Slowly building up my living room...

 

Second weekend of swimming.

Had the first hour to myself after 11am. Then some others showed up.

The first was a 60-something guy who, just days ago, asked me if I needed help carrying a bag of garbage out to the dumpster. ME: No, thanks, I can carry my own bag of garbage.

On this day at the pool, he made a loud grunting show of swimming a couple of laps. He then sunned himself for a bit, then went back in to his apartment.

The second to appear was a young fat woman who lives across from me. She has a very fancy swimsuit with lots of straps and wears a hat out to the pool. Today, I was mildly peeved because there's the whole pool with no one at it but me and her---yet she chose a pool chair about 4 feet away from mine.

One thing, though, that I like about her: She seems to be attempting to be artistic. Months ago, she sat on her back step playing a ukulele. (For real. I'm assuming she got this from "Breakfast at Tiffany's.") Today at the pool, she initially had her phone out, but then she put the phone away and...she was actually WRITING in a notebook!

Who actually writes in a notebook out by the pool? Which is great. It's heartening to see. It's me 30 years ago. The effect was cute but, alas, the girl was not.

It would be fun to talk to a ukulele-playing girl who writes by the pool.

The Vapors: Trains (1980)

Emile Zola: Nana (1880)

I just started reading Emile Zola's "Nana" (1880). Zola was a contemporary of Thomas Hardy's (born in the same year, 1840), and I bought a paperback Barnes and Noble copy of  "Nana" for cheap from eBay because I didn't know anything about Zola and thought I should... I had no idea what the book was about...a treatise on his grandmother?

(Zola is also famous for the phrase "J'Accuse...!" from the headline of his 1898 open letter to a French paper condemning the French govt for unfairly accusing the Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus of espionage---very interesting! Zola was subsequently forced to leave the country.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%27Accuse%E2%80%A6!

Anyway, as it turns out, 100 pages into it, "Nana" is an untalented but very sexy Parisian stage actress who drives men, young and old, wild. After 100 pages, there have been tedious details of Nana's first show, tedious details of a society lady's salon, and then tedious details of a supposedly wild party at Nana's house...

Subject matter seemingly exciting, but writing itself VERY boring! (Conversely, Hardy makes the most seemingly boring every-day things very interesting and insightful.) Maybe Zola is lost in translation---or perhaps he was/is exalted for presenting risque tableaux (the book was hugely successful when it was released) and for politically left-wing opinions that were popular among artists and the left-wing press during his own, and subsequent leftist critics', time(s). Popularity among either group does not necessarily make him a great writer.

I'm hoping "Nana" gets better. If it does, I'm on to 1885's "Germinal." (Another huge success, this one an homage to coal miners and the working class; at Zola's funeral in 1902, mourning miners supposedly chanted "Germinal" as part of his cortege. Which is all very well and good, but... it still doesn't make him a great writer.)

The Knack: Good Girls Don't (1979)

p.s. The line "'til she puts you in your place" was originally "'til she's sittin' on your face." Just sayin'.

The Knack: My Sharona (1979)

My first attempt at being a groupie.

After listening to and loving the "Get The Knack" album in 1979: When I learned that The Knack was coming to the Dallas/Fort Worth Area, I printed out hand-made flyers advertising the concert and stuck them all over my high school's lockers.

Before seeing the show: I made a glittered poster: "We Want Doug Backstage!" 

And a friend lent me her tube-top. When my mom saw the tube-top, she told me I couldn't wear it. OK. I buttoned up my glitter-shirt over it. Then unbuttoned the shirt once we arrived at the show.

The friend's mom dropped us off at SMU's McFarland Auditorium in Dallas. I let a college-boy grab my 14-year-old ass; he then gave me and my friend backstage passes. Where I met the band, got autographs (including Sharona's) on the glossy program, and kissed both the bass player (Prescott Niles) and the guitarist (Berton Averre). 

 

I wore my new baseball-sleeve Knack shirt and jeans-with-Pass-stuck-to-thigh to school the next Monday because I was a big show-off; and especially I wanted to show off to another friend who had recently gone to a KISS concert sans any backstage action! (Yes, I realize that getting backstage to KISS would have been much harder!) :)

I'm good about saving things, but all of these things (the pass, the shirt, the program), my mom later threw out.

p.s. Years later, maybe 1990, I again saw The Knack, this time at a smaller venue, Austin's Back Room, on their downslide. That night, my only contact with a band member was a brief conversation with drummer Bruce Gary in front of the bar. I'd lost my mojo! (Though, in my defense, I had a new girlfriend and was at the club with a couple of gay guys, and was no longer testing my Groupie Powers!) :)

The Bangles: Hero Takes A Fall (1984)

Bonnie Tyler: It's a Heartache (1978)

Bonnie Tyler: Total Eclipse of the Heart (Top Of The Pops 1984)

The The & Sinead O'Connor: Kingdom of Rain (1989)

Tell me what you're thinking baby
Your heart's beating faster than mine
And I know something's going on in your life
In your life...your life

You were the girl I wanted to cry with
You were the girl I wanted to die with

And you were the boy who turned into the man
Broke my heart and let go of my hand

Our bed is empty, the fire is out
And all the love we've got to give has all spurted out
There's no more blood and no more pain
In our kingdom of rain

You think you know about life
You think you know about love
But when you put your hands inside me
It doesn't even feel like I'm being touched

You were the boy I wanted to cry with
You were the boy I wanted to die with

You've moved further from my side, year by year,
While still making love dutifully sincere

But as silent as the car lights that move across this room
As cold as our bodies silhouetted by the moon
And I would lie awake and wonder
Is it just me or this the way love is supposed to be?

Tell me what you told him baby
My heart's beating out of time with my mind
And I know something's going wrong in our lives

I just wanted somebody to caress, this damsel in distress
I just wanted somebody to undress, this damsel in distress
I just wanted somebody to bless, this damsel in distress
I just wanted somebody to possess, this young girl

Our bed is empty, the fire is out
And all the love we've got to give has all spurted out...

The The: The Beaten Generation (1988)

Applies much more to today's youth than to those of us in 1988.



When you cast your eyes upon the skylines
Of this once proud nation
Can you sense the fear and the hatred
Growing in the hearts of its population

And youth, oh youth, are being seduced
By the greedy hands of politics and half truths

[Chorus]
The beaten generation
The beaten generation
Reared on a diet of prejudice and mis-information
The beaten generation
The beaten generation
Open your eyes, open your imagination

[Verse 2]
We're being sedated by the gasoline fumes
And hypnotised by the satellites
Into believing what is good and what is right

You may be worshipping the temples of Mammon
Or lost in the prisons of religion
But can you still walk back to happiness
When you've nowhere left to run?

[Chorus]

[Verse 3]
And if they send in the special police
To deliver us from liberty and keep us from peace
Then won't the words sit ill upon their tongues
When they tell us justice is being done
And that freedom lives in the barrels of a warm gun

[Chorus]

Keeping Up With The Kardashians (2006 to 2021)

I used to watch regularly, have not watched in the past couple of years. There's a marathon going on now on "E!", which I've had on in the background for the past 12 hours or so...

What I remember from the very early days was the relative naturalism---the mean, petty fights among the sisters, the annoying personality of Bruce. Kris and Scott and Khloe were always my favorites because they often had actually funny, biting things to say.

And, as the show progressed, some real drama (sometimes news) developed:

Kim and Kris Humphries' 70-day marriage
Kourtney and Scott minor saga
Khloe and Lamar saga
Rob/Black Chyna minor saga
Bruce/Caitlyn saga
Kim and Kanye courtship/marriage (not that interesting because so choreographed, but still you hoped for something real on camera)
Kim meeting Trump and freeing Alice Marie Johnson

As I've been watching the marathon from the near-beginning, a couple of things I've noticed:

Kim and Khloe started out with bright eyes and bright remarks. They ended up with dead eyes and plaster faces and generic comments. (Thought I still have future post-camera hopes for Kim and her legitimately attempted legal career.)

Rob K deteriorated from a thin white man to a fat black-speaking slug. His black-speak at one point: "Them females get all emotional." (His well-educated father would be turning in his grave.)

Note that between the show's opening photo in 2006 and the final photo in 2021, the only two men, Bruce and Rob, have disappeared. (In the years between, the other men also disappeared.)

Swimming for first time since 2019!

Ever since the "Wuhan Crisis" started back in March 2020, I've been working from home and not bodily moving around very much: Basically just getting up off my couch and going the 6 feet to my computer every day to start my work-day.

I haven't actually put on weight in the past year; in fact, I've lost weight. Primarily because I've been usually eating stuff at home that I've bought from the grocery store (Lean Cuisines and fish and chicken and vegetables) rather than eating fast food or cafeteria chicken-fried steak meals that I used to eat while working from 2014 to 2019 at my university job. From 2014 to 2016, I was under 150 lbs because I had not yet bought a car and so was walking over 2 miles a day to and from my bus-stops. Between 2016, when I bought my car, and late 2019, when I quit my university job, I ballooned up to 168 lbs. The most I've ever weighed. Fat and unhappy with my job.

Since Wuhan and working-from-home at a job I mentally like, I'm now down below 160. But a creaky, decrepit 160 because I never move! I feel like I have a hunch-back, my legs and spine feel stiff, my ankles are swollen. I never could make myself walk a mile or something every day because it was the right thing to do for my body. My body needed fresh air and sunshine, which I had not been getting at all.

My apartment pool was closed all last year (2020) because of Wuhan and just re-opened a month ago. Today, I finally went out for my first swim in 2 years! I remembered old pre-2020 patterns of the pool: I needed to get there early, pre-noon. Around noon, solo loud girls with their phones/music would arrive. In early afternoon, loud couples with phones/music. In late afternoon, parents with kids. (Evening and night: partiers.)

I went out at 10:45am. And had the whole pool to myself for a solid 2 hours, when I left at 12:45pm! I got really lucky! I enjoyed everything about my 2 hours alone there: The fresh air, the sun on my pale-n-pasty body for the first time in 2 years, the ability to swim and move all parts of my body for the first time in years, the floating and contemplating the trees and plants and the other apartment dwellers' moving about---taking out trash, etc. Oh, and reading an old 2015 New Yorker while I was sunning myself! (I'd been a subscriber since the '90s, but cancelled in 2016 after the magazine's idiotic, un-intellectual coverage of Trump. I still have a stack of about 10 New Yorkers left over from 2015-2016.) I had a great, relaxing, healthy 2-hour experience. My lungs and my body thanked me for the sun and fresh air.

Now, as I write this, I'm smoking heavily and re-clouding my lungs. Sigh. Cough.

 

Austin, Texas: A Crappy Place to Live Since Adler, 2015

On June 12, 14 people were shot on Sixth Street, the main entertainment strip in Austin. One person has died.

Austin PD released this statement before the shooter was caught:

The suspect(s) remains at-large. It is unknown if there is one, or multiple suspects involved. There is one suspect described as a black male, with dread locks, wearing a black shirt and a skinny build. The area will be closed for an extended amount of time to process the crime scene. Investigators are collecting and reviewing camera footage and surveillance video.

But the city paper, the Austin American-Statesman, refused to release a description or photo of the shooter, saying:

Editor’s note: Police have only released a vague description of the suspected shooter as of Saturday morning. The Austin American-Statesman is not including the description as it is too vague at this time to be useful in identifying the shooter and such publication could be harmful in perpetuating stereotypes. If more detailed information is released, we will update our reporting.

I had to go searching around the Internet to find out information about a mass shooting in my own town. The shooter was: Jeremiah Roshawn Leland James Tabb, a 17-year-old black guy from Killeen, a town of about 100,000 an hour north of Austin. The shoot-out was apparently related to a gang conflict.

(I also learned while searching online that the increasing crime rate in various Scandinavian countries as a result of Syrian immigration is also being suppressed by liberal media, which also refuses to identify the perpetrators. AS IF WE DON'T KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON.)

Austin Mayor Steve Adler said: “The uptick in gun violence locally is part of a disturbing rise in gun violence across the country as we exit the pandemic. APD and the City Council have initiated multiple violence prevention efforts in response but this crisis requires a broader, coordinated response from all levels of government. One thing is clear - greater access to firearms does not equal greater public safety."

What Adler does not mention: He has been mayor of Austin since 2015. Since then, both crime rates and homeless campers on city streets have skyrocketed. And Adler has also fully supported efforts to defund the Austin Police Department. The "uptick in gun violence" is not a result of "greater access to firearms." Rather, it's the direct result of fewer police officers on the street and Adler policies making it difficult for the police to arrest criminals without being accused of "racial profiling." (SAD FACT: Black men are 7% of the US population but commit over half of all crimes in the country. No amount of left-wing propaganda will ever alleviate this stat.)

p.s. I have lived in Austin, aside from 2 years in San Francisco in the '90s and 3 years in NYC 10 years ago, for nearly 40 years. The city has only become a complete shithole under Adler.

And as long as the press keeps repressing and censoring information (not just the local paper but a larger issue with Facebook and Twitter, et al.), there won't be any sort of reconciliation of ideas, just a mistrust of party propaganda outlets---which is what the vast majority of the US media have become. (You, too, BBC.)

The Beatles: Run For Your Life (1965)

George Jones and Tammy Wynette: Milwaukee Here I Come (1969)

George Jones / Tammy Wynette: Lovin' You, Lovin' Me (recorded 2/24/77)

I'm loving you babe, loving me
Loving you, loving me
I'm inclined just to let it be
Loving you, loving you, loving me

We once were living our life alone
Once were living but the light was gone
Once my life was just a bad routine
'Cause when you're doing it by yourself life's such a lonely thing

Loving you babe, loving me
Loving you, loving me
I'm inclined just to let it be
Loving you, loving you, loving me

Once was traveling a lonely road
Once was traveling with a heavy load
We had tried love but the thrill was gone
But your love came and showed me babe what I was doing wrong

Loving you babe, loving me
Loving you, loving me
I'm inclined just to let it be
Loving you, loving you, loving me

If you can't be with the one you love...buy a new chair, table, rug, etc.

When you're young and have no money, your choices of happiness are: grades (if you're in school) and intellectual interests/music/art and hook-ups/potential mates. As you proceed into middle age, it's jobs and stuff you can buy (or, if you're a woman who's never worked, or worked at low-level jobs, you're really into your kids and grandkids---notice that men hardly ever talk about such). I'm really happy with my new rug and coffee table and black chair.

PC lit-world judgment: Why contempt for Ted Hughes but esteem for Adrienne Rich?

I've been reading Plath since I was a teen in the '80s and Hughes since the '90s. I love both of their work. Plath is more brilliant and inspired/inspiring, and she's my favorite poet, but I have cried when reading Hughes; plus he redeemed himself with "Birthday Letters." Every woman's fantasy---nay, every PERSON'S fantasy---is that the lover who once spurned them would later realize the error of their ways and apologize.

Hughes, of course, got a lot of public shit from feminists in the '70s and '80s for "killing" Plath---because he fooled around on her, and the emotional pain of that betrayal allegedly led to her suicide. In extremis: A 1972 poem by radical feminist Robin Morgan, "Arraignment," accused Hughes of murdering Plath and then threatened to cut off his penis and stuff it in his mouth. (I searched online for the complete text of this poem---extremely odd that it cannot be found anywhere.)

For the past 5 months, I've been almost wholly immersed in re-reading Plath and Hughes texts: Letters, bios, poems, etc. At the end of it all, I started re-reading adjunct texts like the Assia Wevill bio "Lover of Unreason," and various recollections by former lovers/friends of both Plath and Hughes.

From what I could gather second-hand, Hughes actually was faithful to Plath for the first 6 years of their marriage. That he began an affair with Assia Wevill was a weakness, sure. But, historically, such weakness happens all of the time, and especially among creative people. And, honestly (admit it, Plath loyalists), Plath was a highly critical, moody nag, and, face it, Hughes hadn't been getting much sex in between the birth of kids in April 1960 and January 1962. There was no longer any more time for relaxed contemplation of poetry and each other's bodies and minds. Hughes felt trapped. In hindsight, he should have been patient for a couple of years and waited for the kids to get older and need less hands-on care rather than fucking Assia Wevill. And in hindsight, Plath should have not kicked him out of their house; truly, as many of her friends later said, she should have given him a long leash (or no leash) for a while and let him figure out for himself that sex was not the same as true love. But neither Hughes nor Plath were patient and understanding. They were both manic-depressives, in love with the IDEA of themselves as emotional Romantics. (Which Plath, especially, was decidedly NOT. And read Hughes's later list of "to-do's" for Assia Wevill: She should be up by 8am, should not lie around in her house-dress, should not nap during the day, etc. He, too, was not a "Romantic," though he might have, in a school-boy way, fancied himself as such.)

I think that Plath and Hughes were soul mates who tortured each other. I don't think that Hughes, by his painful transgression of sleeping with another woman, caused the death of Plath. I think Plath grew up in a very confined world and had certain ideas of how things should be, and when there was some deviation from her notions of a perfect world and perfect marriage, her psyche crumbled. (As it had back in '53 when she ventured outside of her pleasant Wellesley home and Smith academic environment into the big/mean NYC working world.)

All of that said: After my Plath/Hughes reading, I started on Peter Davison's "The Fading Smile," about poets in Boston in the late '50s  (Plath was auditing a poetry class taught by Robert Lowell in the spring of '59; she'd also slept with Davison for about a month back in '55.) One of the poets that Davison wrote about from this period was Adrienne Rich. Rich had started out as a prize-winning, mainstream academic poet but began to question her life after her marriage in 1953 to renowned left-wing economist Alfred Haskell Conrad and the birth of three sons in '55, '57, and '59. When Rich turned to radical politics after about '66, her husband, far from stifling her, joined her in various crusades, including hosting fund-raisers for the Black Panthers at their home. In 1970, Rich moved out of their home; her outwardly successful husband, in despair ("she has gone crazy"), shot himself to death a few months later.

While reading the Davison chapter on Rich, there was no mention at all of her husband's suicide. When I looked up Rich on Wikipedia, the one line on her husband read: "Conrad drove into the woods and shot himself, widowing Rich."

If Ted Hughes was considered by literary feminist radicals to be emotionally responsible for Plath's death, then shouldn't Adrienne Rich also be considered emotionally responsible for Al Conrad's death? He tried his best to support her in her interests, but... how can one support someone who is still a closeted lesbian but won't admit it and is instead directing her anger toward him because he, in her mind, represents the "patriarchy" simply because he's a man? When Rich finally came out as a lesbian years later after Conrad's death, her anger was clear, but... shouldn't she have told poor old Al Conrad to begin with that she was queer? Why was she blaming him when it was she that was the coward? Shouldn't she have abstained from marrying him if she was a lesbian? Shouldn't she have abstained from having child after child after child if she felt that children were such an awful burden? 

Oh wait----According to Rich, "Society" and "the Patriarchy" made her do it. In fact, in the artistic community, there was a long history of independent women that she chose not to follow out of cowardice. Rich initially chose to follow the "patriarchal" academic prize-winning life, and family life---and rebelled against it only when "society" had made it safe to do so. Wouldn't a truly independent person have struck out on her own to begin with?

Ted Hughes, for instance, had a rebellious streak and hated academia (the same "Patriarchy" for Ted as for Adrienne)---so he chose not to work within it. Ted had no safety net. Adrienne first had the safety net of her husband's income. Later, when she "rebelled" against "the System," she continued to receive grants and professorships from and within "the System." (From reading her Wikipedia entry, I couldn't find any period of time when she earned her own living outside of what a college was paying her.)

Personally, I think everyone is responsible for his/her own life/death. I'm talking, though, about a symmetry in accusation: If radical feminists want to judge Ted Hughes, shouldn't they judge their own equally callous Adrienne Rich by the same standard?

p.s. On a personal note: I despise holier-than-thou poets/priests/politicians who try to tell others just what is wrong with them but fail to examine themselves. Rich is part of the self-righteous leftist crowd that are just as dangerous as the right-wingers. The scowl of the laissez-faire naturalist Hughes is not nearly as threatening as the smile of the smugly self-righteous Rich.

Sylvia Plath: Burning the Letters (August 13, 1962)

I made a fire; being tired
Of the white fists of old
Letters and their death rattle
When I came too close to the wastebasket.
What did they know that I didn't?
Grain by grain, they unrolled
Sands where a dream of clear water
Grinned like a getaway car.
I am not subtle
Love, love, and well, I was tired
Of cardboard cartons the color of cement or a dog pack
Holding in its hate
Dully, under a pack of men in red jackets,
And the eyes and times of the postmarks.

This fire may lick and fawn, but it is merciless:
A glass case
My fingers would enter although
They melt and sag, they are told
Do not touch.
And here is an end to the writing,
The spry hooks that bend and cringe and the smiles, the smiles.
And at least it will be a good place now, the attic.
At least I won't be strung just under the surface,
Dumb fish
With one tin eye,
Watching for glints,
Riding my Arctic
Between this wish and that wish.

So I poke at the carbon birds in my housedress.
They are more beautiful than my bodiless owl,
They console me—
Rising and flying, but blinded.
They would flutter off, black and glittering, they would be coal angels
Only they have nothing to say to anybody.
I have seen to that.
With the butt of a rake
I flake up papers that breathe like people,
I fan them out
Between the yellow lettuces and the German cabbage
Involved in its weird blue dreams
Involved as a foetus.
And a name with black edges

Wilts at my foot,
Sinuous orchis
In a nest of root-hairs and boredom—
Pale eyes, patent-leather gutturals!
Warm rain greases my hair, extinguishes nothing.
My veins glow like trees.
The dogs are tearing a fox. This is what it is like—
A red burst and a cry
That splits from its ripped bag and does not stop
With the dead eye
And the stuffed expression, but goes on
Dyeing the air,
Telling the particles of the clouds, the leaves, the water
What immortality is. That it is immortal.

Sea Witch Hair Colour Advert 1965

Assia Wevill, the woman that Ted Hughes left Plath for, was an ad agency employee. This 1965 ad was the high point of her ad career. Congrats, Assia, for being so "1965"!

Rape Reminder (21 years later)

Yesterday evening, I got a call from a City of Austin worker, asking if I was the person who had a rape case from 2000 (and she gave the case #, which I assume was correct). I hesitantly said yes... She was calling to tell me that the DNA test taken at the time did indeed show a match with the guy whom I said had raped me.

The odd thing is: Back in 2000, the guy (who had told me where he worked, which is where the police picked him up the next day) never denied having sex with me; he just denied that it was rape. So of course the DNA was going to match. No one, not even the rapist, even questioned that it was his DNA... (The Grand Jury that I testified before, all 65+ years old, dismissed the case. The prosecuting attorney later told me that they didn't understand why I would have a man that I barely knew over to my apartment. They didn't get the gay scene; I'd told the guy I met that evening at a gay club that I was gay, and he'd told me he was gay---I thought inviting him over to do some coke was safe.)

When I first heard what the city worker was calling about, I assumed that she was about to say that the guy had been arrested again for rape (or worse) and that they needed me to testify about a pattern of behavior, or something! But no.

(And how in the world did she get my phone number? I didn't get my cell phone with my current number until 2007, 7 years after the rape.)

Hearing from this woman wasn't traumatic or anything (not to downplay rape, but this particular event didn't even mess with my mind that much---at the time, I'd felt a thousand times more traumatized by my female ex's then-ongoing emotional abuse), but just a bit...odd.

I wonder if, because of all of the recent #MeToo stuff, the liberal City of Austin didn't suddenly order a re-opening of all rape cases dating back for dozens of years. And then forgot to ask the case workers to actually pay attention to what they were telling the women they called. (In my case, the DNA wasn't initially in question, so why call me and tell me about it? If they'd read the case paperwork, they would have known this.)

My 2000 rape, while not horribly "traumatic," was indeed disturbing and creepy. A bad memory of a bad time in my life. Very odd that a city official would call me up after 21 years and remind me of it.

I was happy about my new chair...

Until I got pissed off about media censorship! But, even given media censorship, I still like my new chair. Originally meant for the living room, but the living room was/is a cool, hard black/white/red---this chair was too small and earth-toned to fit in. Put it together today and, once I saw how bad it looked in the living room, moved it to the bedroom, where it fit just fine.

Then went and ordered a BIG BLACK VELVET CHAIR WITH CHROME LEGS that WILL fit in the living room!

 

Yale-supported psycho Dr. Aruna Khilanani

Psychiatrist Dr. Aruna Khilanani, associated with Yale University, fantasizes about---and gives speeches about---wanting to kill white people. And she's supported by leftists and academics. Why is this psychotic hate speech OK?

C-Span: 7 mins of Trump speech in North Carolina

When I posted the full hour-plus speech from Fox, YouTube banned it. Maybe this 7 mins from C-Span will be OK.

6/5/21: President Trump Speaks at the NC Republican Convention

He left many things unfinished. Gearing up for 2024.

After I posted, was notified that the video had been removed for violating YouTube's "Terms of Service."

This was a former president making a mainstream speech covered by both Fox News and C-Span. Trump has been removed from Facebook and Twitter, and now YouTube. Even if you don't like Trump, you've got to question why his opinions are being censored so stringently on social media platforms.

Reminded of pastor Martin Niemoller's 1946 post-war "confession":

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

What's happening right now in America is the equivalent of what Niemoller was talking about, except a reverse image---this time it's the left-wing Communists in charge and banning all thought that doesn't agree with their propaganda.

The Beaten Generation

In 2021, tennis player Naomi Osaka withdraws from the French Open because she's "depressed" at having to appear before the media.

In 1996, US gymnast Kerri Strug injures her ankle at the Olympics during a previous attempt at the vault but makes her subsequent vault jump anyway, despite her injury. (Media controversy at the time: SHOULD she have still competed after being injured? Strug, who had worked all of her life for this moment, chose to compete while injured.)

Osaka is the perfect example of today's Beaten Generation.