Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy

In reverse! Originally descriptive of a factitious illness feigned by others upon demand becomes an unwillingness to admit that an actual illness is afoot.

Of course debilitating illness and possible death trump this charade.

As some wag suggests, "Will the Jacksonville, Florida event actually happen?" Two months is an eternity during which time cries of dismay may come to drown out any conceivable crowd of admirers.

We now know that the Trump campaign made the Tulsa people remove the spacing signs and any other signage related to the hazard of viral infection - by order of the Republican mayor of that city apropos of the Republican Governor's removal of any strictures about propinquity.

Death takes no prisoners. See also widespread economic collapse.

How many buses does it take to achieve appropriate spacing for young schoolchildren? How achieve physical spacing in school settings? How suitably expand the number of adults necessary for safe pedagogy, counseling, nursing, and food delivery? Whence come those resources? Assuming the continued good health of all concerned.

Heh.

And that's just at the end of August. All of September and October lie ahead before we get to count the surviving adults who choose to exercise their franchise.

The Supreme Court ruling regarding discrimination.

Not surprisingly, I am relieved to see the legal casuistry moving beyond outmoded and vicious stereotyping regarding sex and gender diversity. Religious shrieks and moans don't reach my ears.
I grew into a hellish landscape in the 1950s and it took many years and misadventures beyond telling before I was able to bring relatively dispassionate attention to my own situation.

What is now indisputable is that there are many gradations and complex nuances surrounding some simple personal realities that are akin to handedness, body height, and understandings about somatotype designations. I am who I have always been and I will be me until I pass from this mortal realm. Others may prefer their versions of such realities but no one - no one - has the right to define for me what I know I am.

There is no room for religious orthodoxy in such statements as these. This is about knowledge, not belief. Hypocrisy is commonplace in many belief systems and there are readily avaiable aphorisms
to bring to bear: "Physician heal thyself", "suum quique", caution about throwing a first stone ...
mere language fails to convey the utter terror victims experience when their very essence is castigated by ignorant and hateful people. Religion is a distraction, weaponized to assert power and hegemony.

It almost killed me and it continues to slash and burn innocence, to torture and murder with impunity.

Trump holding a bible would be risible were it not for the brutal attacks he brought with him on his walk of infamy. Now he and his handlers are subscribing to the meme of "acceptable levels of mega death" that we haven't heard in public discourse since the time of John F. Kennedy. The mindless adoration Trump  requires is creating a death cult and its members will expire in a multitude of lives cut short before their time. Do not expect religion to stand in the way of this brute. Death will put an end to him and his ilk.

Regarding institutional movements afoot, bear in mind that the Republicans have a one-vote majority in the Minnesota Senate. The more this fragile majority drags its feet, the more stentorian the voices can be around the state urging voters to think about the larger issues involved. If police misconduct in Minneapolis is not restrained because a handful of outstate Republicans want to "stick it" to the urban areas that sustain the economic viability of the entire State of Minnesota, they will richly deserve contumely from their more savvy constituents.

The citizens of Minneapolis will also have the opportunity to remove the .017 headcount requirement from the Minneapolis City Charter and such an amendment can be brought forward by existing entities like the City Council itself and/or the action of the City Charter Commission. I think the headwind is there for these possible initiatives to move forward without having to resort to a petition process. If the Mayor drags his feet for whatever reason, 2021 municipal elections aren't all that far way.

It is also first-rate that the Police Federation has been removed as a negotiating agent. Never forget that only 5% of the force actually lives in the City they are sworn "To Protect and Serve". Also never forget that more often than not, the outsiders depend on military hardware to force their opinions into reality against unarmed citizens who now appear in opposition in an aggregate of tens of thousands.

It is axiomatic that rule cannot be maintained at the point of a gun and without doubt divesting the Force of heavy weapons and overblown responsibilities will have to happen no matter what that one-vote Republican majority in the Minnesota Senate might prefer to see. Just as the extortionate behavior of the Police Federation is being sidetracked, so also the opinions of the State Senators who do not live in the core cities of this State will have to set aside their pretensions of supremacy and get real about solutions that can be sustained.

Some remedies are beyond the reach of the State of Minnesota and its subdivisions. The qualified immunity from prosecution profile of the United States Supreme Court has been abused to a fault and should membership in that Court of Last Resort need to be expanded, that can be achieved by a blue wave sweep through the Congress of the United States and the Office of the Presidency - a future prospectus that's looking increasingly real. The tail of the low-population States has been wagging the dog quite long enough and we are likely to see that eliminated in the time ahead. So also the benefit of adding Washington D. C. as a 51st State of the Union and a renewed effort to make a similar offer to much maligned and neglected Puerto Rico. The Electoral College is profoundly undemocratic as matters stand.

I also believe that the use of the filibuster in the United States Senate has surely reached its "sell by" date. It  ought not be possible for a rump group of cynical Senators to bring that Upper House to a standstill. The corrupt practices of the current Majority Leader in that body demeans the good name of the State of Kentucky and it would not be good practice to let such malfeasance continue compliments of the use of the filibuster. Nor ought the Republican Senators who insist on "going down with the ship" as President Trump is given a red slip by the national electorate this fall be immune from the harsh consequences they are bringing into their careers.

The implications for the national economy remain quite daunting no matter what initiatives and decisions are reached in the remaining months of 2020. Speculation in the stock market is as flimsy now as it was in 1929 and the outwash of impending economic collapse compliments of the pandemic is both incomprehensible and inevitable. "Buckle up", as they say, because there's a very rough ride ahead.

Many voices are now raised as we move into June, 2020. In Minnesota, attention is now emerging on the need for long overdue structural reform of the Minneapolis police department. The state's leadership is now determined to undo a long history of offenses against humanity. The city's leadership is very much on task and no scenarios of rage from both the police themselves or from within the ranks of those protesting harsh practices will bring sustainable solutions into being.

That is a horizon filled with compromise because no one camp has a monopoly on power and all are now confronted by both the viral pandemic and the increasing collapse of the economy beyond the strokes of anyone's pen.

Changing demographics is a part of this mix - Minnesota's largest city is becoming a minority majority city of the first class. The economic well-being of ever expanding circles of settlement  - suburbs, exurbs, and the great extent of Minnesota itself  - now depend on a new vocabulary of political will that can embrace and celebrate the diversity that is our strength. The history of settlement in this part of the United States has more than a passing similarity to the growing pains that preceded what we now observe in larger regions around the globe and now the imperatives of consumerism and imperial pretension are lost in clouds of tear gas and increasing desperation.

We must have a new social contract that simply replaces the abuses of previous erstwhile winners with more humane understandings of values we hold in common. As mere newcomers to the only planet we know of that can sustain our species, exploitation and furious conflict destroy more than mere governance systems and threaten the survival of homo sapiens as participants in the global ecology that sustains life in general.

Mass extinctions are occurring with increasing regularity and the planet's inevitable adjustments in climate and more prosaic habitability are seemingly lost in the minutiae of human conflict. If future generations are to prosper, quite the changes in direction must occur and bravura performances in the survival of the fittest meme will have to countenance the likelihood of failure before even this current century passes by. Spiritual growth has been lost lately and there are no magic remedies short of retooling fundamental beliefs beyond mere physical symbols of value.

One must look to more stable cultures than what we presume we understand in the melange we now experience and our newest neighbors bring a wealth of insight that we all must come to embrace if we are to grow and prosper. This has nothing to do with violence and outmoded power struggles.

I can certainly howl at the moon as our American cultural practices succumb to inanity, or I can look to strengths that start with familial loyalties and expand to far greater acceptances of diversity than we have previously shown in my lifetime. 80-odd years on this earth and I'm only beginning to grasp  what is important and what is delusion. Go figure.