Franksummers3ba's Blog

This is November 28, 2016. It is a few days after the death of Fidel Castro on November 25, 2016. He died on what is in the United States of America — Thanksgiving Weekend.  I am not in the least sure that both this weekend after the holiday is one lost on Cuban Americans who have had loved ones or at least cherished relatives  in Cuba in their thoughts at every Thanksgiving. It must seem significant to them and I also feel that the fact that the memory of his passing will not be shaped by the fact that  has died during the Trump transition period before the Electoral College votes. In America we are in the midst of the full carnival, struggle and at times debacle of a great and free electoral system in which people can vote for their leaders. He was a man who never instituted free elections. He held power without them and left a transition without them. he has been a feature on the world stage and across this hemishpere for all of my life. he was a very young man when he won his way to power and a very old man when he died with his brother having taken power but with himself still as a kind of supreme leader of the Communist Party and the State.  He will be remembered by South African who saw his army make possible their defeat at the hands of Angolans and Namibians. He will be remembered by the people who were family members of those killed and dispossessed by the many guerrilla groups he supported around various parts of the globe. Castro’s economy and the US reaction to it affected my own home region because the largest market for Louisiana rice before the revolution was Cuba. He did build a very effective medical community and professional culture capable of operating in adverse conditions around the world. This was of real value to many people and brought in real money in a way that Cuba never generated real money. Cuban doctors and athletes, nurses and some educators sent home paychecks that supported the system that educated them. But he depended largely on subsidies from the Soviet Union and later from Chavez’s Venezuela to support his Caribbean Communist State. he did provide the USSR with sugar and much of the world with cigars. But it was his constant  struggle against American interests that earned him and his continuing revolution that support.  He gave some support to small scale religious and market liberalizations suggested by his brother –the current president, but only late in life.

Marco Rubio has expressed the meaning and sentiment of  many Cuban Americans when he expressed sentiments reported here.  He was a man who used the secret police, torture and a cult of personality to rule a country an intimidate countless of its institutions.  He was a man who dispossessed many people who had property rights without due compensation.  he confiscated the wealth of hardworking families of moderate means as well as of the rich, he persecuted the Church, dissenters and many other people in Cuba and abroad. He brought Soviet missiles with nuclear warhead to bear on cities of ordinary Americans, fomented violent revolution across America. Fidel Castro’s Cuba fought wars which as much as anything else remade the future and destiny of the Southern part of Africa. His own sister has long taken a dim view of her brother’s way of being and ruling but she now is very much aware that he was a human being.  In Cuba for complicated reason, thousands and probably millions  are mourning in earnest.  he was a longstanding enemy of my country and the target of the agency in which I tried to serve. He was the survivor of many attempts by the CIA to end his life.

 

 

America is my country, I have rejoiced in its institutions and holidays and I have known the role Cuba under Castro has played in endangering this land and its people. he was often more popular than we are and have been and were. To be an American in Latin America was to be aware of Castro in some way — now he is gone.  I am not sure what the future will bring. But I am sure that we must face the future remembering the strong man of Havana. His impact cannot be dismissed.

I voted yesterday. It was truly worth doing despite all of the problems associated with our system. There was a runoff for Congressional District and Senate and I had my voice.  he never let his people participate in that great process. I see some complexity in his life and legacy. At one time Brazil alone brought in 11,000 Cuban doctors to work in the favelas  and in isolated rural areas, where ­middle-class Brazilian doctors were rare. It’s a Cuban legacy a generation of poorer Brazilians is unlikely to forget. those he freed from the previous Cuban dictator did not all find themselves back in prisons and detention camps.

I hope that Americans will seek to be more relevant and more positive in their impact on the world because of any reason that comes to hand. One reason is because of the advantage that our greatest enemies take of our faults…

 

I started tonight to erase and delete some material in this blog. This will take some time if I have it. I didn’t attend Thanksgiving dinner, I never date, I am not able to find enough work of any kind. Things continue to look worse. My blog has been a blend of extreme sarcasm, proposed theory, personal experiences, and challenging essays that are not so well edited. But now, I must use what time I have to thin out what is most likely not within the boundaries of our complex social fabric. I have no reason to believe that this alone will see me in a good job or with a good girlfriend. But it is a theoretical step in the direction of conformity to social norms.

I will write more about this later if I have the chance. But I don’t seem to be sustaining even a position for such an edit of pages and posts. But I will try now. Meanwhile, I will add new things when I can.

I wish all of you who may read this a Happy Thanksgiving! But I especially salute those of you who have had your children move away, for whom reflecting on lives led this year brings little joy and who wake up alone in bed or worth someone with whom you once felt more secure than you do now. Holidays can be tough for many of us — very tough indeed. It is OK to admit that fact. It is also good to seize the opportunities to do as much good, find and express as much joy and sanctify as many moments as possible. For some of us, realizing the limits on fun and pleasure and finding the fun and pleasure we can are both part

I spent much of yesterday, not most but much, visiting with family. But I did not take any pictures that I can add to this blog post. So there may be some editing in of material from a Thanksgiving Eve Party and gumbo dinner with the immediate family this evening  — the evening before Thanksgiving Day. I went to morning mass today and hope to make another morning mass tomorrow. But the rest of the day is likely to be fairly anticlimactic. I have decided not to attend an extended family gathering and just to spend the day mostly on my own. Who knows what exactly will happen. I just could not put the pieces together for a different outcome this year. There will be no lack of things to occupy my time. I have quite a number of job applications open or potentially open in distant places.

 

Thursday is Thanksgiving Day. I have blogged about that holiday before here, here and here. As well as discussing it on other years and in other posts. But every year has its unique qualities. This year certainly does.  For me this very bad year is likely to get worse but the holidays are always a crisis not in the sense of being bad — but rather in the way that the word crisis can mean something that can be good or bad. and this year they are a crisis I am less prepared to meet than ever before. But I do rejoice in the visits I share and I do dare to hope for something that will put a different aspect, quality and complexion on my life. I hope for something that will make it possible to look at the fast approaching 2017 with hope. I will do what I can to make the most out of the Holidays within reason and sanity.

The world can be a busy and confusing place. There is nothing about it that is conducive to very simplistic assessment as far as much of the world can measure and yet there is only one way that one can be spending one’s time.  we may try to multi-task but actually to a remarkable degree we each choose or tacitly consent to be engaged in a particular set of actions at any given time. That means we are not engaged in all the myriad other actions. The time finally runs out on many of the paths we could have hoped to pursue and as we age we see the ever more limited set of options facing back at us. For me this is a bit more extreme than for many other people. I am perhaps precipitously stumbling toward dissolution I am not much enjoying the trip either. But the election has meant the reshuffling of possibilities and it is possible that in the emerging new order some things will get better for me.  I can theorize how that might occur — but I cannot predict that it will occur.

I wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving! No matter who you are — even my fellow relatively lonely friends that I said I would not be hanging out with on the day itself. Even if the football games, masses and Macy’s Parade are not available to you and you are reading this — I hope you can find some joy. I honor all who invite an extra person to their table, who bring baskets to those with less and who help a struggling single parent or large and underemployed family to have a feast — God Bless all of you.

In the end, we all have alot to be thankful for and we hope to be able to focus on that truth for part of one fine holiday…

 

 

This is one of those posts that can be read as an essay but where the links embedded in the text are one of the main purposes of the post– I bring together many responses to the Trump Triumph. So what will Trump do? What has he promised to do?  Do Presidents keep many of their promises? There are studies that indicate they do not keep nearly all of them in the United States but they do keep a good number.  The Left, Liberals and in some cases Libertarians are concerned about Trump’s perceived promises they remember that he seemed at least to promise to build a wall on the southern border, to put a temporary ban on Muslims immigrating to the United States of America,  to repeal and replace Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act), to expel all illegal aliens and to withdraw from NATO.  He has greatly modified his position on the ban on Muslims, he has shown a more nuanced view about Obamacare and has set his priority on the expulsion of aliens with a criminal record. I wish that he had a real plan to help Christians persecuted in the middle east which he did have when he first started and which I mentioned. he has let that go in the give and take so far– maybe it will come back into play. But have not heard that it is on the table.  He was in part moved to this whole process by the torture and slaughter of Christians in those countries. But has that — which I liked best about him — survived?

These masses of those opposed to him see his appointment of Stephen Bannon as an appointment for both the far right and for racism. As any regular readers of this blog must know, I am a former Democrat who never has joined any other party. I voted for Chris Keniston of the Veterans Party for President of the United States in this cycle and  almost entirely for Republicans otherwise. But I voted for Governor John Bell Edwards in the last major election and usually vote for a mix of Republicans and Democrats. I do not hold  my political behavior up as exemplary but it  is important background for this story.

Michael Moore the documentarian of the current American left  who made films like Capitalism: A Love Story , Where to Invade Next and Roger and Me is no friend to the President-Elect Donald J. Trump. But he tried to tell his liberal audience that Trump would win.  Now he is predicting that Trump will follow in the path trod by former President Richard  Nixon and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and not finish his term in office. The  American Left and the Liberal establishment in this country have a hard time believing that the man famously endorsed by the KKK has won the election.  They decry racial violence and racism but do not much denounce the violence to which Trump supporters were repeatedly subjected. There are those looking at Chelsea Clinton to take up where here parents have left off as other decry the death of two political dynasties– Bush and Clinton families. Powerful people see this as a time for a noble resistance. But the Democrats are nonetheless in tatters and ruin — at least for now.

I had intended to be at LSU Graduate School if possible this semester. There is a list of books to help Americans mostly left of center to understand how this election can be reasoned out in terms of political theory, demographics, electoral realities and recent history. Here is a list which includes a book by Dr. Nancy Isenberg of LSU. Her book is White Trash and though I have not yet read it I have seen a good bit about it. There is no doubt that this election is about the unrest and discontent of the working poor whites of these United States. The vision of America as sliding into an ethnically and racially confused malaise in postindustrial regions north of the Mason-Dixon Line is nothing new. It is as old as Hill Street Blues the acclaimed television police drama. Although not everyone agrees about what that all meant.  What do the specific issues of whiteness and other racial identities have to do with Trump?  That is not clear to me but there certainly are relevant racial issues and defining factors. There is racial violence attributed to him which may or may not have anything to do with his supporters. Nor is it known that all the vast violence against his cause has no racist elements. Whether Keith Ellison or Elizabeth Warren becomes the leader of the Democratic National Committee the new leadership seems likely to paint Trump as a bigot.

I am breaking the flow and structure of this essay show the progression of a post by a man of Acadian descent ( but not reared entirely  in the community although connected to it very much)who is a Ph.D. candidate at Louisiana State University’s  History Department and who is also my Facebook friend.  Here is a selection his progression of comments just before and after Election Day. they are reproduced in full with one parenthetical name added and only for clarity.

September 27, 2016: “In truth, the Hillary haters seem to resent her more than disagree with her. They demand to be humored and catered to. They hold her to wildly different standards than her male counterparts. They regard her with an unprecedented degree of suspicion. Above all, they really, really want to see her punished. And an aggressive male presence—even if dangerously incompetent—seems to comfort a great many of them.

Everyone but them knows damn well why.

Bad news for the haters: History is decidedly unafraid of “the woman card.” It doesn’t care how many people will stand on tables today and swear they’d feel the same if she were a man. It will see us for what we are—a sick society, driven by misogyny and pathetically struggling to come to terms with the fact that women do not exist solely to nurture.”

October 12,, 2016:I personally do not care who this piece of shit (Glen Beck) endorses. The real motive here is he wants clicks as he tries to overcome irrelevance. But hell, I enjoy the thought of republicans’ heads exploding as their party implodes, hence the share.

October 27, 2016: I agree with this one hundred percent. Facebook should call them “connections” instead of “friends.” Some of you, no matter how we met, are not my “friend.” You’re here because I’m hoping you start a political/historical argument with me so I can kick your ass. That’s my Facebook philosophy. Deal with it.

That being said, these are my feelings exactly.

“At the end of the day, I cannot and will not be friends with people who think that we should be directing resources toward conversion therapy, for people “suffering” from homosexuality (like Pence). I will not be friends with people who think that it is okay to subject black people to practices that were deemed unconstitutional, because they deprived them of the very civil liberties our Constitution was intended to protect (like Trump).

I will not be friends with people who think that those who subscribe to Islam are any less deserving of love, respect, or refuge than their Christian counterparts. I will not be friends with people who think that it is morally sound to indiscriminately murder the children of terrorists. Nor will I be friends with people who speak ill of immigrants, when without immigrants, none of us would even be here.”

 

November 5, 2016: If the Trump wackos start rioting after Hillary wins Tuesday night and you need a place to go, hide in the nearest library or bookstore, they’ll never think to go near either of those places

THE ELECTION WAS NOVEMBER 8, 2016

November 8, 2016: Congratulations Trumpsters. You won, we lost. Lessons? When the media normalizes racism, sexism, misogyny, and xenophobia, there are consequences. Elections have consequences. 240 years of the United States as a constitutional republic have come down to this. God help us.

I probably won’t be posting any more on Facebook for a good while, if ever.

November 13, 2016: Thirty percent of the vote in California is still not counted, along with many precincts in New York–Democratic strongholds. Hillary Clinton will likely win the popular vote by 2.2 million votes. Let that sink in. That’s over 20 packed-out Tiger Stadiums.

Her margin of victory will be more than victorious candidates John F. Kennedy (over Nixon in 1960) and Richard Nixon (over Hubert Humphrey in 1968.) And in terms of popular vote quantity, she is, at this point in history,the second-most popular presidential candidate in history.

Don’t misunderstand. I still reservedly endorse the Electoral College. In a constitutional republic, “pure democracy” ends at the state level. I do believe in safeguards against the “tyranny of the majority,” though this election forces me to rethink.

My point? The Trump forces condemning the protesters–and who had called for “armed rebellion” if Trump lost–what would they be doing right now if Donald Trump had won the popular vote by over 2 million and lost in the electoral college?

 

November 14, 2016: Let’s forget all the economic and political fantasies of Trump’s campaign rhetoric to “get tough” with China. He’s going to label them a “currency manipulator”? Fine. The resolution, after being yawned at, will languish for years in the World Trade Organization’s files before it is even looked at.

The point? Li Keqiang is the Premier of China and head of the Communist Party. You don’t climb to the top of that communist jungle without literally and figuratively, stepping over the bodies of your enemies. From Mao Zedong and the Long March, Chinese leaders have been vetted by their very system that is the epitome of the law of the jungle. If they make it all the way to the top to rule over one billion people, they are made of iron.

So a fat trust-fund baby, who has never held political office or served in the military; who, if he would have put daddy’s inheritance into mutual funds would have had a bigger fortune than he does with his investments and “business savvy” is going to “get tough” with China?

Li Keqiang is going to make Donald Drumpf his little bitch.

So who will Trump turn out to be? I had a discussion with former Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco at the Donor’s Dinner for Family Missions Company Last year and I told her that as Louisiana had voted her in and voted in her opposing Party President so it would likely be in the case of John Bell Edwards and Donald Trump. In the case of former Governor Bobby Jindal we had the same thing although Louisiana did not provide its electoral votes to Obama.   We have chosen for the third time in a row at least a very contrarian governor. As the Dems sink elsewhere we have a strong Democrat as governor. But he will struggle in these years. I think that it is a necessary struggle but I also think that Trump is part of a necessary change. I will begin to discuss the policy of the next presidency and its implications soon enough. But let us get the feel of where we all stand now…

I already have most of my next blog post on the Trump transition written. I have another on after that sketched out. But today I was at the Acadian Museum. I spoke to the Acadian tour group and their companions from Lafayette and New Orleans. I also got to visit with distant relatives and reminisce about my own pilgrimage to those Northern soils.

 

I spent some time with Cajun music legend D.L. Menard, with another LeBlanc living legend related to General LeBlanc and to whom my father often brings communion. But the guests from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were the center of attention. Their leader, a Boudreau was inducted into the Order of Living Legends. My time was limited.

I went to Mass after leaving –the anticipated Mass for Sunday. Tomorrow I will be celebrating my mom’s birthday with family. But soon I will return to discussing national politics….