It’s Wednesday afternoon and the pumpkin pie is in the oven. Eileen and I went to the dermatologist today for my two week check. He seemed please with my progress so far. I was relieved that he didn’t tell me to quit using the salve he prescribed. My rash is immensely better but not exactly back to where it was at its lowest ebb. So I’m to monitor my own progress and cut back from 2 applications a day to one and eventually to use as needed.
We stopped at Meijer on the way home and picked up a few last minute things for Thanksgiving. I’m a bit beat but Eileen is madly cleaning. I made the pie crust for the pie which was my original agreement. But Eileen asked me if I could go ahead and mix up the filling. This is very easy so I did.
I’m out of practice on pie crusts. I got pretty good at it at one time but haven’t made one in a while. Eileen hates store-bought crust so I learned to make a decent homemade one. We’ll see if I still have the knack.
I’m over half way through Adam Serwer’s The Cruelty is the Point: The past, present, and future of Trump’s America. It is excellent. Serwer is as clear and eloquent as anyone I have read about Trump and the current racist state of our country. Each short introduction to each chapter has the word “cruelty” in the its title. So the first introduction is entitled “The cruelty of backlash,” and the chapter is entitled “Is This the Second Redemption?” Redemption here refers to the undoing of the Reconstruction after the Civil War.
In the ninth chapter (Introduction: “The cruelty of exclusion,” Chapter title: “What We Do Now Will Define Us Forever,” Serwer makes an excellent critique of the Democrat’s inability to step up to the plate in this time of need. Writing in July of 2019 he observes that Democrats have “slow-walked investigations, retreated from court battles, and unilaterally surrendered the sword of impeachment… This foot-dragging will leave them with little time to actually look into presidential abuses before campaign season begins, effectively forfeiting a massive political advantage, to say nothing of abdicating their constitutional duties.”
He goes on “Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered the gibberish analysis that the president (Trump) was ‘self-impeaching,’ so no actual impeachment was necessary. When confronted with yet another woman accusing the president (Trump) of sexual assault, Pelosi said, ‘I haven’t paid much attention to it.’ When the politically connected financier Jeffrey Epstein was indicted again on charges of sex-trafficking minors, and Pelosi was asked what she would do about now-ousted labor secretary Alex Acosta, who negotiated a previous sweetheart deal with Epstein, she said, ‘It’s up to the president. It’s his Cabinet,’ a position indistinguishable from that of Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.”
A few pages later he asks “What, exactly, would be enough to rouse Democrats to action? … If congressional Democrats cannot or will not defend the principle that America belongs to all of its citizens, regardless of race, creed, color, or religion, their oaths to defend the Constitution are meaningless.”
And these are the good guys these days. Whew.