There were no roads through the mountains to it, no phones, or any access to anywhere but by a 40-minute pounding ride in a boat the locals called a panga. The dirt path through the little fishing village was swept clean each morning by a few in huts selling local produce, brooms made from long thin sticks, candles, and a few other necessities. All led down to the half dozen fishing boats pulled up on shore next to the “The Yacht Club” a little place cooking whatever food the fishermen caught that day and with a shared shelf they called the library.
For me, living there in a thatched palapa with swinging rope bed covered in mosquito netting was heaven. It was there that I came to terms with my brief political career. It was there that I found my life’s calling. It was there, after weeks of pondering, that it hit me: it was simple.
With the loss of common ground Americans were being fractured. With trust lost in all media, there was no anchor to which both conservatives and liberals could depend upon for the truth and the facts essential to successful self-government.
Without that, I thought, there would be no democracy.
There was only one solution I thought, to create a source where facts were sacrosanct but never interpreted, to which any citizen could turn for the truth.
Within the day I left my little chunk of paradise and hopped a ride to go create VoteSmart.org. Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George McGovern, Barry Goldwater, Michael Dukakis, John McCain, and a few dozen others of both parties, understanding how essential it was, hopped on that ride with me to go build it.
For your good and that of the country, use and support VoteSmart.org
WARNING: You are about to enter an alternate universe.
It was during my campaign for a second term that my recollections arrive in the Twilight Zone. So surreal I do not imagine you will believe, but they are so, and although my memory might confuse the exact order of things, they all happened just as I will describe them.
I had not enjoyed being a State Senator but without ideas leading elsewhere I decided to run for re-election. Besides, my favorite part was coming up, meeting with thousands of voters in a re-election effort, a goodly number of which had become friends.
It was in that happy spirit that my first mailed vote arrived, a few months early, in a plain white envelope without any return address or markings. When I opened the letter, its sole contents, a shiny, heavy lump dropped out and landed in my lap.
Now, I had not been much interested in hunting since I was about 10 when I hit a dove with my Christmas BB gun and watched it die. As result, I cannot tell you the caliber. I wasn’t worried and didn’t even report it. This was long before such threats and shootings became common place. Asking around, no other Senator had received such a gift and I just shrugged it off.
I was more concerned with the pending flop. The flop being my major re-election fund raiser that disabled my toilet plunger and completely unable to handle the mountain of crap to come.
It was about two days before the fundraiser when I pointed out to my wife that no one would be attending. The “no one would be attending,” remark was referencing the event’s dismal ticket sales, and I thought served as a punch to her midsection, since it was she who was managing my campaign and presumably the fundraiser. She wasn’t hurt or concerned. She had her own life to run and had handed off most responsibilities to a campaign manager she had hired with the kind of skills and experience we could afford. His name was “Broom” Hall. Broom, a name he earned for an ability to beat all comers in pool halls using only a broom handle.
Anyway, the flop had been advertised as vaudeville, and as it turned out there were more people signed up to be on the stage than there were people in the audience. It was a bit humiliating, but partly saved by the local firefighters and my brother Bob.
The firefighters, who adopted me during the campaign, went backstage and put on pillowcases in such an unusual way that they made them all look like four-foot-tall Pillsbury Dough Boys without elbows or knees. They humored the seated dozen or so with five minutes of relief, and then we all went back to waiting for a crowd that would never appear.
I walked over to my mother, who never wanted me to follow my father into political life and now stood there, as only my mother could, with that same cocked, rigid look that used to say, “It’s your bedtime.”
Concerned or just embarrassed for me, my brother Bob, who spent a few months on the streets singing my praises to anyone that would listen, didn’t like such events or crowds suddenly stood up. Bob was not supposed to be part of the program, but he marched up to the stage and began an impromptu 15-minute monologue that had the lucky few howling with laughter again and again. More importantly, he made them and me feel all was right with the world despite the empty room. It was a peerless performance that would later that night make me cry, and as unassociated as it was, tell my wife I wanted a divorce.
The fundraiser had little to do with my decision to separate from my wife. The fundraiser failure was only an event, but I felt it made as good a catalyst as any, to make my long agonized-over position known. I was just coming to recognize a flaw in my character: no activity, no matter how initially exciting, ever sustained my interest. I would get bored with most every game, sport, hobby, friend, or person I ever knew. I inevitably just wanted to experience something else. However, as it applied to people, this did not mean I did not care or was not loyal. I was perhaps offensively loyal, always struggling to sustain any and every relationship, but much the way most keep the relics of their past in pictures, to recall how much fun it once was, I wanted to keep the people themselves, only at a space apart.
I had not yet come to grips with this character flaw and so duped myself into believing that there were two episodes that caused the breakup.
One was coming home early one day, some weeks earlier and overhearing my wife tell her friends how she had demanded that she be able to keep her own last name when we married. She did not know I was there.
For days before proposing, I had agonized over the precise words and arguments I would use to persuade her to keep her maiden name. I had never understood why women gave up the name they had been born with and so closely associated with for their entire lives. A woman keeping her maiden name was still unusual, but I was pretty sure Carole would want to but might feel a little uncomfortable talking to me about it. I wanted her to feel great about keeping hers and thus in my marriage proposal I included a virtual insistence that she do so.
My often-unforgiving nature in the face of some perceived injustice could not forgive this violation of trust. This indirect condemnation of me in front of ultra-liberal friends was minuscule but impossible for me to choke down.
More fundamental and perhaps not entirely as self-duping was that we were entering our thirties and she had informed me that she still did not want to have children. I wanted them badly but was in no position to force her cooperation.
My handling of the divorce was unconscionable. I would not make the slightest effort to reconcile or talk to anyone about it. She could have everything (which was nothing) and within a day she had moved to her parents, I had thrown out my campaign volunteers, locked the doors and went on a cowardly three-day binger, drinking as heavily as one can and remain breathing. I had desperately wanted to make sure I was more miserable than I imagined I had made Carole, who I loved and greatly admired to this day. I just could not live with her.
When I did come out filthy, unshaven, and not particularly coherent, volunteers asked if I would see a doctor. Being there “leader” and still in my self-absorbed early years, I refused, instead deciding to give a little more door-to-door a try. It was then that one opened into the Twilight Zone.
Getting close to home, maybe three blocks away, I knocked on a final door. A heavy-set woman, maybe in her 60s, in a coffee stained and tattered robe, threw the screen door wide open hoping to hit me. The hatred smeared across her face was real, possibly dangerous. She backed me up the sidewalk with her thundering voice, “You bastard! I heard what you did.” She kept coming at me. “What are you talking about?” I blurted. “You liberal commie bastard! You think we all do not know what you did. Everyone knows your wife caught you sleeping with that blond bimbo. We saw, we all know she chased you out with a frying pan.” She kept coming at me. “I knew you were a lying bastard when I heard you moved here from Illinois with all that labor money. You lying, fucking bastard!”
It was, of course, difficult to know exactly how to handle this particular voter, who had gotten her information from the Klingon Star Ship. But getting her vote was not likely, so I kept backing away. Bodily harm was her desire, but I was pretty sure I could out jog her slippers if need be.
Her bit about a blond, money and Illinois, a state I had never been to – what the Hell was that all about? I wouldn’t find out until sometime later when tens of thousands of leaflets arrived in voter’s mailboxes. For the moment, I was just thinking of an escape route. She continued to rant as I back peddled. I heard sirens approaching on our street and thought, please hurry. My hands were raised palms out in a gestured effort to pause the onslaught and protect myself from any knives or hatchets that might suddenly appear. I made it to the corner and my chance to escape. Spinning around I jogged down the street toward my house and it was then that I entered the Twilight Zone.
The pace of my escape was as in a dream, where try as you might, with all of your might, you just can’t accelerate in the goo. For as I gazed down the street, I saw a number of police cars at my house with two more squealing around a corner, doors popping and guns out.
Starting with no supporters coming to my fundraiser, the kind of guilt that only comes from hurting someone you love, piled on by a neighbor and constituent’s revulsion of everything that is you, and now this massive police presence: Exactly how horrid a creature was I?
I slowed as I approached home. What I thought must be a policeman, only very nicely dressed in a suit, approached me. He explained the scene around my house as well as anyone could. “Senator Kimball, you and the President have been threatened.” The President of what I asked. “President Jimmy Carter,” he said. “Huh!” was the best I could manage. He repeated himself and I struggled in vain to digest the comment. It was as if all the parts of my brain had suddenly become unscrewed. I didn’t feel worried, threatened or concerned about anything that he said, I just couldn’t grasp it. I was only concerned with the crazy lady who I was certain must have tracked me and about to pounce from behind. Thankfully she had vanished.
Oddly, as I began to mull over what the officer had said, I noticed that I felt a tiny twinge of pride. “The President and me you say?” Some wacko put us in the same category. “I am with the Secret Service,” he said, “Please come with me.”
We walked over to a group of Phoenix’s finest, who informed me that I couldn’t go into my home right now, that they were searching for the suspect and evidence. “Do you know who it is?” I asked. “We are looking for a fellow named Broom Hall.”
Admittedly, Broom was a little strange and I had learned that much of his money came from an adorable little wife who made itsy bitsy stage outfits for strippers, but an assassin? No, this was all wrong. Despite his oddities, he seemed such a nice, even thoughtful fellow. “Listen there has to be some mistake here,” I said to the various badges now surrounding me. “NO! There is no mistake,” the agent barked. “We deal with threats all the time; we had him on the phone for some time and this one fits the profile we do not mess around with. We have to find him, now.”
An hour later I was to learn that Broom owned a number of guns that were now missing from his home, that he had gone after his pregnant wife because she knew too much. She was now nowhere to be found.
The warning or threat began with a police caller, who the Secret Service, with little difficulty, figured out was Broom himself. The caller had said that I would be taken down at a Democratic Party fundraiser scheduled for later that week by a man pretending to be and made up to look exactly like my campaign manager.
The various officers in charge insisted that I not sleep at home for a few days while they staked it out. After hearing about Broom, the guns and his wife, and the event to happen at the party fundraiser, I thought the idea of my sleeping elsewhere a good one, so I picked my jaw up off the pavement and dragged it down the street where my little brother had just moved into a little house.
Out of the blue, just as I was packing up a few things, Broom’s pregnant wife showed up. She was scared as hell and after the Secret Service interviewed her, she asked if I could help her find a place to hide out. I found a place that the officers thought a good one on the other side of town and then got us out of there.
I didn’t have to go far, which was good, because I would still have access to my home office and files when needed, but what had been bizarre was about to go freakish.
My littlest brother, who if anything spent more time in the Black Hole of adolescence than his four siblings had a surprise of his own. My brother’s place was perfect, I thought. He wasn’t involved in my politics at all, few knew him, his house was just few doors away, and no one knew him. Perfect I thought, the police could stake out my house, try to trap Broom and I could still access my campaign files when necessary.
A policeman escorted me over and agreed it would be fine. An hour after the officer left, I was putting some my stuff on the top shelf of my new bedroom closet and discovered that my baby brother was in the drug business. He had a little marijuana trouble with the law years earlier and spent months in a Mexican prison for it. There were two rather large foil-covered bricks of tightly packed marijuana.
The coming headlines scrolled through my imagination!
The Arizona Republic, the state’s largest newspaper, was led by a heavily-medaled military leader, who no longer served in the military but greatly enjoyed his uniform and commendations and wore them at formal occasions. It would later be discovered that he had never earned those ribbons or medals, or even served in the military, but unfortunately for me, this absurd masquerade had yet to be exposed and for the moment, he possessed real power and a lack of affection for me.
When he got wind of all that was going on around my house, I thought he would have a difficult dilemma. What headline would he choose?
KIMBALL IN SEX SCANDAL
KIMBALL CAMPAIGN MANAGER PLANS HIS ASSASSINATION
KIMBALL CAUGHT IN BROTHERLY DRUG DEALS
It would all be bullshit but that never seemed to matter to this fellow and his paper. I imagined that an after the fact simple headline might be the best result for me:
Not a real word yet, but used enough, and it will be. Comes from a Mensa Lexophile competition and perfectly describes the impenetrable mucous protecting Trump supporters from thought.
“Hey, things are just great, we are doing just fine,” not even incumbents. Fear is what sells in politics. In politics the world is always about to end. Complain about your current circumstance to any survivor of the Revolution, the Civil War, The World War, Great Depression, World War II or a dozen other trials they somehow bested to give you the life you have, and you’ll know regret.
“No generation of Americans have had it easier, yet every successful politician knows that fear works, it’s what drives people to the polls to vote for the very savior making them fearful. Politicians are the very definition of the expression “Drama Queens.” They can sensationalize anything, it is what gets attention, creates audience sells product and GOD DAME IT, advances the very world they harp against.
Once a researcher noted, “You are four times more likely to die drowning in a bathtub than you are from a terrorist attack.” Bathtubs have been knocking Americans off for a very long time now, but no one suggests we commit the nations treasure and tens of thousands of lives in an all-out attack against porcelain producers and plumbers. Even though it could scarcely be a lesser undertaking than what we did in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any American war in my lifetime.
The most minor issues are blown enormous when enormous issues are not apparent…”
(Excerpt from my The Miracle of Me — Biography of a Nobody)
What if there was nothing that molded you, nothing that pulled you this way or that, inclined you to like or dislike, you existed in an eventless void without the thinnest tinsel of influence? What would you think, would you even know to think?
That world once existed for each of us, at that split second our consciousness began. From that instant on, each of us has been led, guided to our thoughts, ushered to our judgements of all that surrounds us.
Each of us is the product of incalculable variations in experience. It is those variations that make me so different than you.
Those profound differences that developed, could once make mouths water at the thought of a nice slab of whale blubber in Alaska or a pile of fried or nicely aged maggots in Italy.
Starting slowly and now accelerating to starship speed, our world is homogenizing into manageable clusters of conformity where one can easily forecast what the members of one cluster or another do, want, think, and believe.
The deletions in experiences and the bundlings of commonalities are increasing in most every aspect of our lives, whether it be in how we live, what we do, where we buy, what we see and listen to. One can now easily forecast what the members of one cluster or another do, want, think and believe.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in politics, where we are captured in clusters of like view, all pulled and inclined to identical judgements, shaped by today’s unscrupulous sources.
With the loss of trusted sources of information and the growing inability to know what is so and what is not, there is no escape. And now with A.I.’s foot on the first step of the human ladder the end of unmanaged thought or what we think of as free will is near.
All that is left is the uncontrolled molding of billions of malleable minds.
No one seems certain what WOKE means. All words have a life, like people, they change with age and never more so than a newly born one.
It is how a word is used that defines its meaning. Right now the use of WOKE seems most like a synonym for political correctness particularly as it applies to any class of disadvantaged.
If it stays on that track I hope that one day it will get its due: That is to say, every single one of us owes a debt to WOKE. If there were not enough WOKE, no one would have the vote, certainly not women, we would still have slavery, ovens for Jews would still be in operation and Christians could find themselves lion food in the Colosseum.
To preserve a modicum of sanity and friendly relations if I take a walk when someone talks politics. I have found there is comfort in not knowing another person’s views.
However, this week as so many liberal friends celebrate Trump’s indictment drawn from a sexual affair, I just want on the highest hill to scream how dangerously desperate that inditement will be made to appear.
Is paying off a prostitute really the important issue?
When the conservatives wanted to impeach Clinton for Whitewater, found nothing but Monica Lewinski and so impeached him for that, was the world made right. Does anyone really think men in power won’t follow the urge to pollinate the flowers that gather about them. Hell, even Jimmy Carter “lusted in his heart.”
Be careful what you wish for? You better.
This celebration will play the key role in turning what is an imbecile into a martyr with his millions of nymphlepts. He had sex. He tried to hide it. Ya, that’s unusual, let’s get him for that and engorge his line, “The liberals are on a witch hunt and will do anything,” with real value.
This indictment helps build him a silken cushion to fall upon when it comes to the serious issues that truly matter, like insurrection, election interference and tax fraud.
Sanctions will not succeed and rarely, if ever, have been the deciding factor in conflicts.
American media continues to push narratives that suggest the sanctions have real teeth and suggest the Russian people will rebel as the bodies return home.
The reality is that the Russian economy continues to expand, even out pacing Britain and Germany and will continue to do so as their trade with powerful economies such as China, India and Turkey explode, none of which support sanctions.
The Russian people’s support for the war does not faulter as had been hoped, but grows in patriotic fervor as their sources of information pitch the West as working toward Russian destruction.
The end game we hope for and need:
The West recognizes roughly 7% of Ukraine as Russian, including Crimea and the Russian-speaking areas of Donetsk and Luhansk — roughly the territory Russia claimed in 2014.
Ukraine, whose economy has crashed, gets to retain all of the territory they had prior to the 2022 invasion, gets peace, and the funds to rebuild, substantially but not solely provided by Russia.
Neither Russia nor the West can lose in this conflict. Anything much less or much more than such a compromise will put world disaster on the table.
Now we, as the LUCKIEST GENERATION, choose to live unearned lives on the gains made by our fathers and their fathers before them. Lives that all previous generations in human history could never have imagined.
Yes, we spent much of what was earned and saved in the past and much of what has yet to be earned in the future, all to enjoy today.
Mention rational adjustments to our spending on Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid or defense and we will butcher you.
______
Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder
Sign up on my blog at RichardKimball.org
or Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016
Decades ago, my congressman boss would joke: You know what the difference is between a cactus and a congress? With a cactus all the pricks are on the outside.
HUH?
Give me a switch and it would be tough to choose who to smack first: The Republicans who cower at the feet of their lowliest, or those Democrats acting joyous at the spectacle.
This is what happens when the mindless self-obsessed of our number, once only seen in the crassest of local politics, are elevated to the highest offices in the land.
This is the opportunity, for what is left of reason, to come together from both sides and put our nation back on track. Not Republican vs. Democrat, but the rational/thoughtful vs. the galactically stupid.
Losing weight. The most popular New Year’s resolution. Started with dogged determination and ending with that first tempting French fry, potato chip or cream puff.
Hard to imagine a resolution more made and less kept.
Maybe this year try something new, less narcissistic and a little more egalitarian, something that helps us all.
Something that gives an option to the easily digested partisan news and provides us with the nutrition we all so desperately need: Supporting a source of accurate, abundant, dependable facts on those that govern or wish to replace those who do: VoteSmart.org
A simple equation of enormous significance to anyone that understands it and now with this week’s useful proof of it, stand ready to save the world.
equation by Vote Smart
Democracy equals education/facts multiplied by infinity.
You simply cannot govern yourself without unlimited education and access to facts.
It is that equation that you must focus on and why Vote Smart began. Vote Smart: a simple idea, where people get the facts and citizens have enough knowledge (education) to use them successfully.
At its core, it is not difficult to understand. If you support turning over the rules that govern your life to millions of strangers that you do not know, who you will never know, you must struggle to insure they have access to education and the facts. That is what was began begun at VoteSmart.org.
If you, as an American citizen are captured, tortured, murdered, and dismembered with a bone saw it’s A-OK with Joe.
That is precisely what your President said last week when he gave immunity to Prince Muhammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, in an obviously agreed to subterfuge using international precedents.
That would be the same Prince that imprisons, tortures, and kills dissenters in Saudia Arabia and sends his agents elsewhere in the world to torture and dismember our fellow Americans like Jamal Khashoggi.
That would be the same two-faced Joe who previously called the prince a “thug” who had “shocked him to his very core.” The same Joe that promised he would make him a “pariah” on the world stage.
Want to celebrate American backbone Thursday by eating some off a turkeys? Just go to Joe’s house.
Back when I was in politics there were many legislators who wanted to find means to reduce the number of abortions and the means to protect a woman’s determination regarding her own life. Had we politically survived and worked together, millions of women would never have felt the need for an abortion and millions of fetuses would never have been aborted.
But such rational communication is long dead.
Such leaders no longer survive and the views now so hardened — “I’m right, you’re wrong”, to win at any cost, effectively causes millions of avoidable abortions.
Over time, resignation and acknowledgement of the absolute victory these two intransigent sides have had, has changed my view somewhat. Now my position on abortion simply depends on my mood when I wake up in the morning.
Some mornings I am full of love and want to save every life. So I am an absolute NO. After all, I say to myself, I am the kind of guy that catches indoor spiders to set them free outdoors. If I can avoid it, I won’t step on an ant. I just do not want to cause the end of any kind of life.
On other days, I wake up pretty sour, thinking of what my species has done to countless other species (like the Bambi experiment pictured above), including our own. I think YES, abortions should be required of every pregnant woman and post-birth abortions should be the law of the land for anyone not obeying. Only in that way can we rid the earth of my species’ befoulment of it.
Now I know on those days all people are aghast at my position, but I feel confident that every other species on the planet stands in thankful celebration and ovation.
Which leads me to my point and the truth of it. Most voters standing self-righteously on either side of abortion, really don’t care all that much. That is why a few weeks ago abortion may have been the #1 issue in this year’s election but, as always, as the election draws near, such issues of grand importance fade, taking a distant second to the true heart of voters’ real concern: MY MONEY! MY MONEY!
CUCKOO BEES lay their eggs amongst the eggs in another bee’s nest, hoping their larvae hatch earlier, allowing its young to feed on the provisions stored for the other’s eggs. Then with their extra-large mandibles they dessert on the others’ eggs as well.
Feeding on the haves to engorge the have nots with little demanded in return.
SHREWS don’t look like much to worry about but are total bastards. They secrete venom from their jaws, paralyzing prey, not to kill but to keep alive for prolonged feeding.
At first, Shrews look like a joke, no real threat but now they come for November 8th where democracy will be paralyzed, and the main course served.
EXTREMISTS now control the dialogue, the considerations, and in the end, the actions with too few remaining to bring reason.
Get the facts at VoteSmart.org and good luck to us all this election.
Then uneducated, ignorant of democracy and unable to think critically, I was set free and found my faith in what I wanted to believe rather than what I should believe.
Once American education was the envy of all, our student performance second to none, our skill at self-governance a beacon the world over.
The attack on education, truth, and the facts is no accident. The dimmer we become, the more malleable we are.
The only remedy is to sustain at least one source for trusted facts that any citizen can turn to in confidence — facts without interpretation and protected from influence.
VoteSmart.org is exactly that, but requires a people’s will to use it, believe in it, and to support it. A source to which all conservative and liberal citizens can turn in confidence for the facts and the truth that is dependent upon those facts. Without that, we cannot sustain an ability to self-govern successfully.
It can be done, ensuring its integrity with an elected board balanced between the multiple sides on major national issues. Supported without dependence upon self-serving interests and operated by those willing to commit their time and expertise in the national interest and not financial self-gain.
That is what VoteSmart.org strived to be. As a young man, my boss once said, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.” Without VoteSmart.org or an organization very much like it, it is not the meek that shall inherit the earth, but the stupid.
If you are not white, male and don’t own land, you can’t vote. That is the way we introduced self-governance to the world, with most people still not being actual people, as in “…of the people, by the people, for the people.” Women and most non-whites were not really defined as people in that wonderous American phrase.
It wasn’t till 1920 that most Americans would finally be considered people and allowed to vote — but not all, including the first Americans, native Americans. For those that were first, one or maybe two gazillion years before anyone else — well for them, it would take a tad longer.
The freedom and the liberty that comes with that vote, has been a slow, torturous march for most of us, with barriers erected by the people, against those not yet people, all along the way.
Your vote is your personal hard chunk of power, fought for through the suffering of others, and finally giving you a say. If you do not use it, your power doesn’t go away, it simply marches over and adds its power to those other chunks that are used, by the people who get to order you about.
I have often wondered why God did not say that, but “he” didn’t. He said, “Let them eat Life.”
Rocks are mixtures of one or more minerals. Just like apples, butter, flour, and sugar are the ingredients of apple pie, minerals like quartz, mica, and feldspar are the ingredients of granite. Mixing and matching various proportions and degrees of heat make an unlimited variety of could have been, should have been foods. Not to mention other types of rocks.
We could have evolved with suckers, dissolvers or diamond encrusted teeth and systems that made good use of such nutritious minerals. But he didn’t, he said, “Let them eat life.”
Was it an error in judgement or did he really intend the consequences?
