As we head into a new year, it seems like the stage has been set for a major confrontation. A confrontation between, roughly, Trump and his family and partners in his crimes, and the rule of law in America. Our laws have enough loopholes in them to allow our traitorous Republican legislators to walk. Nothing will happen to them, other than, hopefully, defeat at the polls. And resignations. It’s no coincidence that there are several high-profile Republican legislators leaving their jobs. It is similar to what happens when a ship starts to sink: the rats desert the ship. To me, it seems so obvious what is going on with Trump: He is indebted to Russia, he has done some shady financial deals with Russian banks, and he is afraid to say anything negative about Russia or its government. It’s beyond obvious. Trump has never felt any obligation to show respect towards any of our allies, but he shows such unique deference to Russia. There is that dossier, of course, with its likely factual allegations of activity with Russian prostitutes in a Moscow hotel, but that isn’t the most important thing Russia has on Trump. In Russia, Putin and the Russian oligarchs are closely aligned. It’s not like in the U.S. where we have people like billionaire Tom Steyer openly advocating Trump’s impeachment. It is dangerous to be a wealthy Russian and to be anti-Putin. So no matter if Trump has financial obligations to Russian businesses, it is still a state affair in which Putin plays a part.

It has been such a horror-filled year. It was topped off with our U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley’s idiotic speech before the United Nations last week, promising to “take names” of nations that voted to condemn Trump’s naming Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. It sounded like Trump wrote the speech himself, and he might have, for all I know. I had thought Nikki Haley was a more thoughtful, sensible person than that, but apparently not. If she was, she never would have given that speech. It is as though Trump is acting as a Russian asset. He is deliberately disrespecting America’s allies and international, mutually beneficial partnerships. He stupidly acts like he thinks diplomacy is all about putting up or shutting up, just a financial quid pro quo. He has no understanding of soft power or moral authority. Trump and his stooge Tillerman are busy hollowing out the State Department, while Trump is braying threats to North Korea like a mule that has been given beer to drink.

Our current president and his administration are a dangerous embarrassment. I don’t think that Trump will last for the remainder of his term. He will either be forced out of office, or we will be bombed into oblivion, so there will be no more office to be forced out of. I hope it is the former.

My title is from the Beatitudes, which are taken from Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”. Another line attributed to Jesus says that it will be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter God’s kingdom. Jesus is said to have broken bread with tax collectors and the poor, who were shunned by most. Yet we have one of our two parties claiming to be the true Christian party who violate the entire Christian philosophy as part of their ordinary daily legislative activities. The nominal head of the Republican party, Donald J. Trump, is a walking opposite of every Christian value that I am aware of. There are many reasons why white Evangelicals supported Trump, as well as the erstwhile Senatorial candidate Roy Moore, in such large numbers. But whatever the etiology of their support, I have a simple word for it: hypocrisy. The same word applies to the Republican legislators who consider themselves to be Christians.

The tax bill that, as of this writing, seems almost certain to become law, doesn’t appear to have been marked up with Christian, or any other religious, values in mind. It increases the already onerous financial load on future generations. It gives money to corporate entities that, most likely, won’t do anything with their tax cuts that will help America’s economy. It gives the wealthy a bigly Christmas gift while giving the middle class and lower class table scraps. Heck, you have to give them something. All that begging and salivating from below is unseemly and a bit disgusting, wouldn’t you say, Jasper?

I have provided six links in this short blog. Now I have to read all that stuff again. That’s one good thing about blogging: it forces you to learn things so you don’t end up lying in print. Just because the president does it doesn’t make it okay. See, sonny, someday you too can be president. You can stand before the world and lie and create problems and act obnoxiously too, someday. If you study real hard and follow the rules, honey, move to another country and stay the hell away from politics.

As I am writing this, the longstanding barriers against doing anything about sexual harassment are coming down. Men who have held respectable public jobs, some much beloved, are losing their careers. Right now it seems like a bit of an overreaction, kind of like a scarlet letter being branded on the backs of men on the strength of, in some cases, few accusations. I believe that this will correct itself in time. After all, when you break open a longstanding dam, a lot of water is going to come out. And at the end of the flood, hopefully, we will be much the better as a society. But what I want to talk about in this column is one of the last socially acceptable prejudices, that against the elderly. In the spirit of full disclosure, I wrote a blog about this subject two years ago, but it was short, and there have been new events since then.

Elderly, as a term, is hard to quantify, because there are many different definitions of it. Throughout most of my life, “too old” has meant ten years older than my age. The definition keeps creeping up. When I was fifty, I was mildly traumatized, but I made the mental calculation that sixty is when old age starts. Now that I’m in my early sixties, “old” is getting harder to push away. I figure it now is about sixty-six. Then when I’m sixty-six, you know what will happen. And so it goes.

I have internalized modern society’s anti-elderly prejudice. The thing about growing old is that, if there is no intervening unpleasant event, we will all be old some day. So the prejudice against elderly is, in a way, self-loathing. It’s prejudice against your future self. Psychologists see this as projection. It is when a person has a dislike of some characteristic, and they accuse somebody else of it, when the reality of the matter is that they see the same thing in themselves.

David von Drehle authored a piece in the WaPo about the subject of age in our leaders, and he came to the conclusion that we need to usher in the younger generations in and get the baby boomers out. I have two words for Mr. Von Drehle (56 yrs. old): Bernie Sanders. Senator Sanders is not a baby boomer. He is too old to fit in that category. But he is adored by millions of people, primarily young people. Mr. Sanders is a fierce advocate of free public college and free health insurance. I have a bunch of other opinions about Bernie, but that is for another blog. He is a fierce supporter of youth-oriented issues. And I have two more words for Mr. Von Drehle: Ted Cruz. Cruz is 46 years old. Senator Cruz is among the most fervent supporters of the Republican bill that has the effect of passing a trillion-dollar plus national debt addition to future generations. It could go much higher, and it is unlikely to be lower. So where does age fit into that?

It really doesn’t matter. Of course, there are things that elderly people shouldn’t be doing (by the way, I don’t use the term “older” unless it is being used in its correct way, which is in direct comparison, such as “Joe is older than Mary”, It is a euphemism.) Elderly people start to lose their reflexes and eyesight at various stages of their seniority, and they need to keep an eye on themselves honestly, whether they are doing something dangerous to themselves or others. But there are so many things that elders have over younger people. They have wisdom, and the patience that comes from experience. I know now that I made a lot of mistakes when I was in my twenties that I would never make now. Experience is the hardest and most effective teacher. Okay now, I have two words for what I just said: Donald Trump. He has no wisdom, and any experience he has had is wasted in any way that would benefit us as a country. So there you go. Age stereotypes are not reality, and I would like to see a mass awakening to that someday.