In a perfect future, Donald Trump would live forever. We would tear down his ballroom and his "arch" to build for him a prison that would withstand the ravages of the ages, interring him inside of it for all the rest of living history, there to be ridiculed, reviled, despised, and never forgotten.

"The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind...The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it."

- Thomas Paine

5 years ago today, this was unsealed by court order

Its plainly obvious who is running the country.
And has been since the Inauguration Day they attended;

Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and a bevy of other mega multi-billionaires.

The US has no functioning Executive branch.
It has an amalgamation of special interests masquerading as one.

The famous scene from "Sophie's Choice" is no longer historic fiction in the USA.

There are people who will keep on reliving the trauma of these awful moments for many years to come.

We are all experiencing a deep wound on our society.

And no amount of apologies or reparations will ever undo it.

"Had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great...it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment."

- John Brown

As a former US diplomat, here is something important I see;
The handshake

Trump walks out extending his hand palm up. This is wrong.

He is voluntarily assuming a position of weakness, and signaling submissiveness right from the go.

Clear as crystal for folks like me who are trained in this stuff.

Using this language is verbatim Klan bullshit.
Has been for past 140 yrs.

Combined with eliminating age requirement.
And eliminating or reducing education requirement.
=
They are militarizing hate groups & bringing them under official badge.

Look for them to slack the physical requirements soon.

Speaking of "files";

Lavrentiy Beria, right hand man of Stalin

He kept a meticulous file of all the girls he raped or killed, as well as kompromat on all of his associates.

Khrushchev ordered the file destroyed, but a copy survived and was released publicly in 2003. It contains hundreds of names.

Hmmm...now where have I heard that tactic of making rooms extra-hot before?

What happens to an elite cast of out-of-touch aristocrats when the people they lord over are pushed into starvation and homelessness?

History has shown us over and over what happens...

HAIKU

Old will be branches
Beauty I will never see
Still I dig and tend

400 year old Japanese white pine bonsai tree that survived the atomic bomb at Hiroshima.

Gifted to the United States in 1976.
Housed at the US National Bonsai Museum ever since.

Sometimes I think about this bonsai tree.

It is a 400 year old Yamaki Pine.
And it survived the atomic bomb at Hiroshima.

Its form is evocative of that terrible blast.
Yet it serves as a magnificent reminder that in spite of awful happenings, high beauty outlives those happenings and life goes on.

HAIKU

Emerald green pine
Knifing up through bleak snowbank
It has mastered Zen