Robot Jazz

  It was a surreal spectacle. After a blistering‑hot day, a line of strong thunderstorms with “destructive winds” — as the NWS so helpfully phrased it — blew into my area. Before I could even call for Auntie Em, gusts topping 80 miles per hour ripped through the neighborhood, blowing through the house like a poltergeist as curtains snapped and light décor scattered. Worse, the winds caught my large deck umbrella like a sail and took it — along with the glass‑topped table it was attached to — flinging the whole thing onto its side and into the still‑smoldering charcoal grill, risking a fire. In a matter of seconds, my calm Fourth of July evening had become Bedlam. After I closed my slack jaw, I immediately ran onto the deck to save the table and avert a possible fire. As I stepped outside, I was buffeted by impossibly strong gusts of wind that made the tall oaks on my property dance like tortured spirits in the night. Adding to the end‑of‑the‑world vibe were loud cracks of thunder, ...

  Once upon a time, the American right wing used to hold historical texts in high regard. Why, I recall countless rants by conservative talk radio hosts who were keeping lists of the number of times President Obama ran afoul of the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, or even Black's common law. Nowadays, not so much. Suddenly, the right has lost interest in the foundations of the American republic and is instead content to continue to implement the GOP convention platform of 2020, which read:  “RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.” In other words, the putative conservative right represents only what Donald Trump says it represents, with its home, the once 'Grand Old Party', being reduced to a rubber-stamp plaything for Trump. But while the party of Lincoln and Reagan may have misplaced its historical texts, the American people have not. That enduring civic knowledge manifested itself ju...