This past week had the Super Moon phenomenon. It was the closest the moon has been to the earth since 1948, nearly 20,000 miles closer than normal. I had super pains, too. I have definitely seen a correlation between the full moon and hyper-CLL symptoms, and the week leading up to the super moon and the week behind it has demonstrated that it can exacerbate a host of them, including fatigue, night sweats, enlarged and sore lymph nodes, and a wearying bone and joint pain. I am not complaining. I have had life before Ruxolitinib, and I have had life after Ruxolitinib. The life after is better. Much better. Thanks for the Ruxolitinib!!

It’s the super moon I don’t need.

The super moon must also have had some effect on those upset with the results of the recent election. There seems to be a hysteria I have never seen before, with false flag hate crimes being reported to police, who investigate and find that the only crime that was committed was the reporting of a crime when there was none. I’m not saying that any part of the political spectrum is not capable of committing a hate crime or a false flag operation, but many of them sure seem to be coming to us from the left and made to appear as if they came from the right. We have been told not to be this –phobe and that –phobe, yet it seems to be my progressive friends that are constantly referring to their fears, none of which have a very firm foundation to me.

“So and So was elected. That’s scary,” said thousands.

“I’m terrified,” said thousands of others.

“The thought of a President So and So frightens me,” said even more thousands.

“Everything frightens me except kittens and puppies,” said some few, avoiding the sun just so they wouldn’t see their shadow, choosing, rather, to remain in the dark instead of the light.

The fear has seemed to take a form similar to that experienced in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692-93, when everyone saw witches everywhere, falling down into convulsions, experiencing delusions, which resulted in the executions of some twenty formerly very alive people who were more than likely to not have been witches at all. Excesses can originate from anywhere, from any sphere. They are not limited to any one particular party or political persuasion, only by the restraint of the will of masses, which can be no restraint at all, or by a respect for law and order, which may or may not exist. There simply may be no restraint other than that displayed by reasonable, compassionate people. But, don’t mingle compassion with lawlessness, please.

The idea that being a conservative makes one a racist, any one of a half-dozen assorted –phobes, or less intelligent, or deplorable, or hopeless, purposeless, or uneducated is an idea that is growing as tired as an old broom, leaving behind more dirt than it carries with each stroke, only stirring up the dust which settles on everything, leaving grit in one’s nose and mouth. The idea that laws we don’t like just don’t have to be enforced or obeyed, when not combined with outright rebellion, is a relatively new one. Governments usually view contempt of the law with more severity than what has been shown as of late. Our government has even been proudly declaring which laws it will enforce or not. While this has always been the prerogative of the party in power, I have not seen it so blatant, nor have I seen it encouraged, even to the point of our chief executive intimating in an interview that it is unlikely that any non-citizen choosing to vote will be revealed in such a manner as he can be identified. Non-citizens do not have the right to vote. Period.

Many who were vocal in their excoriations of Trump when he did not readily admit he would accept the results of the election have been adamantly contesting the results of the election. Regardless of what one thinks about the usefulness of the Electoral College, the rules are the rules, and you can’t change the rules in the middle of a poker hand when the bets are on the table, particularly after the last call, and you were the loser, trumped, as it were, by a better hand. The Democrats had the great misfortune of believing their own press, which led to those who were counting states, and they indeed were counting states, to discount Wisconsin, Michigan, and others that they thought they had in the bank. It’s as if they made the deposit and failed to get the receipt. Just ask your bank….you can make deposits all day long, but if something goes wrong, the first thing they ask you for is your receipt: no receipt, no deposit. If you want to get rid of the Electoral College, work to amend the constitution; there is no other remedy. Get enough states together to have a constitutional convention, if you can, but be prepared for the horror of having it also potentially address abortion-on-demand, the definition of marriage, voter identification, the rights of non-citizens, and clarification of our right to bear arms. If you can stand it, so can I.

Furthermore disappointing to those on the left is Senate Majority leader Harry Reid’s prior changing of the Senate rules, the nuclear option as it has been called, on political appointments and the Federal bench, except for the Supreme court, which now requires a simple majority instead of 60 votes. Is there someone you don’t want to see as a cabinet appointee or an agency head? If so, you’ll be needing to get at least three Republicans to flip, as the Vice-President will get to vote in case of a tie. This is possible, even likely if Trump goes too far. I wish you luck with that. Even though the Republicans will enjoy a 52 to 48 seat majority, I think that will become 53 to 47 if and when Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) defects to the Republicans as I expect him to. Regardless of your thoughts on the environment or of the intelligence or educational deficit of West Virginians, they don’t have very much use right now for the Democrat Party, particularly when their candidate said she was going to shut down the coal mines and put them out of business. Were the West Virginians wrong to vote in their own best interests? Is that not what everyone does? For years Progressives have chided the working class (read that middle class) with the idea that if one votes Republican one is voting against their own interests. I expect it would be hard to persuade a West Virginian of that at this time.

The press has shown that it has little or no integrity. Those left in it that have maintained some degree of integrity have found themselves cast into the same furnace as their peers, at least one of whom admitted to being a hack, submitting his pre-press stories to a political campaign for review and editing prior to publication. Even the New York Times has admitted that they need to do a better job of being impartial after all these years of expecting us to believe they were impartial just because they said so. What kind of journalism is this? Are we in a new era wherein the end justifies the means? Is that not true? Or do we still have some respect for the means? I don’t care which way you declare it, just declare it and then stick to it, and allow me to do the same. You can set the rules…just don’t get angry when I force you to play by the rules you set.

The idea of impartial journalism is a relatively new one, a post World War II invention, fostered by academic illusion. There was hardly any non-partisan press in the past. They were all mouthpieces of political factions. In the old days, there was more than one newspaper in a city, and usually they were at extreme cross purposes with each other, not only in commercial competition, but in political persuasion. Now, the witch hunt seems to be on for fake news sites, with social media giants like Google, Twitter, and Facebook manipulating the trending topics to show what they want it to show, deciding what people should see and what they should not see, with others calling for regulation of the internet and the airwaves to suppress speech they find distasteful or “frightening.” If there are frightening political developments, count among them the people that are considering it a good thing to limit political speech, even of fake news sites. I know the difference between fake news and real news. I know the difference between hard news and commentary. I know the difference between click bait headlines and real headlines. When I read an article or an op-ed, I know if there is any substance there. I also know horse shit when I see or smell it. Many don’t, though. Perhaps they have grown accustomed to its taste. Let them enjoy it if they will.

It is not my place to control what people choose to view or read, for at what point will my editing stop? When they only get to see things that support what I think? Well, if you don’t like what I think you’ll probably wisely think that is a terribly bad idea. Do you mind if I think so, too? I hope not, else I’ll be thinking you like a little hypocrisy with your morning coffee, having gotten so used to it you can’t enjoy the coffee without it, nor can you actually detect its presence, only its absence. It’s much like using free salt from the shaker. When you stop sprinkling salt on everything, you start realizing how salty everything is already.

I will make you this promise. I am going to treat every human being I encounter with the same respect and courtesy with which I expect to be treated. I will continue to do this until others show themselves unworthy of my respect. I will then withdraw from their presence if I can, or I will stand my ground if I can’t. You may or may not like the outcome of the encounter. I hope you do. It can end well for everyone. Of this, I am persuaded; we just have to make it be so. Good manners helps. Common courtesy helps. Plain old civil decency helps, too.

I will even go the extra mile. Will you?

I also despise corruption. I will hold our president-elect’s feet to the fire if I smell any hint of it. Heretofore, there has been plenty to go around. I don’t expect it to disappear, but I surely insist that it get better, or at least move in the right direction. Banning lobbyists from the transition team was a good start. Banning administration members from becoming lobbyists for five years after leaving government service is a move in the right direction, but not good enough. They should be banned for life.

I will leave you with this quote from the 44th president of the United States of America, Barack H. Obama, who, after winning the election in 2008 said, “Elections have consequences. We won.”

Chew on that for a while. It’ll either taste good to you or grow in your mouth like a tough piece of dried rawhide that you can’t chew up enough to get down. Either way, is it bad form for me to remember he said it? Bad form to bring it to your attention? Or, in a seeming gloat, was it bad form for him to have said it? Or is it any, all, or none? You can decide. Just stick to it when you do.

Now, I am tired, achy, and sore. My stomach hurts and I have a low grade fever. Yet, I have miles to go before I sleep, if I ever do sleep before I reach the long, long sleep.

On top of all that, I have mourned the death of Leon Russell. He had no peer!! He, very simply, was in a class all by himself. He will be sorely missed.

©2016 Mississippi Chris Sharp