Spanish views from a small town

After the debacle on Wednesday, Twitter and Facebook have finally shut up Trump. They took their sweet time about it. Unfortunately, Twitter has let him use his trigger-happy thumbs again. He's already tweeted out to his followers. Several people have resigned from the outgoing administration, possibly thinking that if they leave now they can still salvage their political careers. There are rumors that Trump is going stark raving mad. In my opinion, he's been that for ages.  His followers probably won't stop there. But it will depend on whether or not Trump or some other crony of his stokes their fires. He's been stoking them for too long, and we got Wednesday as the culmination of the barage of hatred that has been spewing from him for the last five years or so. His message today, calling them patriots, and saying their day will come, is not very pacifying. The reaction in Spain depended on whom it came from. The parties that lean left decried the attempted coup. The p...

Forty years ago next month, there was a session of the Congreso to choose the Prime Minister of Spain. The background was not boding well. Ever since Franco's death in 1975, the Spanish Armed Forces had not been content. Separatist ETA had been killing people. The unemployment statistics were high, and so was inflation. The legalization of the Communist Party was the ultimate straw for many of them, and they began plotting. At the afternoon vote on the 23 rd of February, Lieutenant-Colonel Tejero of the Guardia Civil led 200 Civil Guards into the chambers of the Congreso , crying out, “Quieto todo el mundo!” (Nobody move!). After a brief scuffle with an Army General who refused to comply, Tejero fired a shot into the air. That was followed by a machine gun burst, also into the air, by one of his followers. For the following 18 hours, the Congreso was held hostage, all that was happening going on the air because the radio station, SER, kept its mics open up in the press galler...

The world keeps pushing merrily along in its wild disorder, sometimes more chaotic, sometimes more harmonious. Everything changes, yet everything seems the same. There are days we seem to be standing on one leg without being able to rest. Vaccination has begun in the United Kingdom. Already, the first problems with the Pfizer vaccine have appeared. Two health care workers reacted with anaphylactic shock. They were quickly treated, and nothing happened. It turned out they both had serious allergies for which they carried Epi pens. As a consequence, those with serious allergies have been alerted not to get the Pfizer vaccine. With so many people in the world suffering from serious allergies, that is a concern. I, myself, am allergic to a number of different things, from some fruits to pollens, yet nothing serious enough to run the risk of shock. I do want to get vaccinated, so I hope no more problems arise. Hungary, instead of waiting for the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines to get the green l...

In the past couple of weeks, two open letters, from retired Army and Air Force officers, were received by the King. In both of them, the complaint is that the government, run by "social-communists, lovers of ETA, and secessionists," is bringing the country closer to a dissolution, and a divisiveness never before seen. They re-affirm their loyalty to the King, and promise their help. All of those who signed graduated from military academies back in the 1960's, under Franco, and are retired, which means they are free to voice their personal opinions. They reflect exactly the position of the extreme right party, Vox. In fact, if one were to take away the names of the signees, one could just as easily replace them with members of that political party. That such a letter was sent to the King is one thing. Another thing is a chat room where ex-officials of the Air Force, most of them signees to one of the letters, promoted their own ways of "making Spain great again."...

Just when we thought the circus surrounding Trump couldn't get any more world-class comedy acts, we see Rudy Giuliani give another press conference. It was so much out of the Twilight Zone, that even the Spanish news carried it. It looked like his brain was melting. Honestly, who is running that show? First, we see him standing in front of an entrance to a garage of sorts at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia, emphatically bellowing that there was fraud in the Pennsylvania vote count. It turns out someone made a boo-boo, and scheduled the press conference at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping, next to a sex shop and a crematorium, rather fittingly. Looks like someone wasn't wearing their glasses when they looked up a phone number. Now, at a more common spot for giving a press conference, he stands bellowing that, it doesn't matter if there's evidence or not of fraud, they are going to impugn every single vote that went against Trump. And, while he bellows, rivulets of bro...

That's that for that. Joe Biden is now the President-Elect. I was at the last supermarket I visit on Saturdays, waiting at the doorway for the rain to let up enough to dash with my cart all the way out to my car. I heard a ping on my phone. Since I wasn't doing anything, I looked at it. The Guardian was bringing me the latest news. So did The New York Times. Finally, the tide turned and we have a decent man and woman in the White House.  Of course, despite the relief, the sweet relief, that sanity will once again trod those halls, there are dark shadows. Trump is still bleating that the election was rigged and that most of the votes for Biden are fraudulent. Lawsuits that he tried to bring in Michigan and other states were thrown out as frivolous, and without evidence. Yes, there will be recounts, especially in Georgia, where the difference is quite small. But, while total votes for Biden may not be in the tens or hundreds of thousands, they are enough for him to win those stat...

The votes are still being counted in states such as Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, and Alaska. As of this afternoon, Joe Biden has pulled out ahead in Georgia and Pennsylvania. Since so many people voted by mail, there are mountains of ballots yet to be opened and counted. And who knows how many still lie in postal distribution centers without having been sent to their destinations.  Most of the mail in ballots were cast by Democrats, so as they are opened, the numbers are changing in favor of Biden. That is making Trump furious. Last night he apparently held a news conference that was so full of lies from the very beginning, that major television networks simply stopped broadcasting it, and started correcting the lies falling out of his mouth like blow flies. The man is unhinged, but unhinged are also the people behind him that keep prodding him onward in his pathetic attempt to destroy the democratic principle of voting.  In other countries, people a...

Karma has a way of coming home to roost. After Donald Trump was labelled as the greatest source of Covid-19 misinformation, this morning he tested positive for the virus.  Of course, this being the President with the most lies under his belt, there could be one of three situations going on.  1. That he's really bad, and that an ICU has been set up in the White House. That would be because his tweet saying that he and Melania had the virus mentioned it by its real name, Covid-19. He didn't mention the China virus, or any other such name he's used to disparage it. Might he have tweeted the tweet? Or was it an aide? 2. That it's all a lie to make him look like a victim, and have people sympathize with him. Also, to get him definitely out of any other possible debate with Joe Biden. No one would put it past him to play the victim card. 3. That it's real, he's been isolated, and that he might get through this like through a bad cold.  There are various strikes agains...

Is anybody at the wheel? Is it just spinning wildly as the bus plies the road, leaving the marks of rubber on the road as its driver swerves under the effects of only God knows what? The latest headline makes one think the bus is about to plow into a stone wall. "Trump's new Covid-19 doctor believes in alien DNA." As I was perusing Facebook yesterday evening, my eyes were arrested by that link. I thought that surely it was something from The Onion, or some other satirical outlet (really, with the way things are going, the normal news sounds satirical enough). I saw that it was from The Daily Beast, not exactly Pulitzer journalism, but I decided to look it up. Sure enough, different news outlets of different stripes carried news of a Stella Immanuel, who pushes hydroxychloroquine. She also pushes demons, alien DNA, the Illuminati, and claims of vaccines to stop people from believing in religion.  Seeing what Trump is like, one can understand how he can fall for somethi...

I sat down to watch the live stream of the "Salute to America" the night of the Fourth. I don't know whether I made it to the point at which Trump mentioned how the American Continental Army took control of the airports during the War of 1812 (!) or not, but I quickly stopped wasting my time. This guy has no idea of what the Declaration of Independence, made so many years ago on this day, means. He takes it to mean that it is what enabled America to become the greatest nation on earth. Or, more truthfully, a photo op for him, and a chance to rally his unconditionals around him and his lack of knowledge of the founding of this country. The Declaration of Independence marked a before and after in systems of government. It based the government of a country on the arguments of philosophers such as John Locke. It is a product of the Age of Enlightenment, and as such is an ode to reason and individualism. With the incorporation of the philosophical ideas of Kant, Voltaire, ...

When we emigrated to the United States, it was the year 1969. Two months later, American astronauts would reach the moon. The Soviet Union was beginning its decline but still going strong. The Vietnam war was roiling away in the Far East, and spilling over into Laos and Cambodia. The Cultural Revolution in Mao's China was destroying an ancient culture, and Castro was at the height of power, having recently bested the U.S. at the Bay of Pigs. Small terror groups, founded on Marxist principles, tried to move the Iron Curtain further west in Europe. Communism was the word used to frighten small children to sleep.  In Spain, Fascist Franco ruled. One of his biggest bugaboos was Communism. He didn't want any Spaniard to start sympathizing with leftist movements. (Too late. ETA in the Basque country was not only an independence movement; their principles were also based on Marxism, though that aspect was never greatly bandied about.) My father's old passport from the time had t...

Can I cry now? Can I lie down, give myself up to pure grief and cry? Cry for a country I love, that shaped me, that gave me a set of values, that presented me with a wonderful education? Can I cry for the shadows that loom over the world, over people who have no share in the election process, yet benefit from its good choices, and lose from its bad ones? For, believe it, the United States elections affect the world and its stability. The impossible has happened. Trump, the billionaire who went through several bankruptcies, the man who looks down on everyone who isn't himself. The man who, being the grandson of immigrants, thinks immigrants are America's bane. The man who thinks women are commodities. The man who talks about "the" African-Americans as if they were not as American as he. The man who has no empathy for the disabled. The man who would be friends with those antagonistic to America. He is now the President-elect of the United States of America. How? Can...

What is normal in a daily relationship between a man and a woman? Is it normal that a man's eyes drift to the woman's breasts frequently? Is it normal that he brush against her, having the entire office space to move in? Is it normal for him to casually lay his hand on her thigh?  Obviously, it's not normal. He is invading her personal space uninvited. But if she complains, she'll just be told it's his way of working, of responding. Yet he doesn't do the same with male co-workers, just the females. If the woman decides to speak with a lawyer, the lawyer will tell her that she has no case. It's not against the law for a man to show a woman that she's attractive. It is still extremely difficult to prove a case of sexual harassment, at least in Spain. For every case that is won, there must be thousands that don't even get filed. Because the woman will be told the man simply finds her attractive and that nothing bad has happened. It's still conside...