Continued Confessions

which may be relevant

The confession I want to start with today is that I read a lot of political stuff, but I have not been very active since I sent some postcards to Ohio a couple of years ago now. Age and infirmity are catching up with me, but mostly my eyesight is diminishing as well as my hearing. I know that there are modern devices to assist and I am trying to stay as relevant as I can as long as I can. I’m just making an excuse for not being the activist I was back in the 60’s. So now that’s off my chest, I want to share what I have been reading.

Every week, I’m thrilled to get my copy of The New Yorker magazine, and the artistic covers always bring me pleasure. This week’s edition arrived yesterday with an excellent work by painter Anita Kunz entitled “The Face of Justice” showing portraits of the three liberal women of the Supreme Court seated with six other justices all of whom are a glowering rendition of “The Donald.” I hope everyone can see the cover somehow. I then went directly to the most excellent article that I recommend highly to anyone needing more information on the coming election. Jonathan Blitzer writes the Letter from Washington this week entitled “Inside the Trump Plan for 2025.” I learned so much more than I had found out on my own. Jonathan spent an incredible amount of time and effort tracking down the source of the attempted right-wing takeover of our government. In fact, the subhead of the article says “A network of well-funded far-right activists is preparing for the former President’s return to the White House.” The details are even more terrifying than you might imagine. I had no idea that there were so many billionaires in this country who have unlimited funds to buy elections. We’ve all seen the headlines about Musk saying he will give $45 million a month (if I got that right) from now until November; but there are other shadowier money men just as eager to propel their puppet into place. And the number of so-called non-profit organizations that have been created in layers is mind-boggling. As I’ve mentioned before, my career has involved a lot of commercial title searching, and I pride myself on being able to follow the threads of ownership, no matter how many times a property changes hands. But as I also noted, when the main object is to obfuscate, lying and deception become the norm. The investigative journalists who dig for the truth often uncover such devious behavior that we’re all shocked by the headlines. However, what doesn’t get exposed is probably even more frightening.

And now that I am getting my knickers in a twist all over again, I will end my Thursday post with something else that has interested me lately, As an English major, who has written for newspapers, as well as edited many government documents, I’m always fascinated by changes in what I was taught. A recent book deleted the periods when using the term US for United States (except when giving a direct quote by someone else who used the old-fashioned abbreviation). Now I’m overly conscious of the use of abbreviations in modern print (such as the article I reference above which continues to use periods as in G.O.P.). And one last thing, the Alistair MacLean book I’m still working on uses the spelling “kidnaped” or “kidnaping” throughout the story I’m finishing up now. At first use, I thought it was a typo, but then realized that it was deliberate. Well, I had to get my trusty phone and look it up: turns out the double letter which looks correct to me is the British way, but a single “p” is the American way. Even though the author was British, the story is set in California, so perhaps that’s why he used the American spelling.

Glad to have that sorted. TTFN.