Month: July 2020

Old farts like me are products of the Sixties, an historic period of unparalleled drama.

We witnessed the Bay of Pigs catastrophe, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy, the Beatles, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement, Woodstock, Super Bowl I, the birth of the Internet, Native Americans occupying Alcatraz, and Neil Armstrong setting foot on the Moon.

My generation also learned about an American U2 spy plane being shot down in the Soviet Union, welcomed Rolling Stone Magazine (and the Rolling Stones themselves!), observed a massive peace rally in Washington D.C., read with horror about the My Lai Massacre, were shocked by the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and celebrated the creation of Medicare.

We also were there for the invention of the first lasers and birth control pills, the first public appearance of Bob Dylan, and the determination that cigarette smoking is “hazardous to your health”.

And, alas, we elected Richard Nixon. (Yeah, I voted for the creep.)

Let’s face it, we Baby Boomers have definitely experienced our share of highs and lows, probably more than any other generation. All that shit that I mentioned occurred in the Sixties: we also lived through another half-century of drama!

Unfortunately, for those of us who are still breathing, we must now endure more torment, almost more than we can bear. Our children and grandchildren are losing their jobs, our friends and neighbors are succumbing to Covid-19, and over-aggressive law enforcement against minorities has our country in turmoil.

Alas, we elected Donald Trump.

In my lifetime, I can’t remember a public figure as ill-suited for the job he sought. The guy doesn’t have a clue about the character of America, cannot effectively lead in a crisis, and seeks to divide citizens at the very time when they need to join together to solve problems. He is so busy talking that he cannot listen, and is too busy thinking about himself that he cannot absorb useful advice. He is shallow when the Nation needs constructive thinking, and he is combative and vindictive when things don’t go his way.

Other than that, he’s a fine fellow (if you believe Fox News).

Some people who know him pretty well think he’s out of his depth. John Bolton, the President’s ex-National Security Advisor, knee-capped his one-time boss in a recent book. Bolton agreed with a raft of ex-Administration/ex-Generals who said President Trump puts his personal agenda ahead of that of the Nation. They also infer that he really isn’t the “stable genius” that he purports to be. (“Dumb” might be a better word.)

Today, the President’s niece, a psychologist named Mary Trump, was quoted in book excerpts that her uncle Donald: paid some friend to take his college SAT’s for him; kindness and forgiveness “never had any meaning for him”; only goes to a church “when the cameras are on”; and that his sister, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, called him a “clown” when he was a candidate for President.

Mrs. Trump goes on to add that “His ability to control unfavorable situations by lying, spinning, and obfuscating has diminished to the point of impotence in the midst of the tragedies we are currently facing,”

Gee, and that’s only a few observations that the psychologist has about her unhinged uncle Donald. That guy needs to get into therapy!

Maybe he’ll have more time to do that in a few months…

Yes, we’re going through some very dramatic times right now, and who knows if we’ll weather them.

Right now, the Covid-19 pandemic is back to full-throttle, hospital ICU’s are crammed, and there’s no vaccine on the horizon. We’ve been worrying about a “second wave” of infection in the Fall, but what is just as likely is a second wave of business closures and social distance quarantines. Forty states are now suffering from “premature re-opening”.

I’m not sure what the American economy will look like if Covid-19 gets a stranglehold on us. I think it would deflate all of us and drive the country deep into an economic and emotional depression. Let’s hope that doesn’t occur. Wash your hands, keep your distance and wear a mask!

Social unrest, right now focusing on racial issues, could erupt into larger incidents of violence as the pandemic digs in, more people lose jobs and hope, and angry people with guns look for people to blame for the loss of the American Dream. A lot of rednecks have been itching to do some shootin’…

Me and my fellow Baby Boomers have lived through a lot of drama, and somehow we survived it.

But I dread the next few months.

It could be historic, and not in a great way.

There is a portion of a beach in Southern California that is famous among surfers for routinely offering the best “shore break” in the United States.

It’s called The Wedge.

I used to body surf and boogey board there back in my early days when I was a competitive swimmer, a swim instructor, and a lifeguard.

And a reckless idiot.

The Wedge is the location on Balboa Island where the Newport Harbor jetty runs into the ocean, causing waves approaching shore to bank off of the rocks and then “pile up” on another wave to create a last-minute elevation of the wave.

This effect can cause a 6’ wave to become a 10-footer, a 10-footer to explode upwards another five feet, and so forth. Occasionally, some very large surf comes to shore along this beach…15’, 20’, and even 25’ waves…easily the gnarliest shore break in America.

Two other factors make The Wedge unusual: a very steep beach which slopes back into the surf, creating a natural amphitheater for spectators and a very strong backwash into the sea; and, the fact that large waves break in shallow water. The latter is apparent when you’re taking off on a wave and you see sand, rocks and fish being sucked up into the wave under you, and then when you get wiped out…and speared into the sandy bottom by the force of the wave.

Regular mortal folks like most body surfers, belly boarders and board surfers have no business challenging The Wedge when the waves get to ten feet. The danger of getting a broken arm, leg, or even a back or neck, is very real.

As competent a swimmer as I was back in the 60’s, I really wasn’t safe out there: The Wedge toyed with me, and I knew it.

People didn’t board surf The Wedge back then. Boards were longer then, and there’s no way that they would have worked on quickly-developing, super-steep shore break. Nowadays, however, surf boards are much shorter and more maneuverable, and surfers are more athletic. Some highly skilled guys are surfing The Wedge now, but the place is still the mecca of boogey boarders.

We made our own boogey boards back in the Sixties. They were fiberglass/resin-coated plywood with a stiff skeg added for turnability. Nowadays boogey boards are foam-core, like surfboards.

On July 4^th, throngs of spectators, photographers, and surfers descended upon The Wedge, even though the City of Newport Beach had prohibited beach activity due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The surf crowd pretty much ignores societal conventions, and the word was out: a forecast of very large surf at The Wedge.

So, they came.

I don’t know where everyone parked. There is no parking lot, so beachgoers must park their cars on the street in local residential neighborhoods. In the Summer, on a busy day, finding a parking space within walking distance to The Wedge is harder than finding a virgin in a whorehouse.

Which reminds me of a story:

Back in the 1980’s, when our kids were young teens, I took them to The Wedge for a beach day. I had a VW bus back then, and we hit the jackpot: enough curb space for my VW only about ¼ mile from the beach. I drove just past the space, shifted into reverse, and was about to back in when…a VW Beetle packed with four Anthony Spicoli’s cut in behind me, stole my spot, and yukked it up as they hot-footed it toward the beach.

Oh, boy, some nasty words flew in my VW bus. I was enraged. We had to re-start our search and eventually found a spot a half-mile away.

On the way to the beach with my gang, we spotted the offending VW in “our” spot. I took one, and directed my boys to take the others, and we deflated all four tires on that Beetle. And then, strolled down to the beach, where we settled in about fifty yards from the four assholes who had stolen our parking spot.

About an hour later, somebody came up to them and reported that their car was flat on its rims. They jumped up yelling and cussing and ran off in the direction of the Beetle.

The kids and I high-fived each other: street justice had been administered.

Anyway, I digress.

I mention the July 4^th spectacle at The Wedge because I caught it on U-Tube this morning. Holy Jesus, those waves were monsters! And there were a bunch of brave idiots out there getting their asses handed to them, interspersed with a few really spectacular rides.

What courage it must have taken, along with copious amounts of ganga, for those dudes to take off on 20’ waves and risk being crushed into the sand!

Those watching on the shore oohed and aaahed, cheering on their reckless heroes. It was outdoor theater at its best…maybe once-in-a-lifetime. A perfect 10. Just what was needed to brighten up an otherwise depressing Summer.

The police eventually got there and cleared the beach, protecting the surfers from the Covid-19 danger.

Independence Day 2020 has come and gone.

There were no parades this year, backyard barbeques were socially-distanced, and massive fireworks spectaculars were mostly replaced by do-it-yourself neighborhood versions.

And there was one lame-ass speech, delivered at Mount Rushmore by President Trump.

In a made-for-television spectacle that his campaign folks designed, the President spent thirty minutes monotonously reciting every patriotic theme he could muster.

With earth-shaking events like the collapsed economy and the Covid-19 pandemic going full tilt, and the Nation grieving over Black families forever scarred by police brutality, Mr. Trump had an opportunity to talk about bringing people together to solve existential problems.

Instead, he chose to use his pulpit to denigrate citizens who disagree with his warped vision of America The Beautiful.

In summary, our President used the occasion to divide Americans, not unite them.

The usual suspects were identified: “angry mobs”, “far-left fascists”, “left-wing cultural revolution(aries)”, “liberal Democrats”, educators, and journalists.

The hand-picked crowd of Trump cultists roared its approval.

Absent from the speech was any mention of the reasons for the social unrest throughout the country which the Trump Administration has done everything possible to ignore: systemic racism in the law enforcement and criminal justice systems and police brutality against minorities.

Not one peep from our President acknowledging that America has some problems that need fixing.

Instead, he used the anniversary of the ultimate protest movement (a declaration of independence from British tyranny) to publicly bad mouth protesters who demand that his Administration and all succeeding ones do a better job serving people of color.

The President seems to be fixated on angry protesters who are pulling down statues of historical figures. He chooses to ignore why the “angry mobs” are targeting those statues and, instead, prefers to brand the dissidents as anti-Americans. After all, he says, they are destroying the Nation’s “heritage”.

Our Nation’s heritage is complex, and probably too deep a subject for the self-proclaimed “stable genius” to fathom.

In his speech, the President went to great length to detail some of the heroic achievements of famous Americans. His speech writer even threw in a few minority heroes, just to show how inclusive patriot Donald Trump purports to be.

The problem is that the rabble in the streets that the President is targeting with nasty rhetoric is not protesting American exceptionalism but, rather, long-standing cracks in the social fabric that he, other politicians, and White America, as a whole, have generally ignored for generations.

Many of the statues that are now falling are of individuals who helped defend the institution of slavery, either as politicians or as Confederate soldiers. Almost 600,000 Union soldiers/patriots died in the Civil War, helping to defeat the rebellious Southern states. Why should statues of Confederate soldiers, who were all traitorous to the United States, abound in parks and plazas throughout our country?

Sure, Civil War treachery is part of our Nation’s heritage, but not something to honor.

Similarly, our heritage includes other unsavory episodes that patriots like Donald Trump would rather not mention, choosing instead to cherry-pick the successes. “Why pick at a scab?” seems to be his M.O.

Actually, our Nation has evolved into what it is today because of individuals and organizations publicly protesting impediments, flaws, and moral wrongs in our country. Protesters, dissidents, and even mobs have forced much-needed change in our Nation. “Free Speech”, not the right to own a gun, is our most precious right as Americans living in a democracy.

President Trump is a great believer in free speech, as long as it’s his speech that is unimpaired. As for others, if they disagree with him, they are agitators that should be dealt with. He particularly despises journalists, because they report on things he doesn’t want known, educators, who teach facts, and experts, because the truth that they bring to the table soften refutes the bullshit he’s spreading.

Protest that resulted in change for the better is what made our country what it is today.

Protesters ignited the American Revolution. Crispus Attucks, a black man, was the first patriot killed at the Boston Massacre, which pre-dated the Boston Tea Party by three years.

Fifty-six brave protesters signed the Declaration of Independence, which put them at odds with the British Monarchy and marked them as traitors to the Crown, subject to death. Aren’t we glad they had the courage to protest?

Frances Willard, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott led throngs of protesters throughout America in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s demanding equal voting rights for women. They succeeded in gaining support for the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, approved in 1920.

Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass used rhetoric, and John Brown used fiery speeches and violence, to protest slavery in the mid-1800’s. They laid the groundwork for political change, which led to the Civil War, which led to the 13^th Amendment, which abolished slavery.

Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, and Jacob Riis were investigative journalists at the turn of the 20^th century who protested, via their writings, social, economic, and political decay in American society. Their writings paved the way for a period of Progressivism in the United States, led by individuals such as Theodore Roosevelt, Jane Addams, William Jennings Bryant, and Al Smith.

Samuel Gompers and other individuals who protested unsafe working conditions and unfair business tactics helped form the American Federation of Labor in 1886 and led the union for thirty-eight years.

Women in America have endured second class political, economic, and religious treatment for much of the Nation’s history. In the 1960’s, these disparities were protested by individuals such as Betty Friedan, who helped form the modern Women’s Liberation Movement which continues to this day protesting sexual inequality in the workplace and with regard to abortion rights.

The simple act of protest by sitting down in a public bus by Rosa Parks brought attention to the injustices of Jim Crow laws and segregation in the South.

Martin Luther King, namesake of Martin Luther, one of the most famous protesters of all time, was an effective protester for civil rights and the end of the war in Vietnam.

One of the most famous boxers in history, Muhammad Ali, gave up his heavyweight title in protest of the Vietnam War and the military draft.

Students at Kent State University protested that War, and some died, and the incident helped turn public opinion against President Nixon, who subsequently ended the conflict.

Atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair waged a three decade protest regarding the appropriate separation of church and state per the U.S. Constitution.

The dismal wages and working conditions of Mexican-American farm workers was effectively protested by Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta.

Two hundred years of abuse and a policy of genocide by the Federal government was protested by Russell Means and Dennis Banks, resulting in improved conditions for Native American citizens.

The rock singer Prince protested abusive music industry practices toward recording artists, resulting in a new way (streaming) of merchandising music and controlling artistic content.

All of these protests were aimed at the status quo…because it was lacking in some way. There was a better way of doing things, the protesters said, and thank goodness, their patriotic actions to make America better succeeded.

President Donald Trump represents the status quo. He is not interested in solving societal problems but, rather, in gaining/retaining political power by pitting the status quo against would-be societal change agents (i.e. protesters).

The “heritage” of America that the President speaks so lovingly of includes not only the wars won, the industry created, and the technology invented, but also the inherent problems that were solved when those issues were raised through protest.

We can’t, and our President can’t, pretend that our country is, and always has been, perfect. Yes, we’ve been “exceptional” in many ways, but we’ve made missteps too, like the annihilation of our native peoples, Jim Crow laws, Vietnam, economic meltdowns, governmental corruption and, lately, a shamelessly poor effort to combat a pandemic.

Citizens have a right to aspire for a better America. Protesting has proven the only effective way to achieve that end. Elected officials respond to people in streets carrying signs.

We owe a debt of gratitude to those patriotic Americans who have been willing, and continue to be willing, to face ridicule, abuse, and police-administered violence to alert society to its flaws.

These people aren’t anti-American, like our President would have us believe.

Rather, they are patriots of the first order.

Not much going on around here as we head into Fourth of July, 2020 (tomorrow).

It’s been hot, of course, but not bad. Low 90’s to single-digit 100’s, with low humidity. A few windy days here and there, but generally pleasant breezes. I’ve tried out my misting system on the big pergola in the backyard and it works great. Kudos to Dan Quinn for a great idea!

Tomorrow will mark our second full week with BonBon, our puppy Boston Terrier. She’s doing great, socializing nicely with Booger and Baby and enjoying our property, inside and out.

We let BonBon have the run of the house and, so far, she hasn’t destroyed anything. A few accidents have happened, pee- and poo-wise, but that is to be expected. She understands that she should do those things outside but “shit happens”!

Our general contractor friend “Adam” is accomplishing a few projects for us. He’s been working about two days a week on our patio and is about done with it. There’s an entertainment wall on the interior side and a lattice-work enhanced stucco wall on the exterior where we will entice some Bougainvilla vines to decorate the wall. Adam also installed a ceiling fan over the patio.

We’ve got a few minor aesthetic touch-ups to do with wiring and such. I’m using my RV Tailgater satellite dish plus Internet WiFi to provide broadcast programming out on the patio. Works good!

He is going to return in a week or so to replace our kitchen island sink with a white ceramic farmhouse apron sink. It’s something that Charlie has always wanted, but Pulte (our builder) didn’t offer it when we were specc’ing out our build. It will be a $1,000 improvement when Adam gets done.

Thank Goodness we had a handy guy around here today. I brought the RV over from storage to top-off the “house” batteries with distilled water. In the process of doing that, I somehow locked myself out of the RV right in front of our house. I’ve done it before, by closing the door too hard. Anyway, Adam and I spent an hour and a half figuring out a way to get in. Finally, he drilled a hole in the metal frame around one of the windows, pushed a stiff wire in the hole and released the window lock. Then, we were able to undo the locked door and free up the latch mechanism with graphite lubricant. What a pain!

Adam (Childress), our contractor, is a great guy. Not only is he a talented contractor, but he’s fun to talk with. Adam is married, lives in Las Vegas, has several building-related businesses, and is the “Executive Pastor” of a church in Vegas. In an earlier life, he spent 14 years working for Uncle Sam, first as an enlisted Special Ops guy, and later as a contract black ops specialist working covertly to extract American civilians and soldiers in the Middle East.

We’ve kind of adopted Adam as a sixth son (Jason Friedman is our fifth). He stays over at our house when he works here. Charlie also convinced him that she (and Jonathan) could do a great job for him on his bookkeeping and taxes, so we added a client, too. Adam is so talented and hard-working that we have already recommended him for some follow-up jobs in our community. He’s thinking of moving up to Mesquite in the future.

Speaking of that, my right hip is sore. Again, Thank Goodness that my orthopedic surgeon agreed to move up my surgery date to September 1^st. I won’t be doing a lot until then. I don’t know if I can golf again; my hip issue certainly affected my game.

Tomorrow is July 4^th. We had been invited, and accepted the invitation, to a backyard party with some neighbors, the Carnicelli’s, a couple of weeks ago. It was going to be a small event, with just a few couples that live in the neighborhood. Anyway, a few days ago Charlie found out that this “small” get-together had grown into 18 to 20 people, half of whom we didn’t know.

That’s bad form in the current Covid-19 world.

Two couples that we know talked to us about it, concerned about the size. We all agreed that it would make us uncomfortable to be around so many people at a small property, not knowing who had associated with whom over the past week. All we need is one “superspreader” to attend and, voila!, there could be a bunch of deaths in this community of geezers.

So, we bailed on the event after I talked to the hostess’ husband, my golfing buddy Galen. By the end of the day, a total of eight presumed guests had backed out and the hostess, Sherrie, was pissed. She ranted and raved and felt betrayed by her supposed friends. It was ugly.

However, today it seems like the storm has passed; no more nasty texts or phone calls. In fact, Sherrie sent out a conciliatory message to Charlie. So, we’ll see…

The reality of Covid-19 is beginning to sink in, particularly in light of the recent spike in infections and hospitalizations in Sun Belt states like Nevada. Lots of people (like the Carnicelli’s!) scoffed at the coronavirus “hoax”, but now it appears to be settling in for the long haul. Six weeks ago, half the people in stores around town were without facemasks. Now, everyone is wearing one. Some communities that “re-opened” business are now closing them again. It’s serious time.

I hope that things don’t get out of hand before I get my right hip replacement surgery. It is an elective surgery, and those procedures were halted in April and May when Covid-19 took off. Also, my son Jonathan is planning to fly out here from Kentucky just before my surgery (like he did for my left hip surgery in November) to help out. It would suck if the airlines got shut down again.

We’ll see…

I golfed yesterday at Conestoga G.C. with some Sun City buddies: Gaylen, Jim and Lloyd.

I played like shit because I was pre-occupied with my ailing right hip. Every swing was a new adventure, exactly the opposite of what you want. It was a nice day, though, and we had fun, so the day was a success.

(By the way, my scheduled right hip replacement surgery has been moved up six weeks, at my request. It is now scheduled for September 1st. Hallelujah!)

Lloyd and I shared a golf cart, so we chatted between shots. Lloyd is a smart guy who used to be a C.P.A., a business start-up advisor, and a wine grape farmer in the Napa Valley. He is also pretty racist in his comments and has definitely imbibed the Trump Kool Aid. So, he occasionally says some pretty stupid things which I try to ignore.

Yesterday he wanted to talk about the resurgence of Covid-19.

Lloyd is a guy who bought into the coronavirus as a “Democratic hoax”, wants to blame our poor Federal public health response on the Chinese government, and has, until recently, eschewed the wearing of facemasks in public.

Lloyd has now jumped on the Trump bandwagon about testing for Covid-19; i.e. that the only reason cases are spiking all over America is because we’re testing more. In other words, the plague isn’t any worse and, besides, among the people who’ve officially died from Covid-19 “there are a lot of folks who would have died from the flu or other ailments”. So, no big deal.

That’s the level of thinking that Lloyd engages in.

I told him that along with the spike in Covid-19 infections in half of our United States, ICU beds are filling up with very sick people suffering from the coronavirus. That is not a mirage. In fact, I noted that some of Charlie’s bookkeeping and tax clients are doctors in Southern California who are currently overwhelmed with a glut of Covid-19 patients. They’ve told Charlie that this pandemic is going to get worse as the Summer progresses and they anticipate a catastrophe in the Fall; maybe a doubling or more of the death rate.

Lloyd said, “Why aren’t we being told this?”

I’m thinking, “By whom?”

I don’t know where my friend gets his information, but the facts on the pandemic are being loudly broadcast on television, radio, and the Internet. Anyone who claims that they didn’t know that facemasks help reduce transmission of Covid-19, that the President’s Coronavirus Task Force recommends social distancing, that States shouldn’t “re-open” their economies until the infection rate drops for two consecutive weeks…hasn’t been listening. The public health/medical facts are out there…if people’s ears are open.

The fact that our President refuses to wear a facemask in public reinforces the public perception that Covid-19 presents little danger to…manly men like himself and his army of manly men supporters.

Of course, Lloyd wants to believe that the pandemic is overblown, that public health measures to combat it are not necessary, and that this “flu” will go away on its own without stringent social restrictions and limitations on commerce.

When you want to believe something, the stuff you hear tends to reinforce that desire. It’s called “belief bias”, a form of cognitive bias. Like many addicts, Lloyd would steadfastly deny that he’s addicted to bullshit.

President Trump feasts on people who don’t assess things objectively. He is a master salesman who determines what you want to believe, crafts misinformation to reinforce that belief, and creates excuses when he can’t deliver the goods that he’s promised. If you want to believe that the snake oil works, you probably will even when it (hydroxychloroquine?) doesn’t, because Trump will convince you that bad people or bad science are in cahoots against the product.

Lloyd, like all people, wants Covid-19 to go away, wants the economy to be the way it was in January, and wants to resume normal social activity. However, unlike most people, he refuses to accept information that counters these desires; it’s not a reality that he prefers to live in, so he doesn’t want to think about it, and anyone who dares to raise a factual argument is dupe of some sort. They have been co-opted, not he.

America is facing the sad circumstance that Covid-19 will be with us until person-to-person transmission is drastically limited or an effective vaccine is invented and a high percentage of citizens are inoculated. Period.

Many companies and thousands of scientists are working toward developing the miracle vaccine. Past experience shows, unfortunately, that such an endeavor takes years, rather than months. The optimists among us, like President Trump and Lloyd, want to believe that this life-saving medicine is right around the corner, so…we can relax, the solution is at hand, Covid-19 will “just go away”, to quote Mr. Trump.

This is a convenient declaration (i.e. belief), because it minimizes the perceived need to work hard on efforts to minimize transmission of the virus. “We’ve got it under control” has been the Administration position for the past five months, as top officials, including the President, refused to socially distance or wear facemasks (while 127,000 Americans perished). So, if gullible people like Lloyd believe that, they also can be convinced that “re-opening the economy” is the prudent thing to do.

Which, of course, is salesman Trump’s ultimate objective, as he believes a prosperous economy would help him retain the Presidency.

Most economists, major financial institutions, and revered investors don’t share Donald Trump’s professed optimism about the imminent demise of Covid-19 and a quick turn-around of the national and world economy. They believe that we are in for some rough sledding for the next several years; some say we could be looking at a “lost decade”.

Vice President Pence’s recommended solution is prayer. Of course, that is his recommendation on any problem. He’s a religious guy who won his spot on the Republican ticket because of his creds with evangelical Christians.

I’m not religious and I don’t “believe” in prayer, but I could be convinced if Jesus extinguished the Covid-19 pandemic tomorrow. It would be a very welcome and humanitarian gesture from a guy who supposedly loves us all “Red, Brown, Yellow, Black and White”.

Mr. Pence needs to give the prayer idea some additional thought.

If a plague or pestilence or natural disaster afflicts Earth and its inhabitants, then either (a) God caused it, or (b) God is allowing it, because He is omnipotent…He’s God, He can do whatever he wants. He once flooded the entire earth when he got pissed off, and then helped the Hebrews help themselves to the Promised Land.

Every religious person in the world wants this plague to end, so it is reasonable to assume that every “believer” in Yahweh, Allah, Jesus, or other God imagined by man, from regular parishioners, to priests, to bishops, and even the Pope himself, have been praying non-stop for this nightmare to end.

And, yet, God has not chosen to halt the torture, similar to when He failed to halt the Holocaust.

We humans must have really fucked up this time.

Maybe God is punishing mankind for making Donald Trump “the most powerful man in the World”?

Think about it.