It makes perfect sense to Give Donald Trump a third term or perhaps even more. Why should a new president follow Trump and sign his or her own executive orders possibly undoing what Donald Trump is doing? Like the times of FDR, the world is in such a crisis that unlimited terms are almost a necessity. It is hard enough for a President to get much accomplished in four years.

The next four years will be Chaos in my regard. As Margo Channing famously said, "Fasten your seat belts, it's gonna be a bumpy night."  This is a period in Washington when the Term "Decorum" will be banned from all proceedings. And, sadly, the so-called Deep State, whatever that may be, will still be a mythical reality. 

Billionaires, for good or ill, will make the laws and enrich themselves off of a dystopian society.  And we will all clap and sing God Bless America. Let us Thank God for creating such a heaven on earth. Our kids in high school need to read 1984 and see where we are going. Colleges need to require American History survey courses, preferably taught by OLD SCHOOL Masters credentialed professors. 

Maybe then we will really get back to basics and be prepared to say, with Nathan Hale, that we only have one life to give for our country. And, please, give Mr. Musk a lesson on Nazism and racism. Something they obviously don't teach in South Africa. Isn't President Trump tired of him yet?

When I taught Freshman History in College we invariably became entwined in what is generally called "Western Civilization." The course begins with the ancient world and eventually lands on the shores of ancient Greece. Here we learned that there were various types of governments emerging with the various city-states, Athens, for example, is most often associated with early attempts at Democracy. Democracy  is itself constantly evolving. Under Pericles it seems to have reached it's zenith.

Another aspect of Democracy was it's exportation to other regional areas where the Greeks were making cultural and political inroads. It was called Hellenization. All of this boded well for land owning males being able to participate in politics and determine their future.

But other City-States took different paths to express government, such as a system of monarchy. Still others were ruled by oligarchy. These rulers were part of the ruling elite. No elected, their power and wealth in the community gave them the tight to rule.

What are oligarchs? This definition comes from the Oxford dictionary as quoted in Wikipedia: a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence (particularly with reference to individuals who benefited from the privatization of state-run industries after the collapse of the Soviet Union).

Today, America is poised to be run by oligarchs, chosen by Donald Trump, some to be in his Cabinet, others to act as an ad hoc" Kitchen cabinet" ala Andrew Jackson. No one of them have one iota sense of who the everyday American is. They have no idea I cannot buy eggs due to costs.

Historically, Oligarchs tend to be displaced by the masses, eventually. This is the evolution of society. So we, today, must toil through the Trump years and hope for a better day over the horizon.

A member of my family suggested to me that the firestorm in Los Angeles  was God's punishment for the "young people" living there. I'm not sure whom he exactly meant, But I reminded him that some evangelicals also said that years ago about the New Orleans Katrina disaster. It is so each to blame God for bad things. Did the Christians blame Nero when Rome burned? Throughout history, Christians have used God's vengeance as an excuse for bad things happening.

It is okay to obliterate Gaza and it's people because of what was done to God's chosen people. Early in the conflict, a hard-liner in the Israeli cabinet advocated dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza. There is great hated and it is on both sides. Do we blame God for the carnage? Do we blame Allah? Or do we blame Man's sinful nature? 

In the Old Testament book of Job, God allowed Satan to torment Job, kill his family, devastate his farm, until he had nothing. Job's wife said, "curse God and die." But Job rightly said, "the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." That is an affirmation we should say whenever we wake to to a new day God has given us. Blessed by the name of the Lord!

In 1943 my mother and grandmother emerged from a bunker in Hamburg to see their neighborhood in flames. The bombing of Hamburg gave birth to the term, "firestorm." They rushed past their street and every house was burning. Everything they had was gone. All the new furniture that they had bought from extra savings, all her dolls save one were lost forever in the flames.

Los Angeles is only one recent example of horrific tragedy. The same rain that falls on the just fall on the unjust. God does not target neighborhoods. God is not sitting behind a computer board video game targeting areas of the world. That is not how God works. 

We are Americans and as long as we live we strive to do better and be better. We personally were immigrants who came to the New York area with just a suitcase. We were legal immigrants, having spent hours filling out forms and obtaining the necessary shots. It was up to my parents to excel. It was up to me to be a good son and do well in school. And I think I did.

If I lose my life work today, yes, I will cry but I will not blame God.

And we should not blame the Lord for the fires in California. Only ignorant people do that.

 What is the message of "Where have all the flowers gone"?

Where Have All The Flowers Gone is a powerful anti-war song. When reading the novel And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov, Seeger came across lines sung by a group of Cossack soldiers going back to the war about flowers being picked by girls who marry the men who join the army."Sag' mir, wo die Blumen sind" is a German translation of the anti-war song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?". The song's message is about the transience of life and the ghosts of war. It's built on the association of nature, bridal wreaths, and men at war. 

Marlene Dietrich's version of the song broke the taboo against singing in German in Israel after World War II. She performed the song in German, English, and French, and the German version reached number 20 on the German charts. 

The song was inspired by lines from Mikhail Sholokhov's novel And Quiet Flows the Don. In the book, a group of Cossack soldiers sing about girls picking flowers for the men who join the army

the symbolism comes hauntingly back. I credit various  Wikipedia entries for the above explanation. We are  probably ...In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'" by Thomas  Hardy,  the title itself is taken from the Book of Jeremiah in the Bible. 

War, Killing, always seem the answer when nations want to cull the flower of a 

.generation. We cry Peace Peace, but there is no peace.