid going to integrated schools where blacks were beginning to be introduced into mainstream civilian life.
A college suite-mate of mine bragged that he avoided school with Negroes by attending a private military academy. He also thought Martin Luther King was a communist. I’m sure readers know the type. He graduated in criminal justice and went on to become the head of a police department in a northern state.
We’ve all met people like him, whether we know it or don’t — tall, good-looking, and bad to the bone. The war-resisters, the fighters for racial justice, the men and women of conscience who cared about right and wrong were systematically identified by conservative corporate leaders and kept away from both power and the best jobs at Fortune 500 companies.
A major company in Milwaukee hired me after I graduated. They investigated and learned that I had resigned my officer’s commission to protest the Vietnam War. The background investigation took four weeks. When it was complete, their top investigator fired me.
It was my first job in industry. I learned quick to omit any mention about my anti-war past and to avoid companies that employed investigators. It seemed obvious to me that I would be unable to make a good living otherwise.
The hammer that hit me hits everyone who resists the bad people. It’s the price the poor sometimes pay for standing against the wealthy and speaking truth to power. It’s capitalism’s unseen collateral damage.
I fear for the young people starting their careers today. A trail of internet evidence exposes every free thinking American to the prejudices of the corporate elites who want docile employees who shut up and do what they’re told, no questions asked.
My regret is that, looking back, it seems like I might have had a lot to give, but nobody wanted it; no one felt they needed it. If the truth is told, everyone is expendable and replaceable, right? How many times have the powerful said so to the powerless?
The lives that matter are the lives of the billionaires who rule over us all and call it freedom. I learned that white supremacists (racists) in America can achieve the highest levels of success and be admired by almost everyone who knows them.
It’s true.
But back to the intelligence assessments: Today a Russian woman was arrested who is accused of having established a channel of communication with the GOP through the NRA (National Rifle Association). The Russians planned to launder money through the NRA, according to the allegation.
The Russian agent, Mariia Butina, is now being held without bond, because she is a flight risk. She was having an “affair” with “U.S. Person 1” to gain access “to an extensive network of U.S. persons in positions to influence political activities in the United States” according to her indictment.
Why?
Well, it gets worse in the indictment, but I don’t want my essay to go off into the weeds. People will hear all about it soon enough. Take my word. It’s bad. Who knows what else the Russians planned to better enable them to manipulate hundreds-of-thousands of paranoid, Hillary-hating-Rambos who practice their shooting skills every week at firing ranges across America?
Use imagination for a moment. Imagine that instead of Trump, it was Clinton who won the election. The “deplorables” were ready for revolution, weren’t they? Remember how they attacked vote-counting centers after Al Gore carried Florida in the year 2000?
The GOP intimidated the Supreme Court to halt a constitutionally mandated recount of state voting that was beginning to turn against them. The Constitution of the United States makes voting the exclusive province of state governments, does it not? Look it up. The Supreme Court had no constitutional standing. It’s why the majority opinion took care to restrict its ruling; it was not to be used as precedent for any future rulings from any bench in America, ever. Right?
Who knows better how to incite and fund revolutions than the KGB agents who took down the Russian state and now own and run it as a personal fiefdom?
Lock her up! Lock her up! GOP delegates screamed as they voted to make Donald Trump their standard bearer in 2016.
The citizens of the United States would have been in a second civil war right now, because the DT confederates were planning to insist that Hillary stole a rigged election, right? Does anyone remember? DT was preparing to lead a revolution against America with Russian help. It sounds crazy, doesn’t it?
Maybe Russia planned only to destabilize America. Like the Japanese at Pearl Harbor they didn’t plan for a lopsided victory. The Japanese had no plan to occupy Hawaii. They ran like frightened sharks and hoped we wouldn’t catch them. It took four years, but eventually we came, we saw their lovely islands, and we conquered.
Japan will remain in our vise-grip until the end of time. That was the plan, anyway, when their leaders signed the terms of unconditional surrender in 1945.
Some say that DT harbors a secret desire to become a dictator. He admires strong men and wants to be one. He owned a professional wrestling league and a football team for a reason, maybe.
It’s counter-intuitive, but we might have lost our country to destabilization and revolution had Hillary won the Electoral College. We have now a chance to save ourselves. We have to take that chance.
( Editors’ Note:Hillary garnered 65,853,516 popular votes to Trump’s 62,984,825. ”Third party” candidates took close to 8 million. Ms. Clinton’s margin over Trump in the popular vote was 2,868,691. Hillary won the most votes of any candidate; Trump lost the popular contest by almost eleven million votes. He received 46% of the popular vote. Hillary and the third party candidates received 54% — a margin of 8%. )
People who played ball with the Russians (like the NRA) to take down the “deep state” might want to consider that they risk being arrested someday for treason, because they aided and abetted our enemies who attacked and continue to attack our elections, a foundation stone of American liberty.
The deplorables sometimes behave like fascist bullies, don’t they? They have pretty much proved who they are over the past two years, haven’t they? Read their twitter feeds, anyone who doesn’t believe it.
They claim to be Christians who love military assault rifles. How’s that for crazy? No one who survives being shot by an AR-15 ever fully recovers.
According to polls, deplorables seem to be about forty-percent of the voting population. It’s disgraceful what they post on social media. They’ve brought the USA into a bad place.
To any Trumpletonians who might be reading this essay, here are some things to learn and remember. There is no “deep state.” White supremacy is a lie. Muslims, Negros, Mexicans, gay men and women, and progressives are people who are owed respect, because they are made in the image of God, if for no other reason. They mean you no harm.
Walls make the best prisons.
Be kind to strangers, even on Twitter. You might be tweeting to angels, unawares.
November 1, 2019:Since this essay was first published 17 months ago, things have changed. We have a new attorney general who believes his job is to protect the president.
Democrats control the House of Representatives. The new Speaker Nancy Pelosi is methodically unfolding what will soon become articles of impeachment.
Michael Cohen, the president’s fixer, is in prison. Felix Sater, Cohen’s childhood friend, has disappeared off media radar screens.
Despite the rapid rate of change, Billy Lee’s essay has never been more timely. America is in a race against the clock. Trump and his allies are unraveling America at a frenetic pace. The clock is ticking, and time is running out.
The Editorial Board
Our president seems to be working against our country, not for it.
He started a trade war. He’s bullying our trading partners.
He insults our allies. He breaks treaties. He threatens fire and fury, then coddles our enemies.
Get out of the stock market ASAP, I’m thinking. Trump is going to trash the country and mess up the world for freedom lovers. Not much time before all illusions shatter, it feels like.
Don’t do denial. Don’t go there. It will do no one any harm to protect cash and property from those billionaires who are going to steal it anyway from anyone stupid enough to give them a vehicle.
Trade warscan and do work for business owners but no one else. They wipe out the little people by driving up prices and reducing goods and services. Don’t be a little person Billy Lee; not this time.
Greed-hogs root-snouted America’s financial institutions in 2008 and took a big chunk of the 401K money intended for ordinary people’s retirement.
Does anyone remember when the GOP spent vast sums on wars and drugs to help their friends in weapons manufacturing and pharmaceuticals? The GOP added fuel to the fire by reducing revenues too — they created tax loopholes for the wealthy. When markets went south, they emptied the nation’s retirement piggy-banks (called 401Ks) to cover their losses.
They did!
They crashed the United States of America like a plane into a skyscraper. The USA was hours away from becoming a third-world country when Congress approved a rescue that involved a massive transfer of wealth from the middle-class to the wealthiest families in America. It was called the Great Recession of 2007-2008.
Who says it can’t happen again?
Interest rates are sure to rise; the GOP will empty social security and Medicare. They have no choice, because the USA won’t have the tax revenues to cover high rates on the national debt. The Republicans passed another tax cut for oligarchs a few months ago.
Surely, someone remembers.
It’s not about making America great again. It’s about making America break again.
Why? Because they can.
Billionaires don’t really care about us. They never will. Michael Jackson wrote a song about it. They killed him.
Americans have to push the GOP (who are the defenders of billionaires) out of government ASAP. Everything about the future depends on it.
Republicans are afraid of Russian oligarchs — the ultimate mob bosses. Russian oligarchs are the richest men on the planet. They are intelligence agents who carved up the Russian corpse after Reagan drove their empire into bankruptcy.
Republicans are paralyzed by the fear of foreign mob bosses with Boris Yeltzin accents. They seem incapable of doing the heroic things that need doing to defend and save our country.
It’s true.
GOP leaders are holding onto hope that they can get their families through this takeover; things will be set right someday, somehow, by somebody. They are dead wrong.
If not them, who? If not now, when?
Remember Germany and World War II? The silent ones ended up cooked, eventually — poisoned by gas and shot in trenches, their bodies burned in ovens to hide the evidence.
This is no time for cowards. The time has arrived when everyone must let go of fear and act like the heroes we must become to protect everything and everyone we care about.
If they take away our right to vote by subverting it, we will deal with it then.
For now, it seems like we are able to vote and have our votes counted, at least somewhat accurately. Yes, the last national election showed evidence of voter suppression — and tampering with vote counts around the edges in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois.
The GOP stopped all the investigations into irregularities and statistical anomalies. No one seemed to care much.
Reality Winner, incarcerated NSA hero who exposed widespread voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election. She is being held without bail. NOTE by Editors: July 4, 2018 – Reality Winner has agreed to plead guilty. Her trial was scheduled for October, before the mid-term elections. She will accept a 5 year sentence plus 3 years strict probation. No electronic devices or communication with media is allowed. The NSA contractor revealed that certain voting-machine companies were compromised — raising the possibility that the 2016 outcome was rigged. Bad people who care nothing about democracy have silenced Reality Winner and driven her into anonymity.
Nevertheless, voting is what we have to do until we no longer can. It’s the only recourse. Everyone must pray for Reality Winner, the NSA heroine, who is rotting in jail with no prospect for bail, because she tried to alert Americans to the terrors that are coming with the sabotage of our elections and the loss of our freedoms.
If the day comes when America can’t save itself by voting, it will be impossible to avoid Civil War. The last war didn’t go well for anyone on either side. The difference this time is that foreign agents are crawling all over our institutions and media.
These agents don’t like us much. They want civil unrest. They want violence. Many play the role of patriots. They quote Bible passages — like Two Corinthians.
Don’t be fooled.
We have a lot to attend to, but the State Department and most other parts of government are being systematically dismantled. Here are three things among hundreds that must be looked after:
1 — China, Russia, and their allies are working furiously to overturn the global financial system. The plan is to leave the USA (and the EU and Israel) in the cold. It’s what bit-coin schemes, among other systems, are all about. Think about it. USA financial clout is scary. Certain state-actors want to make it impossible for the USA to extort their leaders financially through sanctions and trading bans.
2 — Japan is accumulating the world’s largest inventory of bomb-grade plutonium. It has the infra-structure to weaponize it. It has the modern missile systems to deliver it. Focusing on Korea’s nuclear weapons means next to nothing. Are Koreans buying fissile material from Japan? It takes ten pounds to make a bomb. Japan has forty-seven tons already and is adding eight tons per year. Does anyone know for sure what the hell is going on? Some samurai cult is making a killing.
3 — Russia has developed a new generation of high speed multiple-warhead missiles that no one can see or shoot down. They bragged about it on TV. What happens if we attack North Korea and Russia comes to their defense like they did the last time during the first Korean War? What if China joins in, like the last time? Read T. R. Fehrenbach’s book, This Kind of War. It could become a war where we get our pants handed to us — like last time.
The problems Russia presents go far beyond Korea; they extend to the Middle East certainly but also to the Americas where Russians have bases in Cuba and Venezuela. Our state and national elections are drowning in Russian interference according to every one of our intelligence agencies.
The media does not know how to protect our country. We cannot expect to look to the media, whether right or left, for guidance. The takedown is not going to be televised. Our military is led in many instances by good-ole-boys from the states of the Confederacy, like Louisiana and Mississippi. It’s not an ideal situation that is necessarily going to lead to unity.
Our leaders have proved to almost everyone but the hopelessly naive that they are haters. Many are white supremacists. The attorney general isn’t the only cabinet member with a reputation for racial bias. Many members of the current administration act like wolves in sheep’s clothing who hide their intentions between the covers of a Bible and the American flag.
Does it have to be this way?
Over the years, the USA has killed millions of Koreans, millions of Japanese, millions of Arabs, millions of south-east Asians, millions of Germans, Native Americans, and Africans. People around the world aren’t blind. They see our love affair with guns; the mass shootings of pre-schoolers; the extra-judicial executions of civilians by a militarized police force.
Rabid people like NRA gun nuts say the dead had it coming. Gun lovers have a duty to kill certain people to protect the world and our values. The way to stop a bad person with a gun is to give a good person a bigger gun. Some say the number of executions by USA military gun-toters exceeds sixty-five million souls during the modern era alone. The carnage that flows back to the eras of slavery and the Indian Wars is incalculable.
People fear our leaders, and they should. America is a handful of countries short of conquering the entire world. Under our new leadership the chances are good that every country will fall under our power sooner, not later.
Like ancient Rome, the United States has blood on its hands. We incarcerate millions of our own citizens in ratty prisons; tens-of-thousands rot in solitary confinement.
We have a moral obligation in victory to become better people as we rule the world and force our values on people who do not necessarily share all of them one-hundred percent.
We have unmatched power; America is on the cusp of living out its destiny in total victory, even as it dominates a world divided against itself, which is a road to ruin according to Christ Jesus — who all our political leaders say they worship — some at Congressional prayer breakfasts.
Yes, the president tried to get Speaker Ryan to fire the congressional chaplain. Yes, he canceled traditional Easter services at the White House. Well, they weren’t traditional. That black Muslim Obama started them. So it’s all good, right? Can we get an amen from the White House press corps? Why not!
Because the USA has unmatched power, the stable genius who leads may take it into World War III. The writer of his masterwork, Art of the Deal, said that if anyone starts a nuclear war, it will be the Donald.
Is anyone completely certain that when that war ends, it will be the USA who counts the bodies of the dead and writes their history? What if the other side counts our dead and writes our history? What then?
One thing about war is certain. The outcome is never certain. That chilling line from the screen play No Country for Old Men echoes in my head. In the contest between man and beast, the outcome is never certain. A rancher shot a cow with his rifle. The bullet ricocheted off its head and killed the rancher. The cow was fine.
In the end and over time, no one ever really wins at war. If history teaches anything, it teaches that war solves nothing. Yes the victor gets first dibs on the spoils, but in the war to come the spoils will be irradiated — poisoned by heavy metals.
Short of nuclear war, what can break America?
We have men on our side who are among the most powerful and dangerous who have ever walked on planet Earth. Imagine the scariest ISIS terrorist. We have men on our side who are scarier.
Felix Sater speaks fluent Russian, because he was born and raised in Moscow, Russia. He says that he and Michael Cohen became best friends after his sister and him were able to emigrate to America from Moscow via Israel when he was eight. During the process of switching countries Felix changed his Russian family name to Sater. Who knows why? Michael Cohen, by the way, is the president’s fixer and attorney, correct?
Felix Sater and the president are friends.
Felix changed his last name as a kind of joke, at least to my way of thinking. In the Kabbalah tradition, the Hebrew letters that spell Sater add to the number “666”. It’s the only Hebrew root word that adds to 666, so it’s easy to identify and remember.
It’s a word that means contrary, disheveled, or chaotic. It is a number made famous by the book of Revelation in the Christian Bible. Chaos is a sign of the anti-Christ.
666 Fifth Avenue is a property owned by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law. He made the buy in 2007.
The president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, bought the building “666 Fifth Avenue.” He and Sater thought it was funny, apparently. Maybe it is.
God doesn’t scare them. They’re bad boys, and they’ll mess up anyone who crosses them. It’s what they want everyone to think, anyway. When they hurt the little people, God looks the other way. They are sure of it.
Felix smashed a piece of cut glass into someone’s face during a bar-fight. He spent a year in prison for it. So yes, he is scary. He bilked investors out of forty-million dollars in Wall Street scams. I watched him apologize on national television to all those he ruined while insisting that today he loves and serves America. He is a changed man.
He might be. I’m not saying that he’s a liar, but when I listened to his explanation I was reminded of Michael Corleone in the movie, God Father Part Two, when he testified before a congressional committee.
Michael, some viewers might recall, was a Marine combat veteran, a defender of everything American, he told investigators. His reputation meant everything. Then again, he was a fictional character invented by the writer, Mario Puzo.
Sater is a close friend of the president. It’s true. The president has many powerful friends; some are family. His sister is a judge who sits on the second highest court in America — second only to the Supreme Court. His late uncle was an MIT professor.
NOTE BY EDITORS: In April 2019, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry retired from her position as a federal appellate judge for the state of New York.
In the 1960s and 1970s the government waged war against the Mafia in America. People got hurt. Many switched sides and made deals with the government to stay out of prison.
This cooperation started after Castro came to power in Cuba in the 1960s. The CIA teamed up with those Sicilian families who had lost their casinos in Cuba. The idea was to overthrow and assassinate Castro and the leaders of the Cuban revolution. The group had some successes.
The revolutionaries who were murdered are not known to most Americans, so I won’t identify any here. Readers can click on links at the end of this essay to learn more.
The CIA didn’t need the mafia to kill Che Guevara. They and the 1,800 special forces they trained in Guatemala were able to carry out that particular hit-job all by themselves with only the tiniest bit of encouragement from Rene Barrientos, the president of Bolivia where Che was found.
I’m not picking on Felix Sater. He didn’t start cooperating with the FBI until long after the war against the Sicilian mafia was mostly won. He has proved that he is untouchable and that he can engage and influence any power player anywhere on the world stage. But in a fight for the survival of our republic and the freedom that it promises ordinary people, are folks who seem to have no limits the best we have to defend us?
Are we truly defended, truly, for real, or are we undercut and subverted? Does right make might, or is it the other way around? I honestly don’t know. No one tells the truth about anything anymore, it seems.
Rome was an empire unchallenged for a thousand years. It’s in the history books, right? The empire fought its wars on its frontiers to protect its heart, as does the USA. In the end it fell, because a mob of barbarians walked into the capitol city with clubs and broom handles and the population hailed them as liberators.
The wealthy, most of them, lost everything, because the army that defended them ran like frightened rabbits from the conquering heroes who scared them with their hairy bodies, bad skin, and missing teeth. It took hundreds of years for the world to recover from that ancient catastrophe. Who knows if it’s true?
A catastrophe in the modern world with its biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons will be harder to endure. Does anyone agree?
I’m taking a knee, hands folded, head down. I’m believing that in the gut of every thinking person is the fear that no weapon in this world can protect any of us from what’s coming next.
Whatever it is, wherever it comes from, it’s moving fast. It’s strong. It’s scary. It makes the birds in the Sand Cherry trees outside the window chirp like monkeys.
It’s morning already. Bevy Mae is at the open window, She says the sun is shining. It was supposed to rain, according to Siri and Alexa.
How is it I haven’t slept and the time for sleeping is past?
Did you stay up all night again? Bevy Mae asks.
I feel good. I’m not tired. I reach for my wife. She pushes me away then tousles my hair. I see her Mona Lisa smile.
