Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer, American Front, Crew 38, and, Alas, Numerous Others

Today, exactly one week after two larger than usual mass murders, downtown Eugene will simultaneously become the site of a God, Guns, and Trump Rally, a gay pride parade, and a large crafts fair. The Trumpers (who created the above illustration) have promised to bring their AR-15s. They can do this because Oregon is an "open carry" state. Antifa has vowed to confront the Trumpers, and while its members aren't known for using guns, they are known for using their fists. Next weekend, the right-wing demonstrators and their left-wing counterparts will move 110 miles up the road to Portland. 

Since Trump was elected, the local papers have become peppered with hate crime incidents. In the worst one yet, a self-described white nationalist stabbed two people to death and injured a third on a Portland commuter train in 2017. Hate crimes in the nation as a whole rose under Obama only to take off like a rocket under Trump. When asked this week if his rhetoric was partially responsibility for last week's El Paso murders, Trump said that his words don't push people apart but bring them together (he had previously said it's the "America-hater Democrats" who push people apart). Conservative talk radio agrees, and while it and Trump seldom deign to mention right-wing hate crimes, they both argue that Antifa should be singled out for a domestic terrorism designation, although the group's members have yet to kill anyone.

The Southern Poverty Law Center lists fifteen--nearly all of them conservative--hate groups in Oregon*, which are two more than in my historically racist home state of Mississippi. Liberal Eugene  has seen a 380% increase in hate crimes in four years,** although when I came here in 1986, it was an alternative-minded hippie town that many dubbed "The Berkeley of the North," because of its left-wing radicalism. Some of the notorious Weathermen were from here, and the town's Selective Service office was broken into and its files burned. The Grateful Dead hit town every summer; Ken Kesey wrote books and created scandals; nudists enjoyed a publicly-owned beach on the Willamette; and both drug use and nudity were common at the Oregon Country Fair. Then came the bomb-making anarchists who, like many, believed that violence is the threshold to utopia. Now it's right-wing hate groups and--barely noticeable by comparison--Antifa.

I've learned over the years that few things are as bad as our fears make them out to be, yet they can be even worse. I still haven't decided whether to join the protest, which starts in an hour. This might well prove to be yet another day when America demonstrates that it loves guns the way addicts love meth. I am afraid that if I go, I might become one of the dead people whose names scroll across the evening news, yet I'm somehow more afraid of staying home. I need to be a part of this.


*https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map

** https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2019/07/oregon-had-the-6th-biggest-rise-in-reported-hate-crimes-in-the-nation-over-a-4-year-period-study-says.html

An interesting article about the Portland Antifa: https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/08/07/portlands-antifascists-punch-white-supremacists-are-they-also-helping-trump/

More Mass Shootings than Days in the Year

As of August 5, which was the 217th day of the year, American has seen 255 mass shootings. In the past nine days, there was:

• A shooting in a historic district of Dayton, Ohio, with nine killed and 27 injured.

• A shooting at Walmart in El Paso, Texas, with 22 killed and at least 24 wounded.

• A shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in the San Francisco Bay Area, with three killed and 15 injured.

• A shooting at a Brooklyn block party, with one killed and 11 injured.

• A shooting at a Walmart in Southaven, Mississippi, with two killed and two injured.*

Trump blames the problem on insanity and the Internet, but not on guns and certainly not on his White Supremacist rhetoric. As his supporters are fond of saying,

"Guns don't kill people; people kill people;" and 

"If you take away their guns, killers will just find some other weapon;" and

"The world is a dangerous place, and I need a gun to protect myself and my family;" and

"The problem isn't too many guns; it's too few guns;" and

"Gun ownership is my Constitutional right;" and 

"Mass murder is the price of freedom;" and

"These killings are God's punishment because America legalized gay marriage;"and

"Reports of mass shootings are just one more example of fake news."

There is now hope. It comes from the fact that America's powerful gun lobby, the National Rifle Association,  has been greatly weakened by internal scandals, combined with the fact that every mass killing is noticeably bringing the country that much closer to effective measures. Unfortunately, these measures will likely happen at the speed of women's equality in Saudi Arabia, and, of course, the people affected all have guns. How many guns? 393 million compared to a mere 133-million for all the armies on earth.**

*https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mass-shootings-2019-more-mass-shootings-than-days-so-far-this-year/ 

**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_ownership

Untitled

 
I know few bloggers who post about Trump, and I know some who do their utmost to avoid the news. After all, when a president does or says several things a week that would have amounted to major scandals under another administration, what's the point in trying to keep up with them all? I know that I can't keep up with them all because they come at me so fast and furiously that they run together, giving last week's scandals the feel of events that happened years ago.

If there's one thing about which all Americans can agree, Trump is different, most presidents being two-dimensional figures who do their mediocre best to run the country while upholding the dignity and honor of the office. By contrast, Trump treats the country as "The Donald Trump Show," and he either has no use for dignity and honor, or, more likely, doesn't know what they mean. For instance, he just spent the better part of a week writing racist Tweets about the city of Baltimore, Maryland, and its black Congressman because he's mad at the Congressman. Prior to that, he Tweeted that four minority-group Congresswomen should "go back to the crime infested places from which they came," although three of the four were born in America, and the fourth was brought here as a child. All are U.S. citizens.

Lying and pettiness are not what Trump does; they are who Trump is, but the fact that he's pathological isn't the worst of it. The worst of it is that 43% of Americans believe his lies; and of that 43%, 90% are Republicans; and of that 90%, nearly all are Christians. While I know that people of intelligence and integrity can disagree about abortion, immigrant rights, and so on, my jaundiced attitude toward Trump supporters isn't based upon disagreement but upon indecency and hypocrisy. They elect a man whom Democrats and Independents loathe--not just dislike or disagree with--but loathe, and they imagine that something good will come of it. Republican leader Mitch McConnell expressed this sentiment well when he said, "Winners make policy; losers go home," his implication being that Americans should expect their elected officials to take turns remaking America. It wasn't always like this, and I see nothing but ruin coming of it.

I know a Texas blogger who avoids talking to anyone about politics, because if she discovers that a person supports Trump, she writes that person out of her life. Trump has split families and made enemies of lifelong friends. I've lost long-time blog buddies because of my anger toward Trump supporters. When Peggy's Trump-supporting father dies, our disillusionment toward him for his abandonment of the noble ideals that we once imagined him to hold dear will forevermore poison our memories. Americans are more divided now than they've been at any time since the Civil War, a war that ended 154-years ago. It's one thing to shun the friendship of a person who is in a minority, but what is the effect of turning against 43% of the nation? I just know that it's beyond sad to truly believe that when it comes to supporting Trump, a person's politics doesn't just make them wrong, it makes them evil.

On Being a Cat Man

Brewsky on bottom, Sage on top

When I got my fourth cat, a bonafide cat woman bestowed upon me the venerable designation of cat man. The 2011 arrival of my first cat marked the end of a lifetime of dogs, not because I fell out of love with dogs, but because Peggy, an ailurophobe, unexpectedly fell in love with a tabby. Being a first-time parent to a kitten was like being a first time parent to a baby in that we had no idea how to raise him. Luckily for us, Brewsky proved to be the world's best starter cat.

Our cats have surprised me in many ways, but the greatest is that their considerable affection for their human parents has yet to plateau. I gauge this by the amount of time they spend with us; the liberties they allow us to take in handling them; and their readiness to forgive.

Another surprise is their individuality. I'll give three examples. (1) I have one cat who welcomes visitors; one cat who hides behind the clothes dryer when visitors come; and two cats who ignore visitors. (2) I have one cat who is indifferent to having his belly rubbed; one cat who doesn't like it; and two cats who do. (3) I have one cat that wolfs his food; one cat who is a finicky eater; and two cats who eat with moderation.

A third surprise is their stubbornness. Dogs say, "You are my god, and I pledge to you my obedience." Cats say, "I am your equal, and you are to respect my right to self-determination." Brewsky found it so difficult to persuade me of the wisdom of this view that I used to chastise him by chasing him through the house yelling and waving a yardstick. When he tired of running, he would lay on his back, stretch to full length, and wait to be petted. I had imagined that cats were timid creatures, yet here was a cat with the self-possession to see right through me. On that and future occasions, I did as he asked while asking myself whether whatever I had expected of him was strictly necessary. 

When we proceeded to adopt other cats, Brewsky joined in their parenting, and he still "nurses" insecure Ollie. If Ollie wasn't a slurper, the situation wouldn't be so bad, but, sad to say and embarrassing to admit, I've found no way to stop him. 

Because I've yet to win a single War of the Wills with a cat, I've been forced to choose between lowering my expectations and making everyone miserable. I'm now down to a mere four behaviors that I go all out to thwart: Ollie nursing when I'm near enough to hear him; Brewsky taking food off my plate while I'm still eating; Scully chewing electrical cords; and anyone walking across the stove top. 

Ollie

Another surprising aspect of living with cats is that their behavior can suddenly and inexplicably change to an extent that I've never witnessed in dogs. For at least two years, Ollie had a favorite chair, but the surprising part wasn't that he liked the chair, but that he used it by placing his butt on the same spot of the chair's seat, and draping his front legs across the chair's arm. I came to regard this behavior as such an integral part of his Ollieness that I couldn't have been more amazed when he stopped doing it. 

Everyday that he lives, Sage does something equally surprising. To whit, I'm usually the one who lets the cats out of the laundry room each morning, and so it is that every day without fail, Sage looks at me with his eyes wide as if to say, "My god, who are you, and why do you want to kill me?!" It's as if he went feral overnight, but only around me because when Peggy awakens, he cries to be picked up, climbs onto her shoulders, and looks at me as if to say, "You're a brute, and I hate you." After that early encounter, he will often roll onto his back when I'm around and request a belly rub, but he never ever asks me to pick him up, and he never shows the least desire to climb onto my shoulder. 

I've sometimes had women tell me that their dog's first person must have been an abusive man, their evidence being that the dog is wary of men, yet my own dogs and cats are more cautious around strange men, and it's hardly because I abuse them. Dogs and cats simply find a strange man more threatening than a strange woman, especially if the man is big, loud, and moves quickly. Even wolves are that way. On the flipside, pets often behave more aggressively toward women. Peggy had a terrible time trying to control our Australian Cattle Dog, and when Brewsky was young, he often  ambushed Peggy, biting her leg hard enough to draw blood. For a cat to communicate displeasure--as Ollie sometimes does when he has had enough petting--by gently mouthing a hand is acceptable. But to persistently bite with the intention of causing harm is not. In the case of Brewsky, the behavior only stopped the night that he bit Peggy twice, and she and I both became so angry that he didn't even try to roll over for a belly rub.

Cat haters... 

Authoritarians hate cats, and cat haters are domestic dictators who demand instant obedience to their every whim. They are disturbed people who can't tolerate the least show of freedom on the part of their pets, and oftentimes their spouses and children. I'm confident that people who abuse pets also abuse humans, and it's a fact that mass murderers and serial killers usually start by torturing and killing animals.

Cat haters believe that cats prolong the killing of their prey because they are sadists (they do it to hone their hunting skills), although these same haters unnecessarily eat animals that lived in misery and died in terror. Many such people even hunt, just for the fun of it.

Cat haters' ignorance is endless and their complaints asinine. They argue that only an abysmally stupid animal would fail to beg, shake hands, and roll over; and they believe that a pet who doesn't run in frenzied circles when they come home from work doesn't love them. Cat haters are all-or-nothing thinkers on whom subtlety is lost, and cats are nothing if not subtle (anyone can tell when a dog is smiling, but what does a smiling cat look like?). Cat haters believe that a pet who isn't full-tilt hyper with affection couldn't care less if they died. Their need for validation is such that they even make their dogs neurotic.

Cat haters hold that a cat's every action provides proof of its selfishness. They argue that my cats only bathe one another so that they will be bathed; only sleep with their bodies touching because they crave warmth; that Scully only runs to welcome Peggy home so that Peggy will pet her; that a cat who alerted a friend of mine to the presence of a burglar was only concerned for his own safety; and god knows why a cat attacked a large dog to save a child, but rest assured that it was out of selfishness.


Dogs are social animals. With the exception of lions and male cheetahs who pair off with other male cheetahs, cats are not. Even so, Felis catus possesses an abundance of those virtues that our social species values, and it does so without the liabilities. For example, only a dullard or a cat hater could fail to observe that cats experience deep and abiding love for their humans, for one another, and even for creatures like birds and rodents with which they were raised but would ordinarily kill. It's also true that, unlike humans and chimpanzees, cats have never once joined forces with other cats to wage war. My cats never even fight over their favorite treats, but woe be to the dog that steals another dog's food.

At Peggy's urging, we got Brewsky the day after we lost our beloved schnauzer. Prior to that day, Peggy was so fearful of cats that demonic cats pursued her in her dreams. While we didn't discuss our reasons for getting a cat, I, at least, believed that a cat would be more interesting than a goldfish but spare me the horrific grief that I had repeatedly experienced upon losing dogs. I was wrong.