When it's not always raining

Wow, there's a whole lot going on. But we knew it would be this way.

I had an awesome essay planned for today, full of humor and enlightenment.

But my primary writing tool, my laptop, had to go into the shop for what turned into an extended period of time.

And even though my phone is brand-spanking-new, it’s not made for extensive exposition. It’s made for taking pictures of little kitties.

There was nothing to be done for it; I wouldn’t complete my work in time.

Granted, I could have skipped The Big Chill ― the Shalom Project’s biggest, funnest, ice creamiest annual fundraiser ― and spent Saturday afternoon writing. But I feel a responsibility to model a healthy work/life balance to my readers, and that makes ice cream a priority.

Still, it was an eventful week, as billions in essential funds Congress approved in a bipartisan fashion for food, education and health care in all 50 states were clawed back by President and convicted felon Donald Trump while Republicans in Congress sat supine, their souls rotting like so much food in a Dubai warehouse.

They also reneged on the $9 billion they’d promised for public media, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which includes NPR and PBS — and will affect our own WFDD. It’s another volley in Trump’s attack on truth, accountability and the First Amendment.

Despite these setbacks to … well, civilization, I can’t help but see a little hope in the surprising response to Trump’s tirade over the Jeffrey Epstein client list — and the explosive story of his history with Epstein published by the Wall Street Journal, a sharp reminder of his capacity for depravity. As Trump essentially defends the privacy of Epstein’s pedophilic clients (if such a list exists, if Trump’s obsessed foot soldiers weren’t just lying about it for years), many of his most devoted followers now seem to have reached the breaking point.

Sure, we’ve heard it before: the claim that finally his ignorance or his incompetence or his gross offensiveness or his corruption or his perversion or his lies, especially his lies, crossed a line that will cost him his cult, as they wake to the fact that they’ve been conned, so conned — even as they’ve exercised a bulletproof ability to deny, excuse and rationalize. That’s what cults do.

But we still hope. Maybe there’s a cumulative effect, a final straw. Maybe they’ve been searching for an off-ramp. Maybe this is it. Austin content creator Mercedes Chandler has compiled a master’s thesis worth of video after video after video of Trump supporters who now say they regret their vote — either because his immigration policies affect them, too, or because he looks more and more like an Epstein client every day. They seem sincere.

There was more: Trump told, in public, an absolutely insane story about his uncle, an MIT professor, and Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, that can only challenge his grasp on reality. He threatened to revoke entertainer Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship for unspecified reasons, an obvious attempt to distract from the criticism over Epstein. (This would also seem absurd, until we consider that the complicit conservatives on the Supreme Court are actually preparing to take up his challenge to birthright citizenship as if it were questionable.)

Thinking about all of this reminded me of a column I wrote during Trump’s first term (it’s in my book, Stardust and Scar Tissue) that perhaps still has some cache. What some are now waking to, many of us already knew.

I’ll post it here, followed by some comments and event notices in the Overflow section. Thanks for being here today.

…..

There are many here among us

Sep 19, 2020

Isn't it funny, the things that can rattle around in our heads? I can't tell you what I had for dinner yesterday, but a scene from “The Waltons,” the classic family drama set in the Depression era, has been bouncing around up there for months now. I finally looked it up online (fifth season, 1977) and was surprised that I remembered it almost exactly as it happened.

In the episode, John-Boy Walton causes a stir by running portions of “Mein Kampf” in his newspaper, The Blue Ridge Chronicle.

I’m not making this up, honest.

One thing leads to another, culminating in the Rev. Matthew Fordwick (played by John Ritter, no less) organizing a burning of German books ― which John-Boy jumps up to stop.

“This is my fault,” he says. “I started this whole thing with my newspaper, I know that. But you misunderstood me. I was trying to show you what people are capable of out of ignorance and out of fear and out of hatred. …

“I read that a foreign tyrant was publishing his plans to take over the world and was carrying out those plans and I thought you ought to have the opportunity to know about it. Just like I'd take the opportunity to tell you if there was a blight that was threatening your crops or some kind of scandal that was threatening your government, because that's freedom, as far as I can see it.

“And if you choose not to know about it, that's freedom, too, but if you take a book and if you burn this book, then you can't know about it and you've had your freedom taken away from you, you understand me?”

And then he finds, among the kindling, a book that begins, Am Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde.

In English: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.”

The fire is put out, apologies are offered, and peace reigns on Walton’s Mountain.

I think about that episode every time someone asks me why we run so many anti-Trump letters in the Journal.

Now, I promise I’m not making a Nazi analogy. And the people who ask me about this ― near as I can tell, they’re all good folks. They’re very civil when they call or write.

But they get tired of reading so many critical letters about the man for whom they voted and support today.

I sympathize. We do run a lot of letters that criticize President Trump ― more than Barack Obama or George W. Bush before him.

So why do we print them? The easy answer is because we receive them. If a letter is under 250 words, if it's about a topic that's in the news, if it's not too nasty and if its facts check out, we'll likely print it. Them's the rules.

We also receive and print letters that support Trump, we just don't receive very many ― though they're picking up ahead of the election. And while I've offered invitations ― and still do, hint, hint ― some readers have declined; they don't want to write letters, they've told me, they just don't want to read so many that they find disagreeable.

Fair enough. But we still receive the letters, so I’ve asked readers to provide me with an objective criterion ― a fair rule that would apply to every letter writer ― that would lead to printing fewer anti-Trump letters.

No one has suggested one.

There are, by the way, some letters that oppose Trump that we don't print ― letters with no substance that just call the president names or insult his physical attributes. The standards of The Readers' Forum are higher than the standards of the president's Twitter feed.

Some readers also tell me that they think we ― the media in general ― have been unfair to the president. We nit-pick every little thing he does. We didn't scrutinize other presidents this way.

I can't speak for every media outlet. But to me, comparing Trump to other presidents is like comparing apples to platypus. Trump ran for office as a disruptor, and that's one promise he's kept, undermining the missions of bedrock agencies like the EPA, the CDC and the U.S. Census, rolling back important pollution protections and doing, saying or tweeting something outrageous practically every day. Plus, you know, he lies an awful lot. Responsible news organizations have to report these things. Not to do so would be an abrogation of responsibility.

But back to John-Boy ― why do I think about that TV episode from decades ago?

Because the letter writers ― among them, ministers, teachers, business people, health professionals and your neighbors ― along with former Trump associates and quite a few Republican officials who now endorse Joe Biden, they're all doing the same thing that John-Boy did:

They're trying to warn you.

…..

Overflow:

If only they’d listened.

When people ask me where I get my local news, I usually answer, “Mostly from WFDD.” It’s reliable, it’s trustworthy, and it’s balanced enough to piss me off at times.

WFDD needs us now: https://www.wfdd.org/

Five-hundred tons of food meant for Afghani children and already paid for is going up in flames because of Trump:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-administration-burn-500-tons-182917671.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1400969607849367

“I don’t want to be that guy, but …”

While denying that the Epstein list even existed, Trump blamed its creation on the usual suspects: former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden as well as former FBI director James Comey.

Whatever happened to blaming Hillary Clinton? Why not blame Canada? Why not blame DEI?

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2025/jul/18/donald-trump/epstein-files-werent-made-up-by-obama-and-biden-th/

We continue to meet from 4:30 to 6 p.m. every Monday and from 7:30 to 9 a.m. every Tuesday at the Green Street pedestrian bridge! It’s fun, it’s encouraging, and we’re generating a lot of commentary online. That provides opportunities for engagement.

Who wants to learn to play drums? Send me a message if you do. We need some drummers on the bridge.

“Why are you protesting?” some ask, which would seem obvious to me — but I take it as a sincere question.

I can’t speak for everyone, but for me, last week I was protesting President and convicted felon Donald Trump's extreme and cruel immigration policies, which tell us, to paraphrase one pundit, that the people who have been mowing our lawns and cleaning our houses for 20 years are criminals and the people showing up in masks with guns to throw them into hellhole prisons are the good guys.

I protest his rollback of environmental protections, his attack on renewable energy and emphasis on polluting coal, which will harm our children and put us far behind the rest of the civilized world, including our adversary China, in clean energy production.

I protest his constitutional violations and overreach, which include tearing up the budget already passed by a bipartisan Congress, which will deny essential funds for education including in North Carolina, feeding the hungry and maintaining good national health. He’s also, by executive order that our Republican representatives refuse to challenge, diminishing the reach or shuttering the doors of important government agencies that protect and otherwise benefit America.

I also protest his deficient character and slipping mental capacity — exemplified last week by his pretend story about his uncle and the Unabomber — not to mention his aggressive protection of the clients of Jeffrey Epstein's pedophilic sexual exploitation ring and his continued racist immigration policies, deporting every brown-skinned person he can while opening doors for white South African farmers.

For a start.

Or, as Chandler puts it:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1857177758392717

Here’s Little Seba, offering a suggestion for how you can spend your day:

Mama said there’d be days like this:

Thanks for being here today. If you know anyone else who should be here with us, send them along.