The noble legacy of Ferguson, Missouri.

I missed it, dang it, and the current Ferguson news keeps reminding me of my cultural loss.  It happened this way:

Just 19 nights ago,  terrified in my more dependable truck with Texsun camper in the box,  I found myself  among the fleas of the giant unwashed armpit usually known  as the St. Louis, Missouri standard metropolitan statistical area. ("Fleas" is metaphorical, of course. The reference is to eight lanes of frantic 10 p.m. westbound traffic,  fleaing, so to speak, the area.)

I can handle such motorized riots and have for years, in fact, when my own bad judgment leads me to the world's great Gothams. But this was a little worse because a new trans-Mississippi bridge project had hurled me into a detour under the superhighway mixmaster, down into the bowels of the city.  Berlin in June of 1945, but with less charm and security. I locked the doors and blundered through the abandoned warehouses and grimy brick row houses, actually thankful that the street lights were burned out. Or turned off. Or shot out. I undoubtedly would have been more disheartened if I could actually have seen the cultural environment most famously documented by The National Lampoon  report on its 1983 vacation.

I re-entered the upper world in due course, hugging the right lane when possible. Shortly I spied one of those earthy white-on-brown exit signs our government erects to guide us to special attractions.  I always associate them with sylvan settings where I might see Yogi chuckling good-naturedly  as he totes off his latest pilfered pik-a-nik basket.

Wrong, this time, Jim.  It said , "Historic Downtown Ferguson."

I mourn having rejected the invitation. The only bright spot is that if I return to the area I can visit an even more historic Ferguson. I certainly hope I live long enough to accomplish this dream.

The Softer Side

A no-mow zone in the front yard for many years has become about 2,000 square feet of "evolving prairie" or something like that. This creates a lot of trees some consider junk,  mainly cottonwood and willow, but I like them.

You also get some impressive wildflowers when the weather is lush.  I love the kind of flowers I don't have to plant, water, weed, pick, or put in fussy-cute vases.

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.
---

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.