‘Truth is good. Humor is better.’
SOME day, we’ll win, he thought. Freedom Unlimited. The freedom of the free human mind. He might fail. But THE CALL would go on. There would always be deviants from the norm. He could fail. The Plan could not.” [Bryce Walton, “Last Call,” Planet Stories, January 1952] Exeunt, Trump Administration, the producers of MAGA:
(1) “In one instance, Machinist’s Mate First Class Robert R. Scott, among 15 Sailors awarded the Medal of Honor for acts of valor on that day, refused to leave his flooding battle station within the depths of the USS CALIFORNIA, declaring to the world: ‘This is my station and I will stay and give them air as long as the guns are going’.” [https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-national-pearl-harbor-remembrance-day-2020/]
(2) “Just 24 years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight, Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean, and 5 years later Amelia Earhart became the first woman to accomplish that same feat. Just a few weeks ago, our Nation mourned the loss of another aviation legend, Brigadier General Chuck Yeager. In a rocket plane named ‘Glamorous Glennis’ after his beloved wife, Yeager flew at speeds in excess of 700 miles per hour, breaking the sound barrier for the first time in human history…In 1969, 22 years after Yeager’s flight, Neil Armstrong, an Ohioan like the Wright Brothers, became the first person to ever set foot on the lunar surface, thrusting American leadership in flight beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. And, earlier this year, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched a commercially built and operated spacecraft to the International Space Station from American soil for the first time.” [https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-wright-brothers-day-2020/]
(3) “We pray for religious believers everywhere who suffer persecution for their faith. We especially pray for their brave and inspiring shepherds – like Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong and Pastor Wang Yi of Chengdu – who are tireless witnesses to hope.” [https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-850th-anniversary-martyrdom-saint-thomas-becket/]
(4) “While Americans enjoy the blessings of religious liberty, we must never forget others around the world who are denied this unalienable right…In 2019, to shed light on this important issue, I welcomed survivors of religious persecution from 16 countries in the Oval Office, including Christians, Jews, and Muslims.” [https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-religious-freedom-day-2021/]
(5) “The United States is a shining example of human rights for the world. However, some in Washington are fighting to keep the United States among a small handful of nations – including North Korea and China – that allow elective abortions after 20 weeks. I join with countless others who believe this is morally and fundamentally wrong.” [https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-national-sanctity-human-life-day-2021/]
The thread has been spooled from 80 years prior. “Law merely recognizes this most fundamental of all democratic principles of liberty and enables parents, who are so moved, to remind their children that they are not the mere creatures of the state and that a public standardized system of secular education is not intended to imply that spiritual faith and education in religious conviction may not be regarded as vital equipment for life and citizenship.” [Charles H. Tuttle (former United States District Attorney, Member of the Greater New York Interfaith Committee), “The Child Is Not The Mere Creature Of The State,” January 21, 1941]
“Dictators boast that they can and have solved their problems of unemployment. They likewise point to our numbers of unemployed as evidence that democracy has failed and democratic principles will not work in our day of complex industrial, commercial, and economic life. I deny their claims and deny their conclusion as to the failure of democracy.
Solving problems of unemployment with concentration camps, by keeping millions of men under arms, and making boastful talk, is no solution. Such methods promise nothing save the total loss of liberty and freedom for the individual, both politically and economically.” [Carl A. Hatch (U.S. Senator from New Mexico), “Our Days: They Will Be What We Make Them,” Before the New York Board of Trade, January 8, 1941]
Exeunt, Trump, the mogul who had pontificated where others fail — there’s your opportunity: “On occasion, I am asked what my favorite deals have been. I have a lot to choose from, but there is something about the acquisition of 40 Wall Street that will always stand apart…In the 1960s and 1970s, 40 Wall Street was a fully occupied building, and it was indeed a hot property. However, in the early 1980s, it was bought by Ferdinand Marcos, the former dictator of the Philippines. Unfortunately, a revolution in the Philippines required his full attention, and the skyscraper at 40 Wall Street fell into decline. Dealings became chaotic, and soon the whole thing was a mess. Marcos was out.” [How I Turned My Biggest Challenges Into Success. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2008, p. 161]
Meanwhile in the “noosphere” of Trump’s buddy, a “cloud formation depicting the image of a pregnant Blessed Virgin Mary that was caught on video standing on the rooftop of the Manila Cathedral last Dec. 8 (the Feast of the Immaculate Conception) has attracted over 100,000 views (and counting) on Facebook,” according to the web-based news-wire service of the Philippine government. [https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1124609] That is news no less official than the launch of the 5000-Peso Lapulapu Commemorative Banknote and Medal to kickoff the 99-day countdown to the 500th anniversary of the “Victory at Mactan.” [https://www.bsp.gov.ph/SitePages/MediaAndResearch/MediaDisp.aspx?ItemId=5665]
Truth is good. Humor is better.
