I have several idiosyncrasies. My central one deals with people who help me on my journey down my yellow brick road of life. I want to express to them my gratitude for their caring and support. So, how would you express your sincere appreciation to those who helped you?

For me, merely thanking them isn’t sufficient. I have five Himalayan salt lamps in my home. I think of them as my emotional treasures. I have given nearly twenty to people in the past few years. The most recent one I gave to my web administrator. She sent this photo to me of her salt lamp in her office.

I was struck by the similarity between our two offices. So, I sent her a photo of my office and mentioned that Ginger loves looking at the salt lamp on my desk.

Salt lamps provide a soothing ambiance. We live in a helter-skelter world where Donald the Loser and his MAGA base set the game plan by lying.

As I pondered our American dilemma, I thought about why politicians can’t resolve the lie about the stolen election. No court in the entire nation buys that lie, but Trump and his deniers still claim the election was rigged.

Enter Nikki Haley with an idea. Haley announced that she wants to be the Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential race. Her idea to help Americans resolve their arguing about nearly everything is a mental competency test for all potential elected officeholders. If you are 75, you must take a test. Now, Trump claims that he took a cognitive impairment test and aced it, and he added that he was “a very stable genius.”

Regardless of Trump’s passing the test, Haley maintains that any candidate, especially for president, must take the test if they are 75 or older. When I read that, this was the first thing that came to mind.

That concerns me.

Really. Hmmm. Is there a scientific reason for testing people at 75? What so telling about 75? Could it be 73 or 78? Beyond the apparent age issue, one could pass a mental competency test and still be racist, xenophobic, or sexist. People at any age can have mental competence. The problem lies with whether they can make correct ethical judgments.

I’m 80, and I’m not running for any elective office. During those decades, I only ran for public office once, in 1978 in Dixon, IL, for the school board and won. During my tenure on the school board, I spent most of my time dealing with two issues: bus safety and some residents wanting to ban books.

I’d suggest to Haley that she might want to consider testing ethical competency. How does she feel about using the Confederate flag at the statehouse of South Carolina, where she was governor? She never had a problem with it in 2015 because it represented to some South Carolinians their “traditions of history, of heritage and of ancestry.”

Let me get this straight. That history, heritage, and ancestry was based upon the slavery of blacks. Slavery enabled whites to get rich by enslaving human beings. Nearly 700,000 people died during the Civil War. I wonder how Haley would feel if she had been a slave.

During the insurrection on January 6, 2021, the issue of history, heritage, and ancestry emerged again.

“traditions of history, of heritage and of ancestry”

Also, would Haley have a test dealing with xenophobia? Many Republicans don’t like people who are non-white and don’t want immigrants to come to America. Interestingly, her parents came from Amritsar, the capital of India’s Punjab region. Haley was born in America and given the name Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. So, Haley is a first-generation American Republican from Asia. Beyond that, her parents were Sikhs. I would think that she would be aware of what Trump thinks about Asians, people from Africa, or the Middle East, including anyone that wasn’t Christian.

Here is another; let me get this straight. Haley is anti-abortion. That is her personal belief. However, her mindset shouldn’t determine the reproductive rights of all women. Women should have their own right to decide. Let women decide about their reproductive rights.