Jon Reisman
An end-of-summer visit from my late wife’s best high school friend and our Maid of Honor, coupled with some traditional Downeast activities involving lobster, clams, blueberries, the Red Sox, Cathance Lake’s clear cold waters, and some deep conversations and reminisces about faith, family, freedom, politics, and President Trump, led to a somewhat scattershot column of observations and complaints. I usually enjoy potpourri fragrance, but the political stink here is a bit overwhelming.
Trump and Iran
After 47 years of Iranian terrorism pushing Death to America and Death to Israel, the red-line crossing execution of some thirty to fifty thousand Iranian protesters, months of fruitless negotiation and deliberate Iranian delay tied to our upcoming midterms and the price of gasoline, Trump and his most excellent Treasury and Defense secretaries declared an economic D-Day on the Ayatollahs and Iranian Revolutionary Guard, with surrender and/or regime change clearly the strategic goal. Trump is the first American President to implement “Find Out” consequences, following nearly a half century of kicking the can down the road. Trump’s actions further inflamed the socialists, Jew haters, and left-wingers in control of the Democratic Party. It’s time for the legacy press and corrupt left to have a full find-out experience, and I’m cheering it on. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.
“Find out” may cost the GOP the House and Senate if the legacy press, commies, and capitalism haters get their wish; it will save the country, freedom, and the West if Trump prevails. I know who and what I’m rooting for, and it’s very different from the hopes, dreams, and desires of Troy Jackson, Hannah Pingree, Matt Dunlap, the Bangor Daily News, Portland Press Herald, Newscenter Maine, MSNow, CNN, Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the Democratic Socialists of America. I believe “find out” is the richly deserved and correct response and possibly the only effective vaccine/treatment for Trump Derangement Syndrome. I hope the side effects to freedom and political mental health are not fatal.
WNBA and Defining Women
The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) has a virtue signaling/marketing problem. The league is numerically dominated by black lesbians and trans advocates/sympathizers, but its biggest marketing draws are two straight white women who challenge the league’s cultural and political values. The league defines women as adult humans who self-identify as women, rather than by biological XX/XY genetics. (No wonder Sydney Sweeney’s jeans/genes are controversial).
I am enjoying the efforts of the WNBA leadership to avoid accountability and litigation. I believe their best hope for survival lies in offering the WNBA commissioner’s chair to Associate Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who famously declined to offer a definition of woman at her confirmation hearing, claiming she was not a biologist. Moving her from SCOTUS to the WNBA should increase the IQ scores of both, plus Susan can remind the socialist scum that she voted for both Katanji and Kavanaugh.
Division
I have been increasingly concerned at the level of polarization, division and dysfunction in the country, urging advocates of all stripes to listen harder without much success in ameliorating the conflict (indeed, it’s hard to enter this arena without stoking the fire, as opposed to dousing it, and I’m not without blame). As nominally-in-charge baby boomers reluctantly cede power to millennials and Gen Z, I have begun to wonder if our level of division is indeed unprecedented. I was a young teenager in the late 60s and somewhat but not completely unaware of all the societal upheaval Vietnam, civil rights, and assassinations entailed. I think America was probably just as divided in 1968 as it is today. I sometimes refer to the upheaval the 60s wrought as “sideswiped by the sixties.” It will take strong and courageous leadership to avoid being sacked by socialism in the 2020s.
Jon Reisman is an economist and policy analyst who retired from the University of Maine at Machias after 38 years. He resides on Cathance Lake in Cooper, where he is a Statler and Waldorf intern. Mr. Reisman’s views are his own, and he welcomes comments as letters to the editor here or to him directly via email at jreisman@maine.edu.
