What I Learned In High School - Applies To This Moment In Time

What I Learned In High School
Applies To This Moment In Time

I have written about attending Mt. Lebanon High School many times. I learned several things in high school that have impacted my life. I learned, by mistake, that I was both poor and dumb. It took me half my life to realize that I wasn’t either. The other learning was, which I didn’t like at the time but have benefitted from greatly, that of memorizing a hundred lines of poetry or prose each semester. However, once I graduated from high school, hardly a day goes by when I don’t recall some lines that I memorized over a half century ago.

For months, I have been bothered by the republicans in Congress. I can’t believe that they aren’t appalled by Donald the Dumb’s behavior in the White House. I get that political parties need to back the president, if he is in their party, even when they disagree with some of his policies. However, our fake president has gone beyond the pale. Name a president that has lead our nation in the past that lies more than Donald the Dumb. Fact checkers have totaled up over 2000 blatant lies or misstatements of the truth that he has made in his first year.

Beyond the lying, he isn’t qualified to be president, even though he claims, “Like I’m really smart.” He is oblivious to history, the Constitution, and governing in general. Additionally, he is vulgar, a sexist, misogynist, and a racist.

He acts like the emperor in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale, The Emperor's New Clothes. Also, William Shakespeare wrote essentially the same thing in Macbeth. Macbeth said of his life that it is like “a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” I memorized this also while in high school.

I recall Tricky Dicky doing that during the Watergate era. Both Tricky Dicky and Donald the Dumb are like dealing with children in their terrible twos. When Donald the Dumb doesn’t get his way, he has a temper tantrum. When he deals with Kim Jong-un, who he calls Rocket Man, our fake president compares his button on his desk citing that it is bigger than Kim’s button.

Finally, last week, when Donald the Dumb was going on about Norwegians, Haitians, and Africans, I couldn’t believe that the republicans didn’t call him out about not only the vulgarity but more to the point the racism behind the comment. Then I recalled what Caesar said according to Shakespeare. This stanza I memorized in high school.

Cowards die many times before their deaths.

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should fear,

Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come when it will come.

When are the republicans going to man-up? When will they address vulgar vocabulary and racism? Unless people are white, Donald the Dumb disses them. Unless they are rich whites, he has no time for them.

One of the things that I have over Donald the Dumb is that I have danced with death. I am keenly aware of the reality that my days are limited. We all know that we will die sometime. However, doing the dance has taught me that truth at a radically different level than merely the intellectual one.

Instead of facts, I possess the feeling, which adds volumes to the knowledge base about death and dying. It changed me, because I grasped the reality beyond merely the cognitive concept of death. It was a transformative event for me. I am ultrasensitive to what I will leave the world and how I will be remembered.

Donald the Dumb will be remembered just like he is today…the village idiot. The question is how will the republicans in Congress be remembered? However, we all need some moral compass. We need to decide what is morally or ethically correct. What we have with the republicans is as couple hundred lemmings.

Donald the Dumb

Apparently, Donald the Dumb is directing the congressional lemmings.

The congressional lemmings

How long will it take the republicans in the Congress to man-up? Donald the Dumb has been in the presidency for a year where he has repeatedly acted like the village idiot. Our fake president claims his hands are big, along with having a bigger button than Rocket Man.

In addition to the lies or misstatements that Donald the Dumb has made, he isn’t qualified by experience to lead the nation. He is a racist. It was apparent that he can’t stand the notion that Obama was successful and that he was black. However, his shithole comment about Haitians and Africans is the last on a long list of his racist comments, which also include Mexicans, Muslims, etc. He is a sexist and misogynous. He has a xenophobic attitude towards anyone who isn’t white like him.

Donald the Dumb should have read Roosevelt’s paragraph, Man in the Arena. I memorized it in high school. Okay, he wouldn’t have understood it, but some republicans in Congress would have gotten Roosevelt’s message.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Finally, Frederick Douglass reminded Americans of a great truth that is applicable to Donald the Dumb and the congressional lemmings. “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”