A Nation of Middle Fingers

For the moment I’m content to let this provocative (but seemingly accurate) title stand with only a modest explanation. It could be the title of a new column in my Reader column “Not Eudora” which has been appearing in the Duluth Reader off and on for the last dozen years.

I’ve been content to let the now week old post picturing the smug President looking on his latest lackey stand at the top of the blog knowing that anyone blundering into Lincoln Democrat would see it and draw their own conclusions. For worrisome family related concerns I’ve found myself this morning supervising my two grandsons solo. I picked them up at home and took them to McDonald’s for breakfast where another customer thanked me for running against Pete Stauber.

This morning is the day following two court decisions regarding some of the swamp dwellers who helped get President Trump elected as the 45th President of the United States. Donald Trump’s unleashing of three years of political unrest has had my head spinning for a long time now. As my grandson’s downed some smoothies and I wolfed down a McDonald breakfast platter I kept thinking of what their eight and eleven year old minds are making of a mess bad enough to shake one’s patriotism. I’m going to France in less than three weeks to honor my grandfather’s service in the First World War. How can I help transfer my appreciation for the history of the United States to these two scrappy young gentleman. They were playing a video game when I picked them up and we had a brief discussion of the meaning of the acronym WTF. None of us spoke its component words out loud but to my mind they could stand for Why Trump Fibs. The problem with this possibility is the absence of the letter H which would stand for “Hourly”.

I’ve been thinking about writing a series of family histories for my grandsons that explained what was going on as I and my family’s antecedents grew up. I battled my next door neighbor Becky over whether Richard Nixon or John Kennedy should be elected President in 1960. A few years later my grandfather lectured me that the worst mistake he made in his life was a single vote for a Democratic candidate for President in 1916. His father arrived in New York harbor the day that South Carolina seceded from the union in December of 1860 all because Abraham Lincoln had been elected to the Presidency.

But I’m still studying French for my visit to France and I haven’t gotten in my daily minimum of an hour’s study yet. I’ve got grandson’s to tend to – we’re thinking a hike through Chester Park. I’m awaiting word on family troubles. And I’m awaiting the drawn out results of America’s latest national trauma and its a glut of middle fingers. Whoo boy!

I’ll be back to blog eventually. Hang tight my eight loyal readers.

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