Another Fun-Filled Week

For someone who loves history so much, I’m finding that living through it as it’s being made is no fun. Every morning when I wake up I wonder what will happen next in Washington. The fact that the center of my attention has been captured by that town is galling. For someone who has spent most of his adult life seeking to build a life as far removed from Washington foolishness as it was possible to get, now suddenly it is impossible to divert my eyes from the spectacle it has become. American politics has become the ten car pileup with multiple fatalities on Interstate 95 with 250 million rubber-neckers looking on in horror. It seems like everyday has featured one large block screaming headline after another, each more outlandish than the last. Remember back years ago when the biggest argument coming out of our nation’s Capitol was...Should We or Should We Not Audit the Federal Reserve? Those were the days. Who can forget the riveting national debate about whether or not the government should bail out Chrysler? The only divisive thing about that argument was how to spell Lee Iacocca’s last name. But unfortunately, this isn’t 1979, we did bail them out but Chrysler went belly up eventually anyway, and Lee Iacocca has gone on to meet his maker.

Today’s political debates feel apocalyptic by comparison. Every issue seems like life and death. Protests, demonstrations, riots and other mayhem are ubiquitous. Violence is no longer something that organically boils over, but rather something that is premeditated, organized by elements within every movement you can name, designed to create chaos and the disruption of order. The disrupters may very well be the outliers of the crowd, but when the most extreme elements carry cell phones and gleefully advertise their mischief to the world, its the outliers who define the movement. Perhaps that’s not fair, but that’s the world we live in. Thanks, Steve Jobs.

So, this week I have to meet with nine clients over the next five days to discuss their accounts. I will do so with one eye on their numbers and the other on my news feed. Here are the possibilities:

- The resignation of a sitting President

- Impeachment proceedings

- The invoking of the 25th Amendment

- More armed insurrections at State Capitol buildings throughout the country

- Some nut job or nut jobs with guns and a grudge reeking havoc somewhere.

In other words, just another fun-filled week in America, 2021.

Final Thoughts on the Events of Wednesday Afternoon.

Perhaps the most outrageous part of Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol was the fact that the perpetrators marched under Jesus Saves banners. The presence of religious symbols throughout the crowd, although deeply disappointing, was regrettably predictable. Its part of a decades long co-opting of the Gospel of Jesus Christ by the Republican Party’s most Nationalistic elements. After the events of this week I can only say that we have got to find a way to discard this toxic notion that Jesus Christ and America are on the same team. Half the time we aren’t even playing the same freaking sport! We have made an idol out of political power and its pursuit has replaced discipleship as the core function of far too many American churches. We are now reaping the whirlwind.

I fear that for the most part the witness of the American church is damaged beyond repair. The center of the Christian witness will have to forever come from some other shore. We are the ones who need missionaries now.

Character is Destiny

I turned on the television around 3:00 yesterday afternoon. By that time I had already had three appointments and was busy doing the resulting paperwork when I noticed a text from my son...

An hour and a half later I was still sitting on the sofa watching, transfixed by the audacity. A couple of times I felt myself choking back tears. There were thousands of American citizens storming the Capitol building, overpowering the Capitol police, then parading around inside the Senate and House Chamber, taking selfies of themselves sitting at the Speaker’s podium, thinking themselves triumphant. Earlier in the day I had heard snippets of President Trump’s 90 minute speech to this same crowd, exhorting them to save the country, feeding them a series of toxic lies about how the election had been stolen from them, how he had actually won in a landslide! After whipping them into a frenzy, he slipped into his motorcade and escaped back to the White House to watch what would happen from the safety of the West Wing. When the Vice-President refused his unconstitutional request to reject the votes of the Electoral College, word travelled fast through the marching crowds. I sat and watched overcome by two consistent emotions, anger and sadness.

Of course, as soon as the optics became horrifying enough, a tidal wave of lies began flooding social media from Trump supporters claiming that it wasn’t them at all. It was really Antifa radicals dressed up to look like Trump supporters who were responsible. The old false flag Trojan Horse trick. It took all of two minutes of Google searches to discover that the alleged Antifa infiltrators were not. But, it won’t matter to the hard core apologists. The slimmest of fig leaves is all they will need to absolve themselves and their leader of guilt. Perhaps the worst part of the whole spectacle was the pathetic video produced by the White House in response to it all, a 60 second whine-fest, spewing more stolen election horse-shit with a big wet kiss to his patriots and the affectionate suggestion that they all go home now.

Winning.

Later last night my daughter sent me this charmingly concerned text, “What are your thoughts tonight?” This was her way of checking up on me. Big things were happening and her Dad was strangely silent. I replied along the lines of, “I can’t put enough coherent thoughts together at the moment to say anything. It is generally a bad thing to write while overcome with sadness and fury. Then I sent her a cartoon to change the subject...

Later last night it was time for the clever memes to begin raining down, the tiresome and predictable but what about, if this was BLM??!! Words cannot express how much I loathe this sort of lazy commentary. Whoever can make the biggest logical leap with the wittiest phrase wins. I’ll leave that short form silliness to the armchair philosophers.

Finally, as I lay awake in the darkness last night, I thought about a phrase that my Dad said to me one time years ago...character is destiny. His view was that how your life turns out is a function of your defining character traits. If you are a thief, someone or something will end up stealing your life from you. If you are violent, you will eventually be a victim of violence. If you are a manipulator, you will eventually be manipulated. When I think of Donald Trump, the first thing that comes to mind is that his defining characteristic is...lying. If you tell enough lies in your life, you become a lie. Set aside for a moment any positive accomplishments of his administration. For a second, put aside your views on immigration, trade, abortion etc. What Donald Trump will ultimately be remembered for is his shameless and pathetic actions since Election Day 2020. The man who promised us nothing but winning, winning and more winning, ends up not only losing reelection, but both houses of Congress in the bargain. He has single handedly destroyed the Republican Party for a generation.

Many of you disagree with me about all of this. I know. Nothing I say or write will change your minds. That’s ok. A few days ago I had a conversation with a friend of mine who is a Trump guy. I asked him the following question: “Suppose an audio tape was produced that had Barack Obama on the phone to the attorney general of Florida asking him to find him 11,000 votes so he could overturn the election in his favor. What would your reaction be? I dare say it would send you into a spittle-spewing rage, and rightfully so. But I haven’t heard one word from you about Trump’s call to the AG of Georgia.” If our outrage with presidential behavior is dependent on the president’s party, then that’s the very definition of false outrage. And yet, for four years now, millions upon millions of people have been content to look the other way at rampant dishonesty. Yesterday, the bill came due.

These People...

We had a professional photographer come out to the house over Christmas while we had the whole family here. We had never done anything like this before, although I see this sort of thing on Facebook all the time. Anyway, of all the hundreds of pictures he took, this was my favorite...

The session took place on our deck and we had left all three of the dogs inside. We hadn’t heard a peep from them, then someone noticed that all three of them had lined up at the back door for a closer look. They are, from left to right, Lucy, Jackson, and Frisco. Adorable.

Our photographer, Mr. Josh Hill, did manage to take some nice pictures of humans as well...

As I was sorting through these pictures it occurred to me that if I were asked to summarize my accomplishments on this earth over the past 62 years, this is what I would show people as proof that I was here. The people, and dogs, in these photographs are what truly matter to me. Everything else is secondary. The house, the cars, the bank accounts serve a purpose, but this is the purpose. My business and the material things it has afforded me are merely tools that have helped me fashion this life, but they aren’t life itself. Certainly there are other things dear to me that aren’t in these photographs, my extended family, my friends, my church family, etc..but its these people who matter the most.

This last picture is good of all of us. But the best part of it is in the background. Look closer and you will see Lucy standing at the back door, keeping watch over her people. She doesn’t sense danger, but she’s not going to relax until all six of us are back inside. Those of you who have dogs know exactly what I’m talking about. But in a way, I feel the same way Lucy does. 

Where’s My Money

Over the past 24 hours, vandals have struck the houses of both Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Mitch McConnell. As of this hour, authorities have not identified the guilty party, so for now at least they serve only as a symbolic protest against the failure of Congress to pass a more generous stimulus package...I guess.

You’ve got to hand it to whoever did this. I haven’t seen anything this honest in our political conversation in years! Aside from the fake blood and severed pig head at Pelosi’s place, this guy’s message is bold and unequivocal...Dude wants everything! I mean, why the heck not? As a negotiating position, it makes perfect sense. You shoot for the moon, and even if you don’t hit it, you’ll land among the stars, right?

Politician: So, how can we help you through this difficult season of life?

Protester: Give me everything.

Politician: I’ll have to get back to you on that...

Whoever spray-painted McConnell’s door chose an interesting possessive pronoun, the word my in his message is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Through the first 10 months of fiscal year 2020, the government of the United States collected $2.83 trillion dollars in taxes and fees. Over that same period of time it borrowed another $2.81 trillion. That’s a lot of money. But, to our protester’s point...how much of that can fairly be described as...his? But, something tells me that the graffiti artist in question here is not pondering the complexities of finance, he is just pissed that his stimulus check will be inadequate to his needs, and he blames Mr. McConnell for the shortfall. I can think of no politician, living or dead, who cares less about what this protester might think of his stimulus check than Mitch McConnell. Having said that, the protester’s decision to paint Where’s My Money, without a question mark, on the Majority Leader’s front door works well as political theatre. Where, indeed? 

A new administration will soon take power that is more favorably disposed to give this protester what he wants...at least in theory. Their ranks are filled with people who have given at least lip service to the idea of universal income guarantees, the cancelling of college debt, free college educations for all and scores of other wealth transfer programs. So maybe the answer to our vandal’s questions are, “It’s on the way. Be patient.” Much depends, I’m told, on the outcome of the two senate races in Georgia. If the Democrats sweep, they will take control of the Senate, finally ridding themselves of the heartless penny-pincher, McConnell. If not, Mister McConnell will have to worry about a lot more than graffiti on his front door the next time he blocks President Biden’s first stimulus check package.

A GREAT Christmas Present

I’ve got a buddy down in Nashville, Deen Entsminger, who gave me one of the best Christmas presents ever...The Complete Far Side...

This is Volume One. There are three such volumes. We will be sending each other coded messages ( page 54, 8/9/80 ) for the rest of our lives, I imagine. Gary Larson’s work is endlessly entertaining, but the best part is that everyone comes away from one of his strips with a different take on what it actually means. Or does it even mean anything? Sometimes, he’s just being silly. My favorites always seem to be the ones with no caption. These are usually the ones that stir up the most controversy, since it is up to the individual reader to decide what’s going on. Of course, individual readers are free to project their own problems onto such strips, turning them inside out, endowing each with all sorts of nefarious intent. Page 54, 8/9/80 is one such strip...

I love this. Two diametrically opposed groups about to confront each other, when just around the corner sits an ice cream truck playing some scratchy childhood tune. Any number of outcomes are possible. Both sides could ignore the ice cream truck. The protesters are the aggressors here since they are the ones marching. Since one of the guys in the front row is carrying a club, it can fairly be assumed that they intend physical violence. But the troops on the other side have far superior firepower and will quickly gain the upper hand in any such confrontation. We don’t know what the issue is here, the protest signs give us no hint. We don’t know if the protesters are fighting for something noble or they’re just a bunch of anarchists. What we do know is there is about to be trouble. Big trouble. Enter, the ice cream truck and its oblivious driver. Is it possible that the song is loud enough to be heard over the screaming and yelling? Is it possible that if enough of them hear it, that they will pause and look? If so, might one of the protesters and one or two of the troops walk over and ask the driver, “Do you have dreamcicles?” It’s awfully hard to beat someone up while enjoying a dreamcicle. I look at this strip and think it perfect for the first day of 2021. As the divided states of America enters a new year, will we choose to continue fighting each other, or will we pause long enough to grab a Nutty Buddy?

So, that’s my take on Page 54, 8/9/80. As I write this, Deen is preparing his take. This is going to be great fun!

Five Things I Learned in 2020

A year ago today none of us could have imagined what 2020 would bring, how it would dramatically alter our lives, how it would change us. I entered 2020 with a list of goals, some of them quite ambitious. By the end of March they were in tatters. The stock market had cratered over 30% in four weeks, all face to face appointments had been cancelled, and Fauci and Birx had become must-see TV. There was a twilight zone quality to it all. When people started hoarding toilet paper, that’s when I knew that the world was entering something newly irrational. Of course, conducting a Presidential election in the midst of a pandemic is a recipe for a special kind of madness, and although the election is over, its most rabid partisans are still quite mad. A sizable number of them still insist that Donald Trump won the election and that some eleventh hour miracle will overturn its results. After witnessing the preceding twelve months, it’s difficult to dismiss any contingency, no matter how bizarre. Among many other things, 2020 has taught me never to underestimate the stupidity of large groups of people energized by politics.

So, what else has this year taught me? Life is, after all, a school. Every day is a lesson if we are paying attention. 2020 in this regard has been a master class in damage control and crisis management. If nothing else 2020 has revealed the quality of all of our plan B’s. With the arrival of lockdowns and quarantines we have discovered the things that really matter to each of us, and what things we can actually do without. Here are just a few from my perspective.

1. Being forced to spend so much time at home, I have become much more thankful for my home. It’s not a mansion. It makes no “statement” to anyone when they see it. But it’s ours, every room filled with memories, every piece of furniture tells our story. If I were to lose my sight, I could make my away around inside these walls from memory. That is a comfort to me.

2. 2020 has made me much more thankful for and solicitous of my neighbors. We have the good fortune of living in a neighborhood filled with good people. When you are asked to hunker down at home, you begin to wonder how those neighbors are getting along. Early on, a college Freshman across the culdesac came down with COVID. Her mother is a nurse and works with COVID patients. Another neighbor across the street lost his wife to a non-COVID-related illness. Then, our next door neighbor caught COVID at her gym. Suddenly, the pandemic became personal. There wasn’t much we could do, but we did whatever small favors that came to mind, a sort of circling of the wagons around our little corner of the world. The experience has made me thankful that I live in this place with these people.

3. I have discovered that I have a love/hate relationship with Zoom, Facetime, and Marco Polo. On the one hand, they have been a Godsend for not only my business, but also for my personal life. In the early days of the pandemic, having the ability to get all four of my children on a computer screen for a conversation felt like a miracle. Seeing their faces was like medicine. It was proof to me that they were well. It made me feel at least the illusion that we were together. The hate part is the fact that having to use this technology only serves to remind me of its limitations. You can’t hug a digital image. You can’t read the eyes of a reflection. My dependence on Zoom reminds me that my life has changed, and until the day when Zoom is no longer needed, that’s a reminder of my limits.

4. Maine is not a luxury. Maine is an absolute necessity for my well being. The seven weeks I spent there this year served as the closing argument in the great Rent vs. Buy trial that has been argued in my mind over the past thirty years. Being in Maine brings me more happiness and joy than being practically anywhere else in the world. It calms me. It wakes me up. It is the great recalibration. I arrive there tied up in knots, often overwhelmed by the complexities of life. I leave there a new man, calmer, happier, and counting the days until my return. I will buy a place. There will be no turning back.

5. I married the right woman. After nearly 37 years together, one might think that being quarantined together would bring out the worst in us. Actually, it has taught me that there isn’t another human being on the planet who I would rather be locked down with. Pam has been one of the few people I know who has thrived during 2020. She has gotten even more creative, more inventive than she has ever been. It’s almost as if she’s gotten smarter as all the world around her has gotten dumber. It’s hard to explain. It’s something you have to experience, but trust me, she has been killing it.