Supertake Sunday

Mister B, our oldest dachshund, turned 16 last August. He started losing weight a month or two later and now is mostly skin and bones. You can click on the photo to see it larger on Flickr: that’s Mr. B on the left, Lulu in the middle, Fritzi on the right. By the way: is that some r/AccidentalRenaissance-level photography or what?

He’s weak in the hips and sometimes his back legs go out from under him, splaying out to either side. When that happens he struggles to get back on all fours, and occasionally he’ll cry for help. Along with old age comes incontinence and confusion. He’s not blind-blind, but his vision is severely impaired, enough so that he’ll bump into things or box himself into corners and need assistance finding his way out … that’s pretty rare, though; mostly he knows his way around. He still sleeps with us, but these days we put a piddle pad over the sheets and make sure he lays on top of it.

It’s time to take him to the vet to see what she thinks, but we’re pretty sure we know what she’ll tell us and have been putting it off. Thing is, he still eats well, and like all dachshunds lives for breakfast and dinner. He can hear a little, and if the younger dogs start to run and bark at the doorbell or a stranger walking by outside, he will too. We don’t think he’s in pain … just old and infirm. Mostly he sleeps. We’ll put the vet visit off a while longer, but it’ s clearly coming.

Donna and Polly planned a Superbowl afternoon but then the toddler-in-chief announced he’d attend, probably to upstage Taylor Swift in her own VIP box, and now they’re not sure they still want to watch. I suspect they will, if only for the commercials and the fact that they’ve already stocked up on ingredients for game day grazing: Buffalo wings, deviled eggs, mozzarella sticks, hot links in BBQ sauce, veggies and dip. Me? I’ll take a plate of finger food and retire to my reading nook, which I would have done anyway, Trump or no Trump.

Like most of you, I’m overwhelmed by the flood of threats & bluster coming from Trump, Musk, and those youthful hackers they’ve turned loose on federal payment systems, government and military personnel data, classified intel, and private information on citizens. And I’m asking myself what I can do. I’ve written to my representatives and senators, but beyond that?

Well … I’ve been writing about banned books and threats to librarians and teachers for several years and have a decent readership on Daily Kos where I cross-post my You Can’t Read That! newsletters and banned book reviews. I slacked off last year, but since Trump took office book banners have been on a roll, so I’ll take up the torch again, for what that’s worth. I sometimes write Air-Minded posts about aviation safety, currently very much in the news, so I’ll keep doing that too. I’ll keep an eye on military leadership and how it’ll cave to, or resist, the whims of Trump and Musk. I’ll focus on what I know, sticking to areas where I have some experience and knowledge, and hope others with different areas of expertise will do the same.

Not gonna be a 21st century Good German. Don’t you be one either. Resist.

I exchange old-timey letters with a friend, who recently wrote about the difficulties of maintaining family relations and friendships in the age of Trump. Didn’t we have this conversation back in 2016? Well, whatever, we’re having it again! I’ll paraphrase what I wrote back to him:

Friends, family, and relationships in the time of Making America Great Again. I think back on the 1950s and 60s, when there was a similar social divide, with some white Americans beginning to come around to the idea of integration while others doubled down on segregation. A lot of friendships and family relations were strained, even broken, as they are being now. And OMG what about the Civil War! Things must have been unimaginably worse in those days!

Well, I missed Gettysburg and Appomattox, but was definitely around for the 50s and 60s. One thing I remember is that even as a pre-teen, I was acutely aware of how segregation was a bedrock principle of the Southern Baptist church, the religion my mother raised me in (though I will never believe she embraced all that hatred … I certainly never heard her use the n-word, which my father and my grandparents dropped from time to time). Growing up as a military brat in a segment of American society that was already integrated (thanks to Harry Truman), I could never reconcile myself with the church and left it at 13 or 14, never to return.

Family relations are one thing and I won’t break them, even though there are MAGAt in-laws in mine. Nonfamilial relations are another matter. I have conservative friends, but when I say conservative I mean people who believe in fiscal restraint and stability. People who are racist are something else, because now we’re into morality, not politics.

There are those who voted for Trump who say they believe he’ll bring about a better economy and living standards (I’m not sure their belief is sincere, given the evidence of every Republican administration from Reagan on, but). There are those who voted for Trump who openly admit their idea of when America was great was the era before civil rights, who openly support white supremacy and keeping minorities and women down. I can stay cordial, even be friends with, the former. I don’t need the latter in my life. I can work with them on the job, as we all have to, but I’m not going to their house for tea, nor having them over to mine.

I think some folks make a big noise about how they’ve broken off friendships with racist MAGAts, but I wonder if they were ever really friends in the first place. I haven’t broken many friendships over Trump … it’s more like, now that they’re emboldened and coming out of the closet, I’m reminded why I kept them at arm’s length before. Those folks have always shown their stripes.

It’s tempting to withdraw entirely, to follow the advice Einstein gave a young man in Munich in 1933: “Read no newspapers, try to find a few friends who think as you do, read the wonderful writers of earlier times, Kant, Goethe, Lessing, and the classics of other lands, and enjoy the natural beauties of Munich’s surroundings. Make believe all the time that you are living, so to speak, on Mars among alien creatures and blot out any deeper interest in the actions of those creatures. Make friends with a few animals. Then you will become a cheerful man once more and nothing will be able to trouble you.”

Einstein, however, knew better than to withdraw: he got his ass out of Germany while he still could and engaged himself in the fight against fascism on the side of the United States and its allies.

You can’t engage the MAGAts. You can’t talk them around, reason with them, educate them. They have always been, and will always be, the way they are now. On a personal level, it’s tempting to blot out any interest in the actions of these creatures. But on a political level, you have to be willing to fight them. Especially now they’ve gained control of government and the media. Now more than ever. Resist.