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OPINION:
Mountain View News Saturday, September 28, 2019
STUART TOLCHIN
THE AGING OF TRUTH
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Many of us
born in the
United States
and “educated’
here have had
some exposure
to foreign
languages,
frequently
Spanish. In
Spanish,
we were
exposed to
something called the subjunctive
but without understanding much
about its significance. As I begin this
article relating to the importance of
recognizing truth, please be aware
that I have no specific guideline for
its recognition and that, therefore, at
the conclusion of this article you may
remain as confused as I am.
Returning to the subjunctive,
or the subjunctive mood, it is
contrasted with the indicative mood.
The subjunctive mood is to be used
when what is being described is
imagined or wished or possible.
Alternatively, the indicative mood is
to be used to describe facts and other
statements that are known to be true
and correct.
That’s the point. In order to
properly use language one must be able
to differentiate truth from conjecture.
As language was painstakingly being
constructed the words themselves,
not their meanings but the words
themselves, indicated to the listener
how certain the speaker was of the
correctness of the information he was
conveying. This is the root of language.
If the speaker is saying, “it is safe to
eat this food or there is a predator
behind that tree” the listener must be
highly concerned as to how certain the
speaker is of the truth of his statement.
Is he just guessing, or is he sure there is
a bear behind that tree.
In today’s world, for me at
least, it has become almost impossible
to separate truth from fiction. Is “fake
news” really fake or is the speaker the
one faking. Let’s begin with that entity
I have called “me” or sometimes ”I”.
Although I wake feeling myself to be
mostly the same as I have always been
I am quickly aware that there are some
differences. In order to function in the
world I must insert my hearing aids,
put on my glasses, find my denture,
swallow pills to mysteriously keep
organs functioning and still I am not
quite the same. Is this the “true me’.
Actually I must concede that this
me is a bit different than the “me” to
which I had been accustomed. This
“me” is 75 years old and forgets names,
incidents, directions, phone numbers,
and passwords that at one time came
immediately to mind. Of this I am
completely sure--there is no doubt,
subjectively or indicatively.
Based upon this awareness
I state indicatively that no person in
their mid to late seventies should ever
be expected to competently execute
the responsibilities of the Presidency
of the United States. As ex-President
Carter explained, persons of that
age may not have full command or
recognition of the facts underlying
their own positions which they have
maintained for long periods. I know
that this 70 plus category includes
Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Joe
Biden, and Elizabeth Warren (almost-
even though she seems to have a plan
for everything she has no plan to stop
herself from aging. Yes, this fear of
aged less than complete competency
causes me to question the decision
making of Nancy Pelosi. I do believe
that seventy-six year old Bernie does
still appear to be the most progressive
hopeful but he has been saying the
same stuff for forty years.
Contrast any of the above-
people with fifteen year old Greta
Thunberg who informed the United
Nations Climate Conference “I will not
beg the world leaders to care for our
future. I will instead let them know
change is coming whether you like it
or not. (Shades of the YOUNG Bob
Dylan.) In the Scientific Community
there is a hallowed expression, “Science
advances one death at a time” meaning
that the older leaders of a specific
Scientific Branch are often identified
with discoveries made years ago and
as leaders of the profession they tend
to protect the continued acceptance of
their discoveries and principles after
the time has come o recognized that
such principles have become obsolete
or even disproved.
I maintain that older people
are often stubbornly and willingly
contained within the bubble of their
own subjective reality maintaining
beliefs that now are, at best, only
subjectively plausible rather than
indicatively truthful. If you question
this viewpoint, review the ability of
our oldest President, Ronald Reagan,
during the latter years of his eight
year term. So, don’t you agree that I
am right when I say oldsters are often
wrong and I guess that applies to me as
well.
JUST MAKE SURE TO VOTE FOR
SOMEBODY!
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CHRISTINE FLOWERS
HAIL HAMILTON
DEAR MADAME SPEAKER:
Donald Trump has become our worst nightmare,
acting out his role as President, albeit
on a much grander stage, of the ultra-corrupt,
autocratic, dictator, a mega-version of
his malevolent role as the corporate-gangster
in The Apprentice. Playing his part to the
hilt, but without any of pathos of Richard
Nixon. I can assure you, there will be no
President Trump on his knees praying with
his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, like Nixon and Henry Kissinger, praying together
the night before the President leaves the White House never to return.
To be fair, Ms. Pelosi you didn’t become Speaker again until Democrats returned
to power in January this year, but you were in the House to witness all of President
Trump’s constitutionally impeachable, abuse of office offenses since he was inaugurated
on January 20, 2017.
You were there when on May 9, 2017 when President Trump fired FBI Director James
Comey, later admitting in a NBC interview with newsman Lester Holt that his reason
for the firing Comey was “This Russia thing…” That is, the investigation of National
Security advisor Michael Flynn and Russian influence in the 2016 Presidential
Election.
It is noteworthy that even before the Holt interview, President Trump’s disregard
for norms of government and his willingness to ignore the Constitution, became apparent
that he had no intention to fulfill his oath “to preserve, protect, protect, and defend
the Constitution of the United States.” Again Ms. Pelosi, you and the Democratic
Party should be forgiven because it wasn’t until the 2018 Blue Wave that Democrats
took back the House in 2019.
Still after witnessing all the instances of Trump’s abuse of presidential power—
separating asylum-seekers and incarcerating their children in cages, Trump’s 34-day
shut-down (Dec. 22 - January 25) of the federal government unsuccessful attempt to
fund the border wall, finally succeeding without Congressional approval by stealing
money from FEMA and DOD, to fund the border wall, in the face of the devastation
caused by four Hurricanes since Trump took office—Irma, Michael, Maria and
Dorian.
Taking money from one federal Department and giving it to another is in effect
STEALING! Think of all the lives that could have been saved had just FEMA been
fully funded. Ms. Pelosi, did you look at the arial images of all the dead after the hurricanes
subsided. If not, you can Google them. Seeing is believing: these are real people,
not mere statistics, with real lives, families and dreams for their future, many of who
died unnecessarily because of silence.
Ms. Pelosi, you are now the Speaker of the House. As a result, the question becomes:
What have you done concerning President Trump since your party returned
to power, what have you done took over as Speaker? It’s hard to say. It’s easier to say
what you haven’t done. You didn’t immediately initiate impeachment hearings.
Ms. Pelosi you have procrastinated, using the Mueller Investigation as an excuse
not to begin impeachment—knowing from the get-go that Mueller was only investigating
two aspects of Trump’s many possible grounds for impeachment—conspiracy
and/or obstruction of justice regarding Russia’s interference in the 2016 Presidential
Election. In effect turning a blind eye on every other impeachable offense Trump had
committed, indeed continues to commit.
You professing that impeachment will doom Democrats in 2020 seems baseless
now. All you have done is make the Democratic Party look weak, and unable to rise
to the task of impeaching Trump and campaigning against him. Rather than exposing
Trump as the national crook he is, like Watergate did to Nixon, you have emboldened
him to move further down road of impeachable offenses without a credible response
until here we are—the “Whistleblower Complaint” about Trump’s trying to extort
the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyto to intervene in the 2020 election as a
condition the U.S. to release $400 Million in military aid to defend themselves from
the Russian aggression in its five-year war in the Crimea.
Note: By the time that Watergate was done in over 85 percent of Americans had
watched some part of the hearings. Madame Speaker, it is time to strip the emperor
of his clothes—like what was done to Nixon during the Watergate hearings—and
display to his subjects Trump’s defects of character to finally see, consider and act
upon in 2020.
REMEMBERING LOVED ONES LOST
DURING SUICIDE AWARENESS MONTH
I never met my great-grandfather, although I’ve seen pictures
of him. The one I treasure most is a family photo,
similar to those images on an Ancestry.com commercial,
where he is sitting with his wife and older daughters.
(The sons would arrive later.) He’s wearing a hat and a
solemn expression, but you get the impression that he’s
content with the life he’d created since emigrating from
Italy a few years before.
You would be wrong, though. Some years after that photo was taken, this patriarch
of five daughters and three sons took his own life. He went to the basement
of their home in West Philadelphia, found his daughter’s jump rope, and
hanged himself. My grandmother Mamie was the one who found him, and felt
guilty for the rest of her life, since she was the one who’d thrown her sister’s rope
down the basement steps while cleaning.
No one knows why he did it. He was a man in his middle years with a loving wife
and beautiful children, a respectable job, and the immigrant’s pride. The impact
of the suicide had a ripple effect on later generations, from my grandmother to
her daughter Lucy and to me, the great-granddaughter who looks at his photo
and shakes her head in sorrow.
Suicide does that. It brings sorrow and raises questions that linger. It begs for
answers that rarely come, and solutions that are only hoped for, not probable.
While it might seem that the numbers of suicides has increased in the last few
decades, that might just be a function of people being more open. I can promise
you that my great-grandfather’s obituary did not include his cause of death.
Now, however, families are talking about their loved one’s painful choices, and
it is not unusual to see an obituary with the sentence, “She took her own life.”
Some think it’s good to be candid about the manner of death, so that we bring
suicide out of the shadows and treat it like a psychological ailment no different
from the diseases of the body. They think it helps erase the shame that people
of my great-grandfather’s generation suffered. I’m not so sure, but I respect the
choices and the grief of others.
When my brother Jonathan ended his own young life, we did not include the
manner of death in his obituary. This was not a conscious choice, it was simply a
personal decision. Jon’s life was much more than the manner in which he chose
to leave it, and it was necessary to reflect on that as opposed to his last moments
on Earth. But there was no shame, only sadness.
This tension between wanting to stop the scourge of suicide and not wanting to
normalize it in our customs and acknowledgements has always been a problem
for those left behind. I didn’t even know about my great-grandfather’s death
until I was in my early 20s, but I always sensed there was something wrong by
the sadness in my grandmother’s eyes when she talked about her father. The
pain was compounded by the Catholic Church’s position of the time, which
prohibited burial in consecrated ground to those who took their own lives. Since
the 1960s, that custom has thankfully been eliminated, but you can imagine the
anguish it caused to a devoutly Italian Catholic family in the early part of the
last century.
September is National Suicide Awareness Month, although anyone who has
been touched by the tragedy will tell you there is no moment in their lives when
they are not aware of its consequences. We have evolved to a certain degree in
our attitudes about suicide, but it will always be one of the most difficult things
we have to face: the deliberate choice to leave.
I come from a family where suicide is a multi-generational legacy. That does
not mean it is our future. The best I can do is remember them, Sebastiano and
Jonathan.
I’d ask you to do the same.
If you or someone you know is thinking of suicide, call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or text TALK to the Crisis Text Line at
741741.
Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and can be
reached at cflowers1961@gmail.com.
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