Barlow On Trump

     I got a letter from my Uncle Barlow the other day.  I hadn't heard from him in quite a while, so I was glad for the opportunity to catch up.
     He still lives the country life out there in Barlow County. He's fully retired now, so mostly he hangs out with his buddies and spends a little time with his jug. He's a good-hearted guy, so from time to time he also gets involved with trying to solve problems for his friends. That's what he wanted my help with in his most recent letter. Here's what he had to say.

"Dear Nephew,
     "I am truly sorry I have been so long without writing. As you might think, life doesn't change much out here in Barlow County, so I guess I thought I'd just wait until I had some news, and I lost track of the time between letters. Anyhow, something has come along that I need your advice on.
     "I am worried to death about Millie over at the library.  I've told you about her before. She's a good person and a hard worker, but she's mighty strong in her opinions, and so she gets worked up from time to time.  Since this fellow Trump got elected president, she's worked up just about all the time. I'm afraid she's going to blow a fuse.
     "Now, I've got some sympathy for Millie's views on this, because it did seem to me that when Trump got elected, folks had put a fox in the henhouse.  I thought maybe if she and I sat down and shared with each other about it, she might begin to feel like at least she wasn't alone. But it didn't work. The more we talked, the more upset she got.
      "Then I thought maybe if I did a little research, I could do a better job of it.  Find some little thing here or there that Millie could feel better about.  And that was the start of the thing I need your advice on.  You see, the research just got me confused.
       "Now, for starters, I  couldn't figure out why this Trump fellow wanted to be president.  You don't have to read very much to figure out that he's the kind who'd steal the coins off a dead man's eyes.  I wondered what in the world made him think he wanted to get tangled up in public service.
     "After I read a little more, one notion did occur to me.  Apparently some of his business ventures haven't gone too well.  Casinos and hotels and such. And I read that, now he's president, lobbyists and politicians and even foreign governments are lining up to have their affairs at places he owns. And I read that some of our government's friendlier policies are beginning to land on countries where he has investments.  So, maybe he figured if he got to be president, and it sort of became American government policy that you'd be smart to trade with Trump, his bottom line might look a little better.
     "Anyhow, there wasn't much comfort in that for Millie, so I kept reading.  And I got more confused. You see, we have a saying out here in Barlow County:  'Watch out for the kind of folks who'll pee on your head and tell you it's rain.'  That has always seemed like good, obvious advice to me, so I couldn't figure out what made Trump think it was a good idea to fill up his whole cabinet with that sort.
     "And then, one notion did occur to me. Since we've already got an abundance of such folks in Congress, maybe Trump thought he'd get along better over there if he matched them up with their own kind.  But it's just a notion, and anyhow, there's not much comfort for Millie there, either.
     "So I kept on reading. I thought surely I could find a person or two in the Trump camp who wouldn't make Millie's eyeballs roll back in her head.  But I only came up with the daughter and the son-in-law, whose previous government experience, near as I can tell, consisted of going to the post office. And then there's that press secretary fellow Spicer. I don't know what they're paying that boy, but I hope he's saving it up. He's boogered up that job so bad that after he's through with it he'll be lucky to get work playing piano in a bawdy house.
     "Anyhow, as you can see, I could sure use some advice on how to help Millie. Otherwise, there's not much news from Barlow County. About the biggest thing is that some city fellows opened a brew pub out on the bypass. I guess they're thinking to snare the tourists on the way to the beach.
    "None of us had ever heard of a brew pub, so we didn't know it's just a beer joint where the beer has fancy names.  Scooter over at the cafe thought it might be competition, so he went to try the place out.  They had lots of different beers, and Scooter thought he was obliged to sample them all.  He came home drunk as a fiddler's bitch and tried to get romantic with his wife, Ida.
     "Now, Ida is a real deep sleeper, and waking her up sudden is not a good idea.  Scooter startled her, and she came swarming up out of the bed clothes and clocked him with an elbow.  Then she tuned in to what he'd been trying, and called him a pervert and clocked him again.
     "Scooter did figure the brew pub might amount to competition, so he decided he'd start serving mixed drinks over at the cafe. This was a long reach for Scooter, as his previous idea of a mixed drink had been to add water to the bust-head his cousin Harold makes out behind the barn. And what with his jaw being wired together and all, Scooter began having trouble relaying the customers' orders to the help. One fellow ordered a gimlet and they served him an omelet, and things pretty much went straight down hill after that.
     "I do hope you can help me find a way to help Millie. She's getting downright strange. The other day I dropped in at the library to ask how she was doing, and she shot me this kind of stretched-out smile and said she was just fine because she'd figured out she really didn't need to worry about Trump so much. She said that sooner or later they'd catch him stealing the White House silverware or trying to deed the Washington Monument to the Russians, and he'd be out of there.
     "I think she was joking, but I'm not real sure.

                                                                                            "Sincerely,
                                                                                            "Your Uncle Barlow"

Credibility On Trial

Ad hominem
     Appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect. -- An ad hominem argument.
     Marked by or being an attack on an opponent's character rather than by an answer to the contentions made. -- He made an ad hominem personal attack on his rival.
                                                                                                    Merriam-Webster
     
     In presenting your case, if the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If both the facts and the law are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.
                                                                       Various versions attributed to various sources


     

     Somewhere in the distant mists of my school years, I received lessons in debate tactics.  Among them was counsel against ad hominem argument.  It isn't proper or smart, the teacher said. It's a dead giveaway of weakness on your own side: You can't keep up with your opponent's game, so you're trying to change the subject.
     This is one of the many lessons never absorbed by our incumbent president. Plagued by detailed accusations of wrongdoing, he has assailed the character, competence and mental health of his accuser, former FBI Director James Comey. Comey has in turn called the president himself a liar, but in this he has not added new notes to ongoing controversy.  The table-pounder-in-chief's penchant for mendacity is well known to sentient observers above the age of 10.
      Thus are the two squared off in a swearing contest for the time being. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, former FBI Director Robert Mueller is assembling a team to search for facts within the fog surrounding relations between presidential intimates and Russian leaders.  Reports say he is amassing major firepower, in the form of top-flight experts in criminal law.
     The medieval monk William of Occam propounded a principle of logic colloquially known as Occam's Razor. Roughly speaking, it holds that the simplest explanation of a matter is often the best. By this rule we would conclude that the president behaves as though he has something to hide because he does, in fact, have something to hide.
     This line of thinking begins with his refusal to release his tax returns.  It runs through his abrupt firing of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whose investigative interests included Russian money laundering through Manhattan real estate deals, and fishy stock trading by incumbent Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. It continues through the firing of Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who tattled on then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn for lying about contacts with Russian officials. It has now reached an apparent climax in the firing of FBI Director Comey, who says the president urged him to go lightly on the Russian issue.
     William of Occam also would permit us to conclude that Mueller is recruiting experts in criminal law because he feels his investigation may uncover criminal behavior.  At a minimum, perjury and obstruction of justice come to mind. One key recruit is an expert on fraud, and led the Department of Justice's prosecution of Enron's wrongdoers.
     Mueller has a reputation for ability and probity. The wheels of justice do grind slowly, but they are grinding.  The president has not been able with bullying and  bluster to make the entire system of our government dance to his tune.
     The rest of us will have to live for now with the bullying and the blustering. And in the credibility contest between the president and James Comey? The known record does not favor the career chiseler who insisted for years that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.

For Summer People

      For everything there is a season ...a time to be born ... a time to plant ... 
                                                                                            Ecclesiastes 3:2

      Right on schedule, the little tree by the front door is turning from red to green. We're told it's a dwarf red maple, but I've never looked that up.  I don't need to know the kind of thing the experts would explain. I know that our little herald changes every year because something elemental is going on between the earth and the air. That's enough for me.
      The azaleas, too, are settling in for summer. They had a rough spring. The weather was too soon warm and then too late cold. The neighbors up the hill had bright blossoms nonetheless. But our plants are in a low spot and couldn't soldier through. Their blossoms were few and quickly dead. Maybe next year.
      If seasons of nature are matched by seasons of the mind, the summer season is my best. I learned to love it as a boy, when we lived for a time with my grandparents on their patch of farm land. I was too young for farm work and too old to need watching. For me, shirtless, shoeless freedom was the hallmark of  summer days. Christian liturgical calendars call them "ordinary time" -- the span between the crescendo of Easter and the promise of Advent. The term has always seemed odd to me. A bit of a flat note. Maybe none of those old calendar-makers ever laid on his back to sky-gaze through the lacework of a honeysuckle thicket.
       My shirtless, shoeless days are gone, but summertime still features special joys -- and chores. I keep a close eye on those azaleas. They gave me fits for years. They refused to bloom. They refused even to maintain a proper demeanor.   The dictionary has a word for it: Tatterdemalion -- A person dressed in tattered clothing. A ragamuffin.  Until I found the right ways of care and feeding, our azaleas were tatterdemalions.
      We had a bit of struggle with the flowers, too. We plant them in the ground around the driveway light, and in the baskets hanging from the back deck rail.  It took a while to find a kind the deer wouldn't eat. They come mostly at night, although on the peak heat days of high summer we may see them taking our backyard shade. They stare at our windows, and if we are careful to do no more than stare back, they do not startle.
     We did find the right flowers. The experts call them Pentas. We ordinary folk call them Starflowers. The deer don't like them, but the hummingbird does, and so they serve us well all around.
       

     ... a time to die ...  and a time to pluck up what is planted; 
                                                                       Ecclesiastes 3:2

     The flowers must come out in the fall, of course. They have their season, and seasons end. The azaleas -- which do bloom now, when the weather's right -- get a little extra snack as they begin setting their flower buds for the following spring. The days are milder, but they are shorter, too. It is a mixed thing for me, as I consider what's ahead.
     Those ancient calendar-makers may not have understood a little boy's country summers, but they knew a thing or two about seasons of the mind. As they organized  and named the days, they gave us festivals and wakes, too. They knew we needed both. They knew our inner sense that the cycle of the seasons amounts to more than changing weather.  Not only because of the cold do I dislike the stark, bare limbs of winter trees.
     But that's for later, and even then I will know a steadying thing. I will know that next year, right on schedule, the little tree by the front door will announce the arrival of a new summer. And that's enough for me.