Survival Mode

Do you remember way back when I started writing this and I said I would not be addressing politics and religion and such very often?... this is not one of those weeks...

In the mid 80's a friend of mine and I took a survival class... it covered everything from changing a flat tire to surviving being stranded in the dessert to an avalanche and almost everything in between... oddly the question that I'm asked the most about the experience is... "Did you have to drink your own urine to avoid dehydration?"... the answer is NO... but what it teaches you are new skills and  to rely on your own knowledge, instincts and common sense when faced with an emergency (if you ever have a chance to take one of these seminars I recommend it highly).. At that point in my life I had been a lifeguard, ski instructor and worked as a Flight Attendant and all of these occupations involved emergency training... the common thread in all of them is in an emergency you need to remain calm, think clearly and act concisely....The things I've learned on my way to today have served me well when I needed them... but I'll get back to this...

I used to just love The Beverly Hills Hotel... I loved going to the Polo Lounge for drinks as I talked about briefly last month...but my favorite was going to lunch by the swimming pool... I got the idea form the movie Move Over Darling with Doris Day and James Garner... All in all I think I've been to lunch there a couple dozen times...

One of my more memorable experiences there was once... a friend of mine was having major construction/renovation on his house and checked into one of the bungalows for a month while the work was going on... I've rarely been as impressed with extravagance as this as I've always lived with the plaster dust, no water etc while the work was being done... long story short he invited me over for a slumber party and we ordered room service, drank, played gin and visited all night. the next morning we lounged by the pool and had lunch... I remember it like it was yesterday... but my feelings changed when the hotel was sold a couple years later...In 1987... it was sold to 

The Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah, He also bought the Dorchester Hotel in London and then transferred the ownership to the Brunei Investment Agency in 1991.... why did my feelings change you ask?... Brunei introduced strict Islamic laws that made gay sex punishable by death (I'm not a fan of organized religion for various and sundry reasons... but I really draw the line at torture and death)... they have not seen a penny of my money since they bought the property.... I miss going to the hotel... but I survived... there are a lot of places I can go for drinks, cheese burgers and slumber parties.

I've only been to Chick-Fil-A once in my life (the food was meh)... I don't see what the appeal is but once I found out they supported hate Christian groups opposing LGBTQ rights, specifically gay marriage and equality and the derailment of the Equality Act.. I've never been back.

I'm not writing this to tell anyone what they should eat or how they should spend their money... that is for everyone to decide for themselves... but I judge...so there you have it. The whole reason I'm writing this week is to pass on some information so that you can make your own informed  personal decision.

Here is a list of companies that donated large amounts of money to DT's presidential campaign...

Much of this does not effect me or my purchasing power directly... where it hurt was NY Yankees... so I'm a Mets fan now... I have bought many things from some of these companies in the past but there are other choices... the one you really need to look at closely is Proctor & Gamble... you have no idea how much they manufacture until you start to look at labels on your household items on hand or at the supermarket... again you can find alternatives... I suppose one of the biggest things for me was Amazon... I really got into the habit of buying on line during the pandemic for the ease and convenience of having it delivered and sometimes the difficulty of buying it locally... most of my purchases were books... I love wandering in bookstores... so that's where I will be from now on.

I have to retract something I said previously about Sephora and LVMH their parent company... it was falsely reported that they donated to the campaign... so luckily I can still buy some of the things they sell under that umbrella. In addition to all of this we now have the people who are not supporting DEI...Diversity, Equality and Inclusion are always at the front and center of my thoughts and actions so for the people who choose to walk away from this... I bid you adieu...

28, February is a national Boycott day of retailers not supporting Diversity, Equality and Inclusion... hopefully it will make a difference.

But on a brighter note...

And...

I'll be booking our tickets to Europe this fall on Delta now... Other companies on board are  Kroger, Meijer, Giant Grocery, Ben & Jerry, Ulta, Macy's, Old Navy, Nordstrom, Walgreens and Wegmans... hope the list keeps growing.

Like I said you can spend your money any place you want... but someone told me once you are investing in the type of world you want based on what you buy from the point of view of what that company politics are... I'm sure Amazon has not even felt of blip from me taking my business elsewhere or The Beverly Hills Hotel... but I feel better knowing I'm not supporting their agenda... that being said... I'm keeping my Apple phone and computer unless someone wants to finance new equipment for me... however I did send them a strongly worded letter registered mail... I have not gotten a response... but they did receive it... I doubt they care... but I feel better having written it... If everyone cared and either stopped buying and/or wrote letters... things would maybe change a little.... maybe. Meanwhile, you might want to call your senators and representatives in Congress and tell them you don’t want Elon Musk or DT messing with your Social Security or anything else....That number, again, is 202-224-3121

First of all I can't believe he won the first time... secondly I can't believe he was even allowed to run again... and finally I can't believe he won a second term... I'm still not convinced that the results were not tampered with... and all of this and where we are now is because of greed and hatred... and much of what has happened in the last three weeks is not legal...

The world is watching the United States slide into Fascism... hate defines this administration and the people who are supporting it... he is targeting the people they hate. Everyone is always trying to analyze and define Republicans... it's quite simple, they are stupid, mean and they lie... and they are proud of all three.

Maybe I'm being overly optimistic... but the checks and balances are the only thing holding this shit show back and we might make it out of this mess if we tie everything up in legal red tape until mid-terms and  the 2028 election.

So from the campaign to the elections to where we are today... this is what has kept me from a good nights sleep...

Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies.

The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please.

There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do – to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world – is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero.

The first six months will be a time of maximum peril. NATO must from this moment be considered effectively obsolete, without the American security guarantee that has always been its bedrock. We may see new incursions by Russia into Europe – the poor Ukrainians are probably done for, but now it is the Baltics and the Poles who must worry – before the Europeans have time to organize an alternative. China may also accelerate its Taiwanese ambitions.

At home, Mr. Trump will be moving swiftly to consolidate his power. Some of this will be institutional – the replacement of tens of thousands of career civil servants with Trumpian loyalists. But some of it will be … atmospheric.

At some point someone – a company whose chief executive has displeased him, a media critic who has gotten under his skin – will find themselves the subject of unwanted attention from the Trump administration. It might not be so crude as a police arrest. It might just be a little regulatory matter, a tax audit, something like that. They will seek the protection of the courts, and find it is not there.

The judges are also Trump loyalists, perhaps, or too scared to confront him. Or they might issue a ruling, and find it has no effect – that the administration has called the basic bluff of liberal democracy: the idea that, in the crunch, people in power agree to be bound by the law, and by its instruments the courts, the same as everyone else. Then everyone will take their cue. Executives will line up to court him. Media organizations, the large ones anyway, will find reasons to be cheerful.

Of course, in reality things will start to fall apart fairly quickly. The huge across-the-board tariffs he imposes will tank the world economy. The massive deficits, fuelled by his ill-judged tax policies – he won’t replace the income tax, as he promised, but will fill it with holes – and monetized, at his direction, by the Federal Reserve, will ignite a new round of inflation.

Most of all, the insane project of deporting 12 million undocumented immigrants – finding them, rounding them up and detaining them in hundreds of internment camps around the country, probably for years, before doing so – will consume his administration. But by then it will be too late.

We should not count upon the majority of Americans coming to their senses in any event. They were not able to see Mr. Trump for what he was before: why should that change? Would they not, rather, be further coarsened by the experience of seeing their neighbours dragged off by the police, or the military, further steeled to the necessity of doing “tough things” to “restore order?”

Some won’t, of course. But they will find in time that the democratic levers they might once have pulled to demand change are no longer attached to anything. There are still elections, but the rules have been altered: there are certain obstacles, certain disadvantages if you are not with the party of power. It will seem easier at first to try to change things from within. Then it will be easier not to change things.

All of this will wash over Canada in various ways – some predictable, like the flood of refugees seeking escape from the camps; some less so, like the coarsening of our own politics, the debasement of morals and norms by politicians who have discovered there is no political price to be paid for it. And who will have the backing of their patron in Washington.

All my life I have been an admirer of the United States and its people. But I am frightened of it now, and I am even more frightened of them. --- Andrew Coyne

So where are we really...

A lot has changed for me since the first administration, specifically I'm not keeping my mouth shut to keep the peace... I am on speaking terms with fewer and fewer people since I got my voice back...

The bottom line is we don't agree to disagree or have a difference of opinion... we have a difference in basic human decency and morality.

... but unfortunately we have to go into the scary unknown... I've actually thought that an actual upside to death would be not having to see his face of hear his voice or being held hostage by his executive orders ever again... and not having to worry about sunscreen and my hair following shortly after that... but what is going to change this time at least for me... is I'm training myself to not have sleepless nights wondering about what might or might not happen. I'm not putting my head in the sand... but I'm being more scrupulous with news sources and not doom scrolling ... and I'm seeing everyone for who they actually  are...the moral and decent left and the beautifully wrapped boxes of shit on the right. 

With everything that has happened in the last 10 years personally, professionally and in the political arena...I don't have patience for certain people and things anymore...I've reached the point in my life where I don't want to waste my time on who and what I dislike especially disloyalty and betrayal... because the last 10 years have tried my patience to the point where I'm only giving it to people and situations that matter...

But before I close I just want to add... I have been working my ass off since the 70's and am entitled to every cent of my social security and medicare benefits...

and the fact that the dipshit billionaire  from South Africa has the audacity to want to cut or eliminate it is appalling... I'm only brining this up specifically because I knew everyone was lying about it during the campaign since it's been the topic of discussion since George W Busch used it as a cash cow for his war... did everyone else have their head up their ass or were they just to busy to notice... or did they just not care?... OK rant over.

So in terms of my survival training... the situation I'm finding myself in the world right now was not covered... but getting back to remaining calm, thinking clearly and acting concisely... don't roll over and lose hope or the direction or your life... find the things that give you your passion and your life back.. (I'm starting ASL training)... and I'm back in the pool and on the tennis court 4 days a week... these are all mostly distractions... but look further inside yourself to find the things that give you peace and hope... don't waste one second of life at the hands of a dictator and his followers. I'm prioritizing, physical and mental health and my appearance. Do yourself a favor... Set goals, write in a journal... drink plenty of water and eat delicious and healthy food... and get a good nights sleep (here is my trick for falling back to sleep if you wake up in the middle of the night worrying about this clown/convict felon and his enablers... it's February 2025... now think back to February when you were 18 or 21 and think about the events, and people and what you were wearing and what was important to you and the music that you listened to and the books you were reading and where you were living... let your mind go into great detail in your recollections... I usually fall back to sleep in 3-5 minutes if you are still awake skip ahead 10 years...) 

Our name will be forgotten

In time

No one will remember our work

Our life will pass like the traces of a cloud

And be scattered like

Mist that is chased by the

Rays of the sun

For our time is the passing of a shadow

And our lives will run like

Sparks through the stubble.

“I place a delphinium, Blue, upon your grave.” --- Derek Jarman

So above all else the next four years and beyond is going to be devoted to finding me again...the happy me, the smiling me, the laughing me, the gone me... the me that I used to be and miss terribly.

So all of this aside... Have a Happy Valentine's Day... if you don' have someone special be your own Valentine... When I was single people used to always ask me "I can't believe you are still single"... I just said... "I'm picky" I'm so happy I waited for the right one... and you will be too...

Where shall we go next? Last month I was considering something called "California Dreaming" but now I'm still devastated by the fires in California... my old house is ash and rubble... Someone wrote asking for another travel blog... so I'll give it some careful thought...Thank you for reading.