Trump

It's not easy to write seriously about this guy, especially if you think he is performing a useful role in American political discourse.

Limited but still worthwhile is Trump's  absolute rejection of the mealy-mouth sputterings of politicians willing to risk offending no one, tiny men and women terrified of riling some identifiable group. Black people. Women.  Fundie religionists. Humanists. Cat lovers. Art lovers. Gun lovers  -- probably descending downward to whatever internet group exists to mock  folks who eat hummus. None must have the tender hymen of virgin ears pierced.

He came into this campaign with the idea that millions are fed up with limp language of PC. His polling numbers tend to prove him correct.

But the poor, sad egomaniac's insight stops a world away from the notion that plain speech, blunt speech, is not the same as stupid and vile speech. For instance, he could have said of John McCain:

"From what we know this guy endured pain we can't imagine under Communist torture. For six long years he was, in fact, a military hero as most people define the term. It's too bad people confuse this with the kind of wisdom we need in a political leader, balh blah blah.

That was his point, exactly,  a valid argument on which Trump committed seppuku by expressing it as mockery, intentionally cruel sarcasm displaying a strong hint of envy.

Mexicans are rapists. 

Nonsense, of course.  But he could say,  the illegal immigrant population from Latin America includes a high proportion of thugs.  Even that will inflame passions, but it is a proposition which can be debated. It can be tested for truth. If found true it can be a base for policy. As Trump vomited it out, it is a flash-bang grenade tossed simply to make his 15 minutes last longer and longer and longer.

The coy reference to Ms. Kelly's vagina was probably the final cross-stroke in Trump's ritual suicide. Rag-on remarks have been around forever but, in my life experience, anyway, always taboo in any but the most testosterone laden gatherings, even in the years before our intellectual betters decided that that open debate should be forbidden except when framed in words which carry zero chance of offending some group or even some one.  (That's the way it is now ...trigger warning...  honest, Injun.)

A Trump with his mouth under even small control would have said something like: Ms. Kelly, I speak my mind without a lot of editing for mushy political correctness.  Maybe I go to far sometimes, but I think your question reflects a stupid approach to journalism. The campaign is about huge issues, and whether or not one candidate sometimes uses words too strong for you is not one of those issues. Grow up."  

The furor about stupid journalism and Kelly's alleged infantilism would have been almost as raucous,  but it would bear on things we need to think about, namely stupid journalism and  arrested-development teevee personalities.* It is far more important than her menstrual status.  Goodness, I'll bet the nation can avoid thinking about her cycle for months on end. If it can't, what the Hell. We might as well elect The Donald because we deserve no better.


*I do not necessarily accuse Megyn of those faults

Well I'll be Damned; I'm a Victim

...and I'm covered under the Americans with Disability Act.

I learn from an old George Will column that I am likely afflicted,  per the American Psychiatric Association manual of disorders,  with a DSM-IV ailment. Specifically it  is oppositional defiant disorder  characterized by displaying a pattern of negativistic, defiant, disobedient, and hostile behavior toward authority figures.

It means that when I yell that Hillary is a harridan, the kind of thing to which men are pleased to be unmarried, I can't help it.

I never thought of it as a disease under ADA.  I thought I was just fulfilling my anti-statist duty by  expressing a pertinent and verifiable fact. So I am slightly disappointed to discover that I'm merely nuts.

Still, I guess there's the compensation of knowing that if I fill out the right form I can probably get some bennies.
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I mentioned Will's vocabulary a while back, and I found another dandy.  I had to look it up.

Swivet.

It means hissy fit, as in Mrs. Clinton's behavior when questioned about Benghazi. Or learns about interns.

Elsewhere in America

In Macon, Missouri.

They are to transportation as the Colt 1911 is to weaponry, and they never fail to trigger my acquisitive mania.

There were 13 of them, including the lust object called Scrambler. Of which, below, the interior of the blue one at far right. Just too tired.

Or how about a nice flat fender Willys from the 40s or early 50s?

Like the Scrambler,  just too tired. The engine was missing and the transmission stored on the floorboards.

No one was around the place, else I'd have undoubtedly asked prices, then mentally added restoration costs of  $goodgawdafriday  before deciding there are other toys which would give me more pleasure per buck invested.

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I am writing trivia yesterday and today, little more than pretty pictures captioned. The banality must suffice until I work my way into  something more about a trip with a purpose; tracking my kin and my larger people, the Scots Irish, the redneck hillbillies of whom I am a recent incarnation.

I'll probably get round to saying something prosy about it. For now leave it this way:  Anyone who walked the Wilderness Road from the foothills just above Tidewater Country, stumbled on and through the Cumberland Gap, and followed  Boone's Trace up to his first fort was one tough son of a bitch. Or daughter.  From seven generations forward, here's to you Grandpa John and Grandma Christina.

The Gap.

What I saw in America

Beautifully restored and maintained atop "The Pinnacle" overlooking the Cumberland Gap.

The Civil War piece, originally emplaced for a battle never fought, inspired three of our fellow citizens.

If the gods are just, Gary C. was stricken limp forever and Alicia C. became permanently frigid. DGB should be let off with multiple public horse whippings and a court order barring reproduction.