Memoir, from just outside the box

Christmas Eve

December 24, 2016

This Christmas Eve, I am haunted by a strange emotion. My entire being is already finished with president-elect Donald Trump. In my mind, I am fast-forwarding to the possibilities for 2020. A recent news article called for something new from the Democratic Party, someone new to run for president and vice president.

Gavin Christopher Newsom for president

Born October 10, 1967

In 2003, Gavin Newsom was elected as the 42nd mayor of San Francisco. He was re-elected in 2007 with 72% of the vote. He was elected Lieutenant Governor of California in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. He is the author of “Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government.” In February 2015, Newsom announced he was creating a committee to explore a run for Governor of California in 2018.

Samantha Jane Power for vice president

Born September 21, 1970

Samantha Power is an Irish-American academic, author and diplomat who currently is the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Power began her career by covering the Yugoslav Wars as a journalist. From 1998 to 2002, she served as the Founding Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she later became the first Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy. She was a senior adviser to Senator Barack Obama until March 2008, when she resigned from his presidential campaign after apologizing for referring to then-Senator Hillary Clinton as “a monster.” Samantha Power won the Pulitzer Prize for her book “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.”

1950

I read Michael Moore’s five-point plan for resisting the Trump presidency. Michael Moore suggests that the left-wing resistance movement take over the Democratic Party. Once Trump is inaugurated on January 20, 2017, we will see whether the Democrats in the House and Senate have any fight in them. If any Democrats give in to Trump, my guess is they will be bombarded with condemnation. We on the Left had Hillary Clinton shoved down our throats. In 2016, our candidate, win or lose, should have been Bernie Sanders.

Two examples of my disgust with Democrats: 1) In 1999, Bill Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, thus destroying the Glass-Steagall Act (1933), which had kept Wall Street corruption in check for over 60 years. 2) As a Senator in 2003, Hillary Clinton voted FOR the Bush/Cheney Iraq War, as did Joe Biden and John Kerry. I will never forgive them, nor will I forgive the Republican Party, for that display of jingoistic war-profiteering. By the way, Senator Obama and Senator Sanders voted AGAINST the Bush/Cheney Iraq War.

Six weeks after Trump’s victory, the Left is still shocked and stunned. Most of us feel like a corpse floating face-down in a sludge pond. I have learned to appreciate the Lame Duck period, wherein we all have a few months to adjust to the coming upheaval, which may be just the traumatic rite of passage this country needs to spark rebirth and renewal.

It’s 10 AM on Christmas Eve. My brother Ron is helping his wife Megan at her flower shop. She has a big order going out to a rich client: 12 arrangements for a Christmas dinner table 65 feet long. At 4 PM, Ron & Megan will head across town to her family’s table for 24. I will stay home with the female cat, Steve, and dine on a Christmas Eve pizza. Since Thanksgiving, I have tried to stay out of the way of the Christmas juggernaut, I have avoided being trampled by the madding crowd. In my golden years, I have found it wise to just step aside until the holiday season blows over.

my brother and his lap dog

December 24, 2024

It’s 5 PM. Ron & Megan are across town at her family’s table for 16. By choice, I am home alone with the 130-pound Great Pyrenees, Tissot (t’SOH), and the cat, the new male Maine Coon rescue whom I refuse to call Kiki. I have changed the cat’s name to George Cooney.

When I was a kid in the 1950s, there was a novelty Christmas song on the radio that began, “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth…” This year, in my very own parallel universe, all I want for Christmas is for Joe Biden, who has full immunity for all official acts, to acknowledge publicly that Donald Trump is an insurrectionist and that, via the self-executing Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3, Donald Trump is hereby constitutionally disqualified from taking office on January 20, 2025.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress,

or elector of President or Vice President,

or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States or under any State,

who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress,

or as an officer of the United States,

or as a member of any State legislature,

or as an executive or judicial officer of any State,

to support the Constitution of the United States,

shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same,

or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof…