For Democrats, and all the People who detest Trump, one word of advice: ease up on your giddiness that President Trump is heading for a colossal beat-down in November. Don’t bet the house on it. In fact, Mr. Gripes still thinks Mr. Trump has at least a 50-50 chance to be re-elected.
I understand that possibility will engender a huge depression among those Americans who look at the polls everyday – as I do religiously – and find Mr. Trump consistently four, five, six, occasionally even double-digit points behind Joe Biden in the states that will decide the election – Arizona, North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, et al – and that has been the consistent theme for a couple of months.
Yes, the pundits [‘pundit’ is an ugly-sounding word, isn’t it?] assert almost to a man that Donald Trump doesn’t have much time to overcome his numerous electoral-state deficits, and November is fast approaching. Haven’t these ‘experts’ [I use that word cautiously] learned anything at all about Donald Trump? He rises from the scrap heap over and over again, and wins in the end.
Mika Brzezinski every morning cites a couple of polls in which the President continues to lose, and insinuates to the TV audience that these polls really are significant; they aren’t actually, they’re simply a ‘snapshot’ at a particular moment, without a shred of any sustaining wisdom. They’re put on the screen simply to pump up viewers’ fervent wishes that President Trump will be finished on November 3. Five minutes after being posted on MSNBC, they’re forgotten by all.
I think the Trump haters have to understand that as President of the United States, Mr. Trump has inexhaustible resources to overcome Mr. Biden. He can manufacture news showing him in a glorious light, he can absolutely lie with impunity, with no consequences, he can even create an international crisis, allowing him to paint his opponents as anti-American, pro-violence adherents.
[An aside: It’s the pathological lying every day, about everything, that is so dispiriting. No one ever dissuades him from this behavior – no one. It just goes on and on. And, for Mr. Gripes, it’s the little lies that drive me nuts: for example, Trump’s out on a golf course a couple of weekends ago, right after Nancy Pelosi accuses him of too much golf amidst the virus, and not enough work. So, what does Mr. Trump proclaim the following Monday?: one, that he plays less golf than Barack Obama did [a blatant lie]; two, he ‘plays fast’, which allows for work time on the course; no, he doesn’t play quickly; it took him 4 hours and 10 minutes to play 18 holes on that Sunday, a very long time considering he’s the only golfer on the course; or, three, ‘I worked, too, during the round’: pure horse manure: I’ll bet the only ‘work’ he did was order a couple of diet Cokes to be brought to him mid-round; keep in mind he’s a lazy SOB, too. It’s always, always outrageous lies, piled high to the sky .]
Donald Trump, and his much more adept political advisors, may indeed figure out a way to outfox Joe Biden and his Democratic Party. That’s my fear. Trump, with his irrational outbursts, and inability to concentrate on urgent matters at hand, may not be capable of pulling the rabbit out of the hat by himself. But guys like Attorney General Bill Barr are not only smart, shrewd and incredibly ambitious, but also have no moral compass; they, among various stratagems, will certainly try to foment riots all over the country, engendering a lot of white fear among voters. That’s the game plan, and it may work. Law and order and Spiro Agnew, here we go again.
The Babe….During this interminable, exasperating endemic, Mr. Gripes, as has been a habit of his since his teens, read books. A lot of them. Some history, some fiction, and, mostly, biographies. And, strangely, his focus was on old-time baseball – 1920’s, ‘30’s, ‘40’s, ‘50’s – especially on the stars of those eras, i.e., Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, et al.
And, of course, the absolutely peerless Babe Ruth. Mr. Ruth was GIGANTIC, in every way.
I was drawn to Babe Ruth’s story – a grand American rags-to-riches tale – like a moth to a night light. In terms of star power, Ruth was an exploding nova star, compared to everyone else’s dim headlight, then or now.
Ruth was a ‘natural’ in the truest sense of the word. One of his biographers, Tom Meany, a 1940’s-50’s sportswriter for the New York Daily News, explained his innate gifts this way:
‘Ruth was an instinctive ball player. He required no more tutoring in the game than a seal pup would in swimming. Babe didn’t need any powers of concentration and study to work on improvements. Babe came full-blown. When he was pitching [and he was one of the best pitchers in the majors when he first came up] he neither knew nor cared whether the batter who faced him stood at the right or left side of home plate, and when he was hitting he never took the time to distinguish between southpaws [lefties] and right handers. They all looked the same to the Babe….Tom Meany, from ‘Babe Ruth’, published in 1947.
It’s been almost completely forgotten these days that Babe Ruth arrived in the major leagues as a 19-year-old left-handed pitcher, and immediately became one of the best. Statistically that era produced the finest pitching in baseball history, and Babe Ruth dominated: in 1916, at 21, he won 23 games, struck out 170, had a 2.28 ERA, and threw 9 complete-game shutouts to boot. But Babe loved hitting, so he soon became an every-day outfielder, and never pitched seriously again. No one now remembers that Babe Ruth pitched, and was an All-Star. Amazing, isn’t it?
Because he was fully formed as a superb and powerful hitter early on, he never developed bad habits foisted on him by incompetent batting coaches. No ‘tweaking’ with that swing. Hitting from the left side, he’d hold the bat – a very heavy 38-ounce model – with the right pinkie finger off the end of the bat, and swing for the fences every time. No ‘Punch-and-Judy’ dribbler down the third base for the Babe. His swing was ferocious, uncoiling from his heels. [No wonder the kids and fans absolutely adored him. I once asked my father about Babe Ruth, and he simply said, ‘Every home run I saw him hit was a thing of beauty.’]
Before I get into some of his career statistics, one historical note should be mentioned: Mr. Babe Ruth, among his achievements, was the savior of baseball as the national game. In 1918, the ‘Black Sox’ scandal occurred, with a half-dozen or so of players on the Chicago White Sox taking money from professional gamblers to ‘throw’ games in that year’s World Series. The plot was discovered afterwards, and several players were banned for life from playing again in the major leagues. Those crimes obviously put professional baseball in a horrible position, and the end of professional baseball became a very definitive possibility.
Baseball got lucky, though: on the heels of the 1918 scandal, 1919 turned out to be Babe Ruth’s ‘coming-out’ year for his incredible talents as a hitter, and specifically, a home run slugger. He hit 37 in 1919, by far the most in the majors, and he was off and running: 54 HRs, 135 runs batted in, and a .376 batting average in 1920: his 54 HR total exceeded every other team’s total in the big leagues that year; then, in 1921, even better: 59 home runs, 168 RBIs, and a .378 batting average. Fans came out to games in the millions to see the Babe smash those majestic home runs, and the game was saved.
The grand exploits of Ruth were not limited to his feats on the baseball field. Supercharged alongside those feats was an incredible ‘extracurricular’ lifestyle off the diamond. Seemingly a man of inexhaustible energy and drive, the Babe never slowed down for an instance.
Here’s a typical ‘slice of life’ episode from the life of the great Babe Ruth gleaned from an account I read recently:
All of the games when Ruth played were, of course, day games. Before road games, as he left the hotel to go the ballpark, he’d fill up his room’s bathtub with bottles of beer and ice. After the game, a party would naturally commence in his suite into the early AM hours.
On one such occasion, we find Babe Ruth, buck-naked, sitting in a big chair, swigging from a beer bottle, showgirls all over him, a huge cigar extruding from his mouth. He looks up at Lou Gehrig, his roommate at the time, [as abstemious in behavior as Babe was hedonistic] and, wearing a huge grin, Babe declares, ‘Baseball’s not such a bad life, is it, Lou?’
Babe Ruth roared through life, at full tilt, relishing every moment of an extraordinary life.
‘Mr. Gripes’
By Jim Israel
July 31, 2020
Trump’s Big Worry – Donald Trump’s modus operandi now, if readers examine it, is identical to his methods prior to his Presidency. He obfuscates, he prevaricates, he confuses, he bullies, he cheats, he denigrates, and he doesn’t hold fixed positions on anything. Plus, he’s ruthless.
It’s hard to get a ‘fix’ on exactly what his strategy is regarding Robert Mueller’s investigation. We only know that he’s dead set on closing it down.
One of the obvious questions I would pose to Mr. Trump is if he, as he claims, did not collude with the Russians during the 2016 race, why doesn’t he just let the investigation run its course to the end, at which point he’d be exonerated of any Russian collusion, and be judged innocent? He’s much too vehement about stopping it for Mr. Gripes to believe that there’s ‘nothing there’, as Mr. Trump asserts.
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| CNNMoney.com |
Mr. Gripes has a different take on Trump’s strenuous opposition to the investigation. Collusion will be very difficult to prove: unless there are ‘smoking guns’ out there – on paper or on e-mails – criminality will be virtually impossible to prove. Witnesses asserting his guilt will be countered by witnesses saying he’s innocent, and the whole matter will devolve into a ‘he-said-she-said’ situation, and produce nothing but a muddled confusion. Without hard evidence, nothing will stick.
So, it’s not collusion that is the principal focus of Mr. Trump these days; he’s most worried about something else: those tax returns. The further Mr. Mueller’s investigations delve into Mr. Trump’s rather spotty and sordid past, the more likely the concealed – and probably criminal – business deals come into play. I’d bet that what keeps our President up at night.
Let’s not forget that Trump thought right up to Election Day he had no chance to be elected; he figured he’d lose to Hillary, and then no one would care enough to pick through his earlier business deals. So, he probably didn’t cover his tracks particularly well. Whatever it was, Mr. Trump acts like he’s guilty of some very bad behavior, actions that could send him to jail.
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| therealdeal.com |
I’ll leave my readers with a hunch guess as to what he was involved in: financial entanglements in selling arms to enemies of the United States [perhaps laundering tons of cash]. The arms business, which can involve very rich sovereign countries and some murderous rivals of ours, i.e., Syria, Iran, China, Russia, might have proven just too alluring for a money-grubbing monster like Mr. Trump.
* * *
Clown Car, Revisited….Remember the Republican candidates’ ‘Clown Car’ of 2016? Sure you do…Hucklebee, Perry, Carson, Cain, Jeb Bush, etc., as well as the driver of the bus, Donald J. Trump. We laughed at the spectacle, but couldn’t take our eyes off of them. Well, the Democratic Party, not to be undone, now possesses its own clown car, 2018 version; alas, there’s nothing remotely interesting about this crew -- they’re just ancient, like the barnacles Mr. Gripes, in his young summers, used to chisel off the bottoms of imperious rich guys’ boats at the end of Long Island.
Just look at some of them: that perennial race horse Joe Biden, who incidentally would be a shoo-in in any gleaming-white-teeth competition, reminds Mr. Gripes of the pet hamster who scurries feverishly around his wheel, going nowhere; Joe never stops running as he bides his time for another election; the annoying Nancy Pelosi [not running, but part of the menagerie], who’s seemingly been around DC since the James Polk Administration -- I have a single piece of advice, Ms. Pelosi: do an Amelia Earhart and disappear; Elizabeth Warren, no longer Pocahontas, but now the female Sitting Bull of the Senate; Bernie Sanders is in the hunt again, although he’ll be 100 before we know it. He thinks the country is moving in his direction – Bernie, don’t delude yourself; you really have no shot. [He’ll be tarred and feathered as a Communist stooge, and the Republicans will find all kinds of lethal Commie dirt on him, most likely with Russian assistance.]
And, in a stunning development, the vehicle just took on another passenger: John Kerry announced last week he’s considering a run in 2020. Is he kidding? John, your campaign in 2004 was a complete fiasco, and I’ll bet there’s not one Democrat out there who’d vote for you again. Please take a personal inventory, and stop embarrassing yourself – a plush Nantucket retirement with Mrs. Heinz57 awaits you.
If this meager bunch is representative of what the Democrats will be offering in 2020, Mr. Trump must be grinning from ear to ear.
* * *
A headline from ‘Slate’ a few weeks back: ‘The official who ordered 147 trees cut down so a well-heeled contributor would have a ‘better view out his front window’ is named National Parks Commissioner by the Trump Administration.’ Just beautiful. Three, maybe seven, long, long years of this car wreck to go, folks.
* * *
The real life stories are so heartless, so cruel. Just recently, a man who’s lived in this country for 39 years, and who has four daughters, is deported back to Mexico. Why? No reason that makes sense. Pure vindictiveness. And, let’s face it, as the Trump people place more and more of their supporters into positions of authority, these tragedies will occur more and more frequently.
Mr. Gripes’ suspicion is that during the Obama years, immigration officials and police were foaming at the bit, infuriated by Barack Obama’s benevolent approach to essentially harmless [and tax-paying] immigrants. Now that Trump and Sessions have given carte blanche permission to arrest and deport, the law is out for blood. Immigration enforcement increasingly isn’t differentiating between criminals and perfectly honest, law-abiding individuals – they’re arresting anyone without the proper documentation. This is just so stupid: besides, the courts and jails are currently completely overwhelmed. It’s a bureaucratic morass. Why at this time, with so many critical problems this country faces, create one more enormous, unnecessary headache, and heartache? These Trump operatives show no mercy.
* * *
‘A Day Late, A Dollar Short’ – Blue State Governors and Mayors, you blew it: you had eight years of a supportive Democratic President in the White House sympathetic to your burdens: he’d at least listen to your concerns about the crumbling urban areas: he was your hope and opportunity to obtain the financing you desperately need to repair transit systems, railroads, buildings, bridges, schools, roads, basically the entire crumbling infrastructure of this country. That’s right: you had two terms of a benevolent White House. But virtually nothing was accomplished, as you did nothing but fall into petty, divisive, inter-party and intra-party disputes, and the inevitable happened: A Republican President came into office, and you’re today staring at the implacable countenance of an undeniably hostile Republican President and Congress. You’ll end up getting crumbs.
If it were all up to Donald Trump, he wouldn’t fork over a nickel. ‘Sh_t,’ he roars, ‘Those a__holes didn’t vote for me, and now they come begging? That ain’t happening’. The slashing of funding for urban areas is only just beginning. So what if De Blasio in New York City needs billions for transit repair and upgrade? Trump will stump him on his progressive throat. All of you fat-cat urban politicians who never have to contend with any real opposition in your elections: you dawdled, you bitched, you whined, you got nothing done, and now you’re in real big trouble. The Republicans play very hard ball – it’s all ‘vote for me or face the harsh consequences‘.
And here’s a double whammy: have you noticed that interest rates are going up, after a long period of dormancy? For years, we had low interest rates attached to municipal bonds, lessening the debt obligations – from now on, with the deficit exploding, the new debt service is going to be much more expensive. Shame on all of you for wasting a golden opportunity. From here on you’re going to pay dearly for your interminable turf wars.
* * *
Soon to be Legal: Sports Bets…The National Football League, as a lot of you know, has suffered some setbacks in the last couple of years: its TV ratings, which allowed the league to grow exponentially over the past 60 years, have faltered a bit lately: a drop of 16%, which is significant. Why? There was a national anthem kerfuffle; severe player injuries on the field, which sidelined many of its stars; recognition by the public that life-altering concussions occur all too frequently, and attendant to that, a prohibition by many mothers in allowing their sons to play football. All these factors at least chipped away at the NFL’s massive popularity.
Well, Mr. Gripes has a solution, and it’s staring right in the face of the sport’s grandees: betting on games. And this goes for every other sport out there.
Up to now, the various professional sports leagues have pushed mightily to not allow the public to bet on games of any kind [only one sport, horse racing, is generally permitted to take wagering in a public setting, and has been for centuries. Why is that sport exempted from the ban? Maybe because it’s forever been a pastime of rich and powerful men, but that’s just a guess.]
Why has virtually every professional sports league fought so vehemently against betting on competitive games across the board? Perhaps because gambling is considered a ‘sin’ in many quarters, including organized religion, and the politicians, who hold the hammer on this issue, don’t want to have to tangle with opposition generated by their more devout constituents? Or, the unproven fear that as gambling takes hold in a community, the moral fabric of that community will start to fray?
In any event, the leagues now are beginning to change their tunes. Finally, it’s dawning on these rather slow-on-the-draw officials that the revenues the leagues could generate from legalized gambling would be absolutely huge. If they’re worried about television ratings, gambling will insure a much bigger audience, and consequently, much larger fees for the rights to televise these games.
And, they’d be entitled on some level to a percentage of the revenues generated by the betting. Ten percent, let’s say, of the ‘take’ would mean a ‘gusher’ of cash for teams.
Its appeal to the public is assured. Here’s why: suppose the football New York Jets are playing the Indianapolis Colts. Mr. Gripes, who roots for the Jets, would like nothing more than to walk over to a betting establishment, lay $20 on the Jets to cover the point spread, and then settle down in front of an enormous TV to enjoy the game, over a huge hoagie, fries and pint of beer –ah, heaven on earth. And he’d probably make another bet on the second televised game as well. A game is so much more interesting when there’s a wager involved. It’s a captive audience. Ask any sports fan.
Think of that $20 bet multiplied by a portion of the average 14,000,000 football viewers who watch a game on any given Sunday. If half of them bet $20, we’re talking revenues of $140,000,000! And that’s just for that one Sunday afternoon.
If the politicians can get out of the way, this is a guaranteed bonanza. No need to brand, or expend millions on advertising. We all know how to bet. If it were permitted, many, many fans would love to gamble a little on games. When it’s legal, it can’t miss. And everyone wins: the states, cities and municipalities, which are desperate for cash, get a piece of the action [without raising taxes]; the leagues make a fortune as television ratings skyrocket…..and the public will love it.
It’s coming….in a decade, legalized sports gambling will be entrenched in this country.
Count on it.
Jim Israel, aka Mr Gripes
February 12, 2018
Straight to Hell, Fidel --Mr. Gripes was handed an early Christmas present on November 25th: he woke up to discover that Fidel Castro had died. My immediate reaction: ‘The SOB is finally dead -- this morning there’s one less bastard on this earth.’
And, indeed, what a ruthless, cruel, heartless monster he was. And crazy, too: when Nikita Khrushchev and John Kennedy were attempting delicately to extricate their countries from initiating a nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, Fidel Castro’s persistent advice to Mr. Khrushchev was : ‘Go, go for it. Use the missiles to launch those nuclear weapons on the U.S. if America threatens Cuba.’ Castro was advocating the destruction of the planet, which would surely have followed any attack on the United States mainland. When I read this recently, I was immediately convinced: Fidel Castro was a demonic and murderous psychopath.
Mr. Castro did, miraculously, manage to survive 57 years in power, since 1959. That is astonishing. But, readers, don’t be misled by the fools who still support the Castro reign. Don’t believe for a second it’s because there was a groundswell of love and devotion to Fidel. No, the Castros have maintained power through the very same means that all cruel despots use: a huge secret police apparatus that penetrates every aspect of Cuban society, eliminating any political opposition through intimidation and imprisonment, prohibiting a free press or free assembly, or simply through the barrel end of a gun, or the noose at the end of a piece of rope.
Cubans are a very gifted and beautiful people blessed with hard work-ethics, who reside on a gorgeous island that possesses bountiful natural resources. Fidel Castro essentially took these people and their magnificent country and ground them into the ground. Mr. Gripes laughs when he hears the apologists assert, ‘But Castro gave his people free medical care.’ Yeah, and the doctors, I bet, deal with a lot of malnutrition. The jobless economy is so dire, and has been for so long, that people struggle to eat. It’s an impoverished, tattered country.
Castro, when he came to power, had an opportunity to mold his country into one of the most envied nations on earth: his people, if they were treated differently, and if Castro had chosen a more benevolent path, could easily have achieved whatever they wanted. And let’s not forget that American investment and aid would have poured in. The country had everything it needed. But Castro didn’t hesitate to take another road: his ambition was one-man rule and domination, and if killing enemies and destroying the economy were the methods to get there, so be it.
His supporters in this country never did accept Fidel Castro as the criminal he was. After all, he was a devoted Marxist, and the leader of a country that was a ‘workers paradise.’ Everyone would be treated the same, the doctor or the peon in the sugar fields. It was going to an egalitarian society. Castro promised this, and a lot of duped people in America and Europe believed him for a long, long time.
Did you know that Cuban citizens, whose land is surrounded by the spectacular Caribbean Sea, are not allowed to keep their own boats! Why? Fidel Castro, a man of the people, was afraid his people would try to escape the ‘workers’ paradise’ and direct the ships to America, to a free life. Fidel Castro was a horrific, sorrowful catastrophe, who mistreated his own people right up to the end.
Jobless Man from Scranton -- At least he’s honest: Joe Biden, soon to be out of his job as court jester in the Obama royal court, admitted a couple of weeks ago, “I’ve done this [politics] since I was 26 years old; I can’t do anything else.’ Naturally, in the same breath he announces he’s running for President in 2020. Guys like him always are running for office, or getting ready to run. They’re like racehorses – lead them to a race track, and they witlessly run, and run, and run.
Mr. Biden, not a man of introspection, doesn’t realize he’s finished. His time has passed: he’s worked successfully the ‘I’m-from-scrappy-Scranton-and me-and-the-working-man-are-attached-at-the-hip’ crap for a long time. His supporters, however, extensively white, blue-collar, union, urban, and a bit long-in-the-tooth, have just rejected the Democrats and voted for Trump. He’s now a relic of the Franklin Roosevelt era.
When Mr. Biden confesses he can’t do anything else but run for office, he’s not kidding: I bet he couldn’t sell a chocolate bar or a comic book to kids on their lunch break in a candy store. Mr. Gripes, despite Mr. Biden’s jobless plight, sheds no tears for him; some fat-cat, liberal, Democratic tax-dodge foundation will give him a cushy $750,000 no-show sinecure for which Mr. Biden, flying first-class around the country while staying at $800-a-night, big-shot hotels, will attend well-heeled conferences to exhort crestfallen Hillary souls to keep the faith –2020 will be here soon enough.
Why is Joe Biden in such a hurry to announce a run at this ungodly early date? [Also, let’s not forget that challengers like Elizabeth Warren and, yes, Bernie Sanders, are growling about running, too]. Mr. Gripes has a theory. The Democratic Party, I suspect, is convinced that Donald Trump is going to fall on his face, fail miserably as President, and serve just one term, gift-wrapping a Democratic Presidency in 2020.
Beware, once again, my vanquished and wishful-thinking Democratic friends: Mr. Trump may turn out to be quite adroit at retail politics. In the interregnum before he takes office next month, for example, Donald Trump has already made some pronouncements that are broadly appealing to a majority of Americans: his caustic criticism of the ridiculous cost of the new Air Force One [$4 billion!], and his anger at the ongoing price overruns for a new military plane, the F-35 [$400 billion, and counting!!], are very shrewd ploys: no one is for extravagant waste. [Of course, nothing may come of his comments, but Mr. Trump is surely aware that first impressions in this country are usually all that’s remembered.]
Americans have known of outrageous overruns for decades, and nothing is ever done about them. I applaud Mr. Trump for at least announcing that the days of rubber-stamped approvals without real oversight are over. And if Mr. Gripes, who cannot conceive ever voting for Mr. Trump, is muttering, ‘Go get ‘em, Donald, beat on them like a drum,’ there are a hell of a lot of other potential 2020 voters out there, Republican and Democrat, thinking the same thing.
‘The War on Christmas’ – It’s bizarre that right next to the uproar these days about ‘fake’ news on the internet, Americans are simultaneously bombarded with the notion that this country is in the midst of a subversive ‘war on Christmas.’ Talk about a phony and spurious issue….
Mr. Gripes reasons that this is another ‘shot across the bow’ by the radical / evangelical right towards liberals and their media pals. It’s a slippery slope, the neo-Conservatives proclaim, when media and businesses instead of proudly asserting ‘Merry Christmas’, substitute ‘Happy Holidays’ as the greeting. Taking ‘Christ’ out of Christmas will be next, they say, then the elimination of Christ in public discourse and, ultimately, the banning of Christianity itself.
The fear is absurd on its face: Mr. Gripes took a stroll down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan a couple of weeks ago, enjoying immensely the Christmas decorations in department store windows, as well as the festive bonhomie of everyone walking down the avenue. Christmas, on 5th Avenue, is no different now than it was when my family and I took that same stroll 60 years ago.
‘They’re killing Christmas’ is a bold-faced lie. How does an obvious falsehood like this manage to endure for such a long shelf life? For one thing, it’s been promulgated by Bill O’Reilly for years, even though Mr. Gripes is convinced Mr. O’Reilly doesn’t believe a word of it. Let’s keep in mind, though, that Mr. O’Reilly is one terrific publicity engine for his endeavors, especially his books. [He did write one on Jesus Christ, in fact.] He knows that pushing this ‘dead Christmas’ idea, although patently untrue, arouses the conspiratorial tendencies of the Radical right, which always thinks liberals are out to snuff out ‘traditional’ American values and eviscerate our rights. Bill O’Reilly wants to create publicity, and a theory, however outlandish, about the demise of Christmas will have the media eating out of Mr. O’Reilly’s hands. And, voila, his books then fly out of the bookstores.
Let’s get one thing straight, by the way: the American Constitution guarantees religious freedom for all citizens. We’re free to belong to any religious order, whether it’s Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Atheism, Islam, even Paganism. Sure, we’re a predominantly Christian country, but religious freedom is a protected right for everyone, no matter how minuscule the number of believers may be.
What’s especially dismaying to Mr. Gripes is that our President-Elect has taken up the cause. The other day, he made it a point to emphasize the words ‘Merry Christmas’ repeatedly in an impromptu press conference, giving credence to those who think saying ‘Happy Holidays’ is all a conspiracy to delete ‘Christmas’ from our American lexicon. Doesn’t Mr. Trump have many more important matters to deal with, as he’s going to be President in less than a month? Maybe not.
It’s Mr. Gripes’ contention that Donald Trump revels in conspiracy-thinking. It fits him to a tee. First of all, if the theory is dramatic enough, it creates a lot of publicity – and good or bad publicity is all Mr. Trump is after. Second, there’s no need to be truthful: just create a ‘plausible’ fiction, throw it up against the wall, and see what sticks. Verifiable facts are bunk. Mr. Trump, with his Obama-birth fabrications [‘I have investigators over in Honolulu right now and they’ve come up with some real interesting stuff.’], knew it was a total lie, but that issue, I think, actually jump-started his campaign to the White House.
And, last, conspiracy theorists, like Trump, thrive on tumult, disruption – shake up the established order, and create noise. So, of course, Donald Trump is going to play up a Christmas conspiracy – it’s custom-made for him.
Jim Israel, aka ‘Mr. Gripes’
December 31, 2016
