~by Colleen O’Brien
A longstanding piece of wisdom says that your eulogy isn’t written after you die; it is in fact written day by day as you live.
This is a daunting pronouncement — who doesn’t live with at least a tad of regret or shame? But It’s a good guide for a life worth living.
If one is responsible. this wisdom might frighten us into confessing sins or at least apologizing for them; perhaps a person might move along into developing empathy and kindness, working on a legacy of goodwill.
Andrew Carnegie comes to mind. While he was an industrialist, he treated his thousands of employees with contempt and would not allow them to unionize. During the last 18 years of his life, he gave away $350 million ($6.9 billion in 2025 dollars), which was about 90 percent of his fortune. A mea culpa? Or pure philanthropy?
Will our billionaires give 90 percent of their wealth to the poor, the sick, the struggling, the uneducated?
I fear that our tiresome billionaire president, who right now has close to the same amount of billions – around $6.5B – as Carnegie gave away, does not havea conscience and does not have enough time left in his life to develop one like Carnegie did.
And if he thinks his dozens of gold spray-painted monuments will mean the same thing as Carnegie’s 2,509 libraries around the country, he’s wrong.
As soon as I’m the least bit awake each morning, I become involved with the day’s breaking news. Trump is invariably up to his early morning bad judgement in ruining whatever he thinks of, touches or talks about.
Friends tell me to let it go, quit listening, quit paying attention, it’s killing me.
It does make me feel awful, but it’s not killing me. I simply feel I have an obligation to do something, however small, as a citizen of my beleaguered country. So, I read the news, then I write. Then I recover by going back to bed.
The man who is the cunning President of the US is at ease with whatever countless things he does that dismay us and damn him — starting a war for his oil-related bank account and starting a world-wide economic disruption; cutting off a third of the White House without permission; he is not the owner, we are. He lives there part-time and has to pay for his own groceries [I suppose this irritates him]. Have you ever cut off half of your apartment because you felt the need for a bunker hiding under a 90,000-square foot ballroom?
Why do I question his abnormal behavior?
What makes me feel especially helpless is that no one on my side has stepped up to get rid of him in some legal way . . . him and his suck-ups; if they don’t go when he goes, we’re still in trouble.
The Democrats are feuding about what kind of Dems they are. At this critical moment, who cares? Progressive, complicit, conventional, too old, too inexperienced, fanatical, extremist, reactionary ? Just get together, supposed leaders, and pick who will take charge and get rid the weighty and old problem that by the hour inches us away from democracy.
Democrats, the Schiffs [Senator Adam Schiff of CA] and Schumers [Senator Chuck Schumer of NY] talk talk talk, the Obamas do remarkable things behind the scenes, like train thousands to run for office; great; the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes [House, NY] and the Bernie Sanderses [Senate, {Independent} Vermont] are out there encouraging us folks to stand up and fight back; we are. The Jazmine Crocketts [House, TX] are unfailingly adamant in the House, railing at the devious who lie to us daily as soon as they open their mouths. And of the rest of them – only Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Senator Alex Padilla of California have opposed every judicial nominee in committee.*
So who’s paying off the rest of the Dems who vote for inadequate, rapacious Trump nominees?
Trump’s eulogy will be full of bad deeds; anything else, we’ll know it was lies written by Stephen Miller, the white nationalist informing the White House as deputy chief of staff and homeland security advisor; he’s the one who thinks cruelty-as-policy is the best way for the president to get what he wants – those countless murders and imprisonments that dismay us and damn the Prez.
The senators and representatives have the Constitution behind them, in front of them, and as their constant but apparently never-read guide. Who among them has consistently stood up with integrity to their oaths to that Constitution? Not their leader. Their eulogies may lie, but I hope at least that history will take care of them, informing the future who were courageous enough to save the country from the man who cheated his way to the top . . . and all who helped him.
