Ask not for whom the bell tolls

The president's de facto Muslim ban and the closing of the borders to foreign-born Muslims brings this poem to mind. Again.  

Twice this week. this poem has seemed a propos. First, it was during the ugly public squabble between Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto and the US president and then again yesterday, with the announcement of the Executive Action on Immigration.

Truly, no one could have said it better than Donne, but let me ask you:

No man is an island, 
Entire of itself.
Are we an island America? Entire of ourselves? Needing no one, wanting no one, harming no one, seeing that no harm is done?

Every man is a piece of the continent.
A part of the main. 
America, a nation of immigrants, each of them a part of the main.....or perhaps not. I wonder, our dual citizens from seven faraway lands, are they not 'a part of the main'? Should they simply be 'washed away by the sea' as if they were of no import?

If a clod be washed away by the sea, 
Europe is the less. 
We are the less when we cast them aside. Do we choose to be less? Out of fear? Ignorance? Rigidity? Bigotry? Spite?

As well as if a promontory were. 
As well as if a manor of thy friend's 
Or of thine own were: 
Are we not 'less' when we speak of our brothers and sisters in dismissive, ugly language? Are we not much less than or simply unequal to our values? 

Any man's death diminishes me, 
Are we not diminished? Thinking on this now, I wonder if this poem isn't also relevant to the whole ACA debate but more of that anon and elsewhere.

Because I am involved in mankind, 
We are involved in this, worse, we are implicated. We are implicated in the refugee crisis and we are morally implicated in our failure to act to solve it. 

Our faiths, all of our faiths, are founded on the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Are we doing as we would like to be done to? Do we care if we aren't? What of our great values by which we have always set so much store? 

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 
It tolls for thee.

The bell is tolling America, ask not for whom it tolls, it tolls for thee. 

The bell. I hear the bell. Do you hear it America? It's playing your song.

Does My Vote Really Matter?

For those who didn’t think their vote counted. Here’s a newsflash: it does. Every time, it does.  But for it to count, you gotta show up. 

The next time you’re tempted to stay home as yourself these questions………….

1. What might happen to my environment if I don't vote?

Answer: much, much more of this. Remember "Drill baby drill!"?

Meanwhile, out in the real world this is what is actually going on.

The 'Drill baby drill" crew swears up and down that drilling is now safer than ever, but that red river ain't looking like a particularly good example of safety in action. Unless water's supposed to be red?

2. What could happen to my (or my friends') Civil Rights if I don't vote?

Answer: an erosion of the comfortable, easy, diverse universe you've known your whole life.

It is not accidental that it took this nation until the late 19th century to begin to acknowledge the Civil Rights of some of its members. Neither is it a surprise that those rights have been challenged and undermined at every opportunity since.  That's kinda the way we do. Resistance to the principles and practice of equality remains a central theme of American social, political, and economic life.  

If people who are uncomfortable with growing diversity are going to vote, then those of us who embrace it must vote in larger numbers. That's the math.

3. What could happen to my healthcare if I don't vote?

Answer: the candidate you fail to vote against might wipe out any chance you have of owning some.

If you're really lucky, the eventual election winner might think health savings accounts (HSAs) make sense. But in a world where income barely meets current expenses HSAs are not going to help you much.  

Or, alternatively, the winning candidate might gut healthcare access entirely, as they seem intent on doing in Minnesota. Check out this list of procedures and care options that AREN'T covered. Numbers 1, 5 and 23 are especially interesting. But don't worry about them because there's no war on women.

As I written before, democracy is nothing without us in it. We may have forgotten recently that democracy won't continue without our express participation but I think we know different now. We have the proof that it will not. We gotta show up. Every time. 

We must get back in the game. And we must do so in numbers too large to ignore. 

R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Miss me with that BS

Whenever I hear people talking blithely about their respect for the Office of the President  and the part that that respect plays in their attendance at or watching of the inauguration to end all inaugurations, I want to cuss, loud and long.

Help me to understand what this "respect for the office (of the president)" is. And after you've explained what it is, please tell me where it's been since January 20, 2009 cuz I'm pretty sure I ain't seen it in a while. 

To my mind, if you're respecting the office you also should be, at the very least, respectful of the office holder. This was not the case during the Obama years so I'm beginning to wonder whether respect rights only accrue if the office holder is Republican because for the last eight years, respect surely has been in very short supply.

And no, I am not saying that you can't challenge the office holder's thinking; his/her policy prescriptions; his/her comportment in the office if his/her behavior is egregious, but you sure as hell don't write a letter to an enemy state asking them to refuse a deal (and dancing damn close to breaking the law) deliberately and publicly undermining my guy and then later demand that I respect yours. Nuh uh. That ain't gonna work.

Is it "respectful of the office" to set on a course to deny people access to the polls (through which that office is obtained) on arbitrary or racially motivated grounds? Y'all been doing that for generations and yet now you want to tell me about respect? Remember North Carolina's Supreme Court voter ID decision?

Is it "respectful of the office" to gerrymander the hell out of districts, thereby making one side's victory assured irrespective of voters' wishes? Hell, that ain't even respectful of fair play, but now you want to tell me about respecting the office of the president? Nah. 

What part of meeting on Inauguration Night to collude (yeah, I said 'collude') to frustrate  every good faith effort at working across the aisle, can we describe as "respect for the office"? 

What part of rejecting a health insurance purchase mandate (which was an idea that came out of your own people at the conservative Heritage Foundation), translates to "respect for the office"? You reject your own idea to make a point about rejecting the president. Oh yeah, that sounds like R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Your guy (45) questioned the president's place of birth - steadily, loudly and mendaciously - for 90% of his presidency, but now you want my "respect for the office"? Yeah, y'all can kiss my entire Black arse with that respect talk. 

You demand "respect for the office" but you never respectfully allowed the outgoing president to perform the job the way he/she believed was best. You were free to argue or disagree, and you did. You were free to mount a vigorous debate against the officeholder's policies, and you did. But you lied, lied, lied and lied some more to sell your snake oils to the unsuspecting, ignorant masses. Claiming to "respect the office" while behaving in the ways in which certain groups have behaved these last 8 years, is anything but "respect" for either the office or the officeholder. Such "respect" is but an empty veneration of the title. Empty. Entirely devoid of meaning.

Frankly, I'm of the view that all the current calls for respect are a neat way of saying, "Respect us never mind how we disrespected you! That's all in the past". Well I, for one, am not here for it.

Respect is far more than just using the word in a sentence. Respect is a series of actions and little to nothing that has occurred in the last 8 years bespeaks respect, IMHO, so don't be expecting my respect any day soon. Respect is earned and your broke behinds ain't have a clue how to start earning.

In the meantime, 'respect'? For this guy? 

DJT tweet, on MLK weekend no less

Miss me with that BS. Please. 

A Bromance for the Ages

As the days wind down to the end of the Obama Era, I'm somewhat fixated on the Obama Biden bromance (and the Joe and Barack memes it has generated). I'm warming up to a good cry about Michelle but that's a whole other story. My current focus is on the bromance for the ages between the President and the Veep. I know I'm not alone in feeling something, because the meme-ification game has been strong. These two make it easy. (If you don't believe me, here are some really good ones for your enjoyment.) The question I keep asking myself is, what is it about the love these two share that gives us a warm fuzzy feelin'?

My very unscientific poll of a few good friends generated these results:

1. The Obama Biden bromance makes us feel good because it shows us that love can thrive anywhere, even in an arranged political marriage.

UPI/Landov/Barcroft Media

This may have begun as the usual marriage of political convenience, but it didn't remain that. All presidential/Vice Presidential relationships begin as arranged marriages do: with an assessment of what each party brings to the union but clearly the participants to this particular arranged marriage chose to do the work necessary to move from that starting point to a place of respect and love that inspired many.

2. The Obama Biden bromance makes us feel good because it shows us what is possible when we judge each other by the content of our characters

These two demonstrate for us that old rivalries can be set aside. In spite of having begun as BHO's rival, Joe Biden has had Barack Obama's back in a way that many of us have rarely seen before, and perhaps longed to see, as a sign of what was possible in politics and in race relations in America.

Say what you will about how far we think we've come as a nation, we ain't come that far. This didn't have to work, but it did because of the two people involved. Joe is Scrappy Joe from Scranton and Barack is No Drama Obama and between them, there is a level of emotional intelligence that is extraordinary.

Joe & Barack (BBC.com)

For many of us, the sight of an older White man, willingly taking second place to a Black man was ..... is there even a word for that?  Oh yeah, there is! It’s unpresidented. J This is America after all, where one party made hay of the president's 'exotic' background, his funny name, his African antecedents, his childhood in Indonesia and Hawaii, so anything was possible. This outcome was not a given but boy are we glad that it's the one we got!

This relationship made us feel hope. It showed us change. Oh sure, it probably made some people's stomachs churn (as evidence by the deplorables who subsequently came out of the woodwork), but for those of us leaning toward our better angels? For those of us looking to see post-racial America finally take flight, ah this image was a balm to the soul. 

3. This bromance makes us feel safe. 

Quoting my friend, it makes us feel safe "not in the ISIS can't happen here sense [but rather] in the sense that the two radically different men at the top of the country saw me [and] went to bat for me and defended what I am."  Amen.

These men, their relationship and their work made some of us feel a new, and much longed for, sense of safety and security; a sense of security that is now all but gone in the advent of the Age of Trump. The protections for LGBTQI, DPA and DACA reflect that safety; the end of DOMA and the beginning of Marriage Equality reflect that safety.

Obama and Biden, SOTU 2016. Obama tasks Biden with the US Cancer Moonshot Task Force[i]

4. The Obiden bromance also chokes us up because it is wholesome

Seeing these two men love each other so unabashedly and unreservedly is, as another friend said, "a distraction from all that's wrong with the world" and forces us to focus on the wonderful thing that is friendship.

In Barack and Joe we see the beauty of filial bonds, family and extended family; all that really great stuff that we just don't see enough of in this reality-TV-the-more-loud-crass-and-vulgar-the-better world.

And finally,

5. The Obiden bromance makes us feel inspired and hopeful

Quoting still another friend, "[i]t proves that friendship is stronger than any differences of opinion inherent in a working relationship. It shows the genuine nature of a true friendship. And it shows that humanity has the ability to not see skin color [sic] but rather [see] the common values and traits on which a sound relationship can be built."

Can I geddanother "Amen"?

Obama embraces Biden at Beau Biden's funeral Yuri Gripas / AP

**************

Men don't often show affection for other men. Certainly, Black men are not so open in their affection for other men. The way in which manhood seems to be defined limits men's willingness and ability to be openly affectionate with men they love. Everybody's afraid of being thought to be gay.

Case in point, earlier this year, my father passed away. Several months after he died, a much younger man called his phone to check in on him. When I told him, very reluctantly, that my father had passed away, I could hear and feel the impact of those words. I felt the whoosh of air leaving his body. And then there was the silence....a loud pain full silence. There may have been tears. He whispered, "I loved that man." And then he said it again. "I really loved that man." 

I wondered whether he had ever told him. Probably not. It's not the way of men. But on Friday, when Obama hung that Medal of Freedom (with distinction) around Biden's neck and Biden had to speak, I heard "I love you, man" in every pause and I saw it in every tear he shed.

Ladies and gentlemen. 44 and 47: A Bromance for the Ages. 

---

[i] Cancer Moonshot Task Force with which Veep Biden was tasked in January 2016. Please check it out.

Thoughts on the second presidential debate

I don't know about anybody else, but the second presidential debate of the 2016 campaign  triggered a profound feeling of hopelessness. I watched an experienced (you don't have to like her experience to agree that she has it) woman 'debating' an imbecile and it looked like my life on steroids.

To be clear, I've not debated many imbeciles but the sense of being more than capable but that you're just missing that one thing - some particular appendage; the right skin color; the right nationality; the right 'look' - some f*cking thing over which you have zero control, that'll put you over the top? Yeah, I know that feeling all too well.

I'm not the smartest person I know, but I'm good at what I'm good at, and I gotta tell you, I've had more than a couple of interactions that were similar to what I saw a few weeks ago. Watching Sec'y Clinton basically re-litigate my own life was deeply disturbing. It just showed me (as if I needed showing) how completely out my control my world (the world?) is. It was depressing. Deeply depressing.

Mornings like this, I wake up knowing that my professional life is over. When a man of Donald's obvious incompetence, moral turpitude and overall stupidity is being held up by even a single person a some kind of model? When his millions - largely inherited - are the measure of his 'success'? Yeah, I don't have a f*cking shot. I know why people drink and I know why people act out. I know why the caged bird pecks out eyes. F*ck singing.

I don't trust Hillary, everybody knows that, but at least she's intelligent, does her damn homework, and is ready for the job - even if I think the war with Russia drum is already beating. But Donald, Donald is the quintessence of knowing nothing but having ever been given the benefit of the doubt. White male winning. Dumb as a box of nails and as useful when there's no hammer in sight, but winning and grinning anyway.

Donald is just like f*cking Columbus: lost no arse but receiving acclaim five f*cking centuries later for having 'discovered' the New World. And I, little brown me, with my $50 words, an accent and a vagina, think I could have something to add to the world? Not this century.

It's going to be hours before I purge this from my system.

History repeats: Miss Universe '78

This article was originally written on 4/30/2016. Like various other pieces I've written, I changed my mind about sharing, deciding that the idea was deeply flawed. I'm publishing it now because apparently, the idea wasn't flawed at all.

Miss Universe 1977: Janelle Commissiong

In 1977, the first Black Miss Universe was crowned. She was Janelle Penny Commissiong and she was a West Indian, like me.  A year later, in '78, the new Miss Universe was Miss (Apartheid-era) South Africa. I remember it like it was yesterday and it's nearly forty years ago. I remember hearing the announcement, being jarred by the juxtaposition and filing it away in my mind never thinking I'd need to refer to that incident again. At the time, it really didn't signify anything. At the time it was just a, "Huh, how weird is that" kind of thing. No more. I understand it all too well now. 

Until fairly recently, I hadn't really thought too long or hard about President Obama's successor but in light of the way the race is shaping up, that 1978 Miss Universe suddenly seems relevant. What, if anything, does this political equivalent of Miss Aprtheid-era South Africa portend?

For the last seven years, certain voices have worked assiduously to make sure that we knew who the enemy was; who it was who hated America; who was trying to 'fundamentally remake America’ in ways that were unamerican. Over these last years, those and other voices have also eschewed the more delicate approach of using dog whistles and have gone straight for bellowing the dog's name at the top of their lungs. Now that the dog is coming galloping at us, and folk are getting a little nervous. The dog is very large and seems unpredictable, rabid even.

Until not too long ago, I had thought that the successor to the first Black president of the US would be someone reasonable. I'd thought that after eight years of cerebral leadership, we'd move on to another clear-thinking person. I thought that both sides would field candidates who would talk to the populace as though we were intelligent, informed voters. Boy was I wrong. Instead, it's looking increasingly like it's going to be another first Black Miss Universe crowning an Apartheid-era Miss South Africa situation. 

Miss Universe 1977 crowns Miss Universe 1978

November 12
So now, here we are. Where exactly is 'here' I'm not sure. I'm still waiting for my intestines to settle. I've wept, for myself, for this nation, for the planet. And now, I wait to find my footing in this Brave New Trumpian World. Stand by. Be ready. Brace yourself. More to come.

This kind of outcome is not new. It's happened before and until we get some things sorted out, it'll happen again. And again. And again. It's just a restoration of the 'natural order of things'. Carry on.

The Bending Arc of History

It is said that the arc of history, though long, bends surely towards justice. (Theodore Parker)

This line is often attributed to MLK Jr. but it was Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister and prominent American Transcendentalist born in 1810, who used the above phrase in an 1853 collection of “Ten Sermons of Religion”. The third sermon titled “Of Justice and the Conscience” included figurative language about the arc of the moral universe: 1

In the sermon he says, 

"Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right [thing]*. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Jefferson trembled when he thought of slavery and remembered that God is just. Ere long all America will tremble." **

* Parker used the word ‘right’ to denote the right thing not the right wing, just to be clear. 

**All emphases mine.

As insightful as the arc of history metaphor is, there are some ideas in there that are open to misinterpretation.

First, Parker's language suggests that history's arc bends naturally. The phrasing seems to center the bending of the arc away from human actors. The sentence gives the – dangerously erroneous - impression that the arc bends, not that we who wish to see it bent, must act to make that happen. That's really misleading. Passivity bends nothing. Staying away from the polls wins no elections. Apathy achieves nothing. Disengagement wins no war.

The bending of history's arc does not occur without significant effort. We ought to know this by now. Shoulders - many, many, many of them - must be applied to the work, and there must be blood, sweat and tears shed along the way. The bending of history necessarily involves both victories and defeats, and at times it may even feel like more of the latter than the former. Yet overall, the arc may indeed bend, but only if we have the will and do the work to bend it. For history bends toward justice only if we fight tooth and nail against the will of those who would have it not bend at all.  And then when there are victories, we must fight harder still to hold the newly gained territory, because change is a threat to those comforted by the status quo, and they will fight with everything they have in them to reassert what they believe to be the natural order.

Parker also offers the idea that "[things] refuse to be mismanaged long". This idea has very little bearing on the truth. Perhaps where he stood in history this was the case, but it ain't the case today. I could write you a list, as long as my arm, of things that have happily been mismanaged for quite long, but I'll offer just one: racial justice in America. We've mismanaged that to hell and back. We still don't have it managed, and if the election campaign of 2016 is anything to go by, we probably shouldn't hold our breath that it's going to be managed any better, any time soon.

Not least of all, I must disagree vehemently with Parker's suggestion that "all America did tremble." When did this happen?  Parker, speaking in 1853, suggests that America had some collective epiphany that clearly has not occurred.  It had not occurred when Parker spoke, just two years after Chief Justice Taney asserted that "the Negro has no rights which the White man is bound to honor" with respect to the Dred Scott legal matter. It certainly had not occurred when the Confederate States seceded to preserve African enslavement and defended that course of action with a Civil War.  Surely it had not occurred when in the wake of Reconstruction White supremacists implemented Jim Crow laws and rained Domestic Terror (lynching) on African people.  It was evident that it had not occurred when millions of Americans expressed their hatred of the slogan and the notion that Black Lives Matter.  And it most certainly has not occurred, as evidenced by this year's awful incidents around the election.

So on this election day + a few, while the arc of history may seem (to liberals and progressives) to have returned to its original place, and while we seem to be careening back to an earlier, uglier time for people like me, I am working to remain optimistic about the overall direction of history's arc. I am choosing (or trying to) to believe that we can bend history. At the same time, I am also staying coldly realistic about what that bending will take. I accept that sometimes, even as the arc is bending, it will bend through dark and dangerous places and times (such as these may now be) and we won't all come through to the other side. MLK Jr, himself said as much and was then killed for his efforts to bend the arc. 

This last point is critical: we will not all see justice. Not every family survived the Trail of Tears; not everyone survived the Middle Passage; not every unarmed man, woman or child survives their supposedly  uncomplicated encounter with the police. We do not all come out the other side of these horrors, which is why these "My grandpappy survived Jim Crow, I can survive Trump" memes are ridiculous as hell. Your grandpappy survived so that you wouldn't have to! But let me not go down that rabbit hole. Some of us won't make it out of these next four years. Some with chronic or life-threatening conditions will lose their health care and it will shorten their life spans. Some will be diagnosed and unable to get care. Some will be harassed or brutalized by an increasingly out of control police force and there will be no justice. Some will lose homes, jobs, everything and will succumb to grief and despair, and give up. 

Whether the election of Donald J. Trump is whitelash or not I'm not sure, but here's the truth: the arc of history will bend if we set to bending. There will be setbacks and there will be victories but we must never stop applying the pressure that is required to bend history's steely arc. Right about now though, I'm taking a little break. I'll get right back to doing my part just as soon as I get up off the floor cuz this election done laid me flat.

Making America great (no, not 'again')

I saw a note on FB this morning which was very interesting but included a line that confused me. The writer said that what we are watching is the deterioration of a once-great nation. My question is simply this: when was it great? No, I'm serious. I just want to know. How are we defining greatness because I'm starting to think that word doesn't mean what we think it does.

Bear in mind that I'm an immigrant so my perspective is different. I'm not wedded to any of the notions of American  greatness and exceptionalism that native-born sons and daughters are, and it's therefore far easier for me to look dispassionately at the history of this Great Country*.

I come from a formerly colonized nation, so questioning the colonizer is what I do. Forgive me.

The root of American - and European - greatness needs to be questioned and looked at with a clear, unflinching gaze. I've said this before, and will likely say it again, only the truth will set us free. So the question has to be asked: when was America great? Give me a date. How did she get great? What war did she win? What new territory did she conquer? How did her greatness come to be?

As far as I can tell, the America of the founders' imagination is a fabulous idea but betwist idea and implementation, is a long road of death, destruction and damnably persistent exploitation. Are we there yet, at implementation I mean? Are we at the full implementation of the founders' idea: equality, liberty and the right to pursue one's happiness? And if we aren't, what will it take to get there? And, given that there are folks who are constitutional originalists among us, do we even know where 'there' is any more? Seems to me that to a constitutional originalist like Clarence Thomas, 'there' might be a place where his learning to read was against the law. Just sayin'.

Based on what I've seen and heard, America was great when the Native Americans were walking the Trail of Tears courtesy Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal policy. Indian Removal: great for America, not so much for the Native Americans.

When America was great, the slaves were arriving in Jamestown in 1619. Slavery: great for America, not so much for the slaves.

When America was great, newly emancipated slaves were being forced back into sharecropping and de facto (version two) slavery. Only the stories of the sharecroppers can give a real sense of how exploitative these conditions actually were. History books tend to lay the continuing poverty of sharecroppers at the feet of the vagaries weather and crop yields, but in many cases there was far more to it than that. Sharecropping: great for America, not so much for the sharecroppers.

When America was great, domestic terrorism was a thing keeping newly freed people of color from getting too big for their britches. Lynching: great for America, not so much for the n*ggers.

When America was great, Black people could be used for medical experimentation. Medical research and advancement: great for America, not so much for the guinea pigs (aka Black human beings).

When America was great, discrimination in lending and home sales was OK; unequal resourcing to schools was OK; disparate treatment in any and every sphere of life was OK; discriminating against persons on the grounds of the race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or gender expression was OK; and using disparaging language as we spoke to and about each other was perfectly acceptable. Discrimination: great for America, not so much for those being discriminated against. So I ask again: when exactly was America great? Or perhaps the real question to be asked is, for whom was this great America great? And in our quest to regain this apparently lost greatness, who are we going to put in a box, because clearly, someone's gotta be the guinea pig, the sharecropper, the slave, the n*gger. Who's it gonna be? I'm not volunteering. I guess that leaves you? Oh wait, not you either? Hm. We seem to be running out of candidates.

We have long confused the ideas of greatness and prosperity. The two words are not synonyms, not even close.

Belgium is wealthy, but that wealth is built on the bones of millions of Africans in the Congo who were brutalized for rubber, which makes a response to the events in Brussels complicated. We repudiate the violence but we must also be mindful of the history. Does wealth make Belgium 'great'? If so, then surely the source of that wealth makes Belgium something far less than great? Great Britain is also wealthy but that wealth came at the expense of both the East and the West Indies,  the Triangular Trade, colonization and its attendant brutalities. Great Britain was made wealthy through the stripping of people from their culture and stripping of culture from its people. That certainly made her wealthy, but great?

America is wealthy. The Founders' idea is a great one. The Bill of Rights is fantastic, but even as that was being crafted, Thomas Jefferson was exploring/exploiting some kind of connubial relationship with Sally Hemmings and George Washington and several others were slaveholders. They were tacitly, if not actively, supporting the rape and torture of the female slaves on their plantations and while ain't nobody ever talk about it, I'm pretty sure some of the male slaves were being raped as well. Was the slave-owning version of America great? What about the Trail of Tears and Native American genocide version? Was that one great? How about the current version of America, where unarmed people of color too often do not survive even the simplest encounters with agents of the state? How great is that?

Perhaps rather than toss the word great around we need to figure out what greatness looks like and then hold America up against that standard and see where we come out? Before we talk about making America great again, let's do the gap analysis, see how it comes out and then get to working on closing the gap because I'm not feeling the 'again' bit. The first time around wasn't so good for my people.

If you want me to sign on, let's talk about finally making America great; finally realizing the promise of the founders’ vision. I could get on board that train. The Trump train? Not so much. 

* Don't you feel like the words Great Nation should always be capitalized or bolded, the way folk say it? I do.