Conversation with a Trumpite

by Tom Kando

The health spa to which I belong is in Republican territory. On most days, most of the TV screens facing the treadmills and life cycles are turned on Fox News - except mine, which is either on MSNBC or on C-SPAN.

I have many friends at this club, some liberal, some conservative. I engage in daily small-talk with them. In this heated election season, it is impossible to avoid politics. We don’t fight, we just engage in friendly banter.

Today, I chatted with my friend Joe, a rabid Trump supporter. Joe is a friendly old-timer who immigrated to America from Eastern Europe over half a century ago. Our conversation started when he informed me how much he liked Trump. I replied that in my view, Trump is insane and that his election will be a great disaster for America and for the world.

Joe of course had to come back at me. He began to enumerate all the reasons why he admired Trump, and he then moved on to saying that Obama is the worst president we have ever had.
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The 2016 Republican Convention: Several Instances of Mass Hysteria

by Madeleine Kando

Mass hysteria happens when there is a group of people who fall into a collective delusion. There have been several cases of mass hysteria throughout history, the most famous of which are the witch-hunts, which lasted more than 200 years. Countless innocent women were executed.

Here is a list of fictitious epidemics that are not such a far cry from what is really happening to the insane crowd that populates the Convention Hall in Cleveland.

The Phantom Pregnancy Panic

An extremely rare form of mass hysteria gripped the attendees of the 2016 Republican National Convention, when 34 year-old Ivanka Trump announced that she was expecting a baby. This is, of course, false. Whatever the case, Ivanka’s incredibly convincing personality was enough to trigger a pregnancy panic. By the third day of the Convention, numerous female attendees said that they too were pregnant and caused a ruckus in the Convention hall. Only the constant reassurance by their supreme leader, Donald Trump, that they were never pregnant in the first place did the women finally calm down.

The Vanishing Genitalia Epidemic

Although their nominee, Donald Trump, had guaranteed them that no matter what the size of his hands, ‘I guarantee you, there’s no problem down there’, an episode of vanishing genitalia caused widespread fear amongst the attendees. These fears were usually triggered by incidental body contact with a Democrat in a public place, after which the “victim” would feel strange scrotum sensations and grab their genitals to confirm that they were still there. Read more...

Is Time Reversible?

by Madeleine Kando

I was in the midst of a belated spring-cleaning in my house and suddenly found myself confronted with boxes full of photographs. The past was oozing out of those boxes and I couldn't stop the flow. Being the child of a photographer, this is hardly surprising, but it really felt like a tsunami, to the point where I had to remind myself that these snapshots weren’t real. These moments were gone, flushed away in the stream of the river of time.

Since the birth of photography, the past has had free entrance to the present; no more borders so to speak. Like the Schengen Agreement between the EU countries, the past can go anywhere it pleases, even into the future if it wants. My grandson will be rummaging through these boxes, wondering what happened to this young, beautiful 20-year old woman and how she managed to turn into this old, wrinkled person whom he calls ‘Oma’.

Before the birth of photography, people had to rely on rare and expensive paintings to look into the past, which most of them couldn’t afford. The majority of people relied on their memories to conjure up the past, but otherwise it just stayed conveniently hidden. The past knew its place and didn’t infringe on the present. Read more...

Coming Home

by Madeleine Kando

I travel to Europe at least twice a year and have become very familiar with the routine of clearing customs and immigration on my way back to the States. Even though I emigrated to this country eons ago, the butterflies are still fluttering about in my stomach as soon as I enter Immigration Hall, with its red and green line marked on the shiny floor.

I was stateless for the first 18 years of my life, you see, and I have an irrational fear that the boot of the law suddenly would decide to kick me back from whence I flew.

That long red line conjures up a whole smorgasbord of emotions. I feel a tinge of superiority as I walk by the much longer green line packed with aliens. I am no longer an alien, my green card proves it. I am a member of the club now, albeit not an elite member yet. I throw unobtrusive glances at my fellow club members and try to adopt their nonchalant and casual air. Americans are like that, you know, they talk to each other in public places, they don’t put on airs. They feel comfortable in their own shoes, probably the result of a century’s worth of being the top dog in the world. Read more...

It’s all about the ‘The’

by Madeleine Kando

The word ‘the’ is the most commonly used word in the English language. We don’t give it a second thought; it’s there, like the air we breathe or the water we drink. Actually, it’s not really a word like ‘butter’ or ‘table’, since it can not even stand on its own two feet. If a ‘the’ walked through the door, you wouldn’t know what you were dealing with. At least with a table or a chair, you know where you stand, but a ‘the’? You’d be waiting for the rest of the retinue to appear before you could make sense of the visitor.

The 'A'

The ‘the’, together with the ‘a’ and the ‘an’ make up the articles of the English language. Even though they are useless on their own, these little function words pretty much determine what people are talking about. If my husband came in and said ‘A guy just hit a car’, it might elicit a slight shoulder shrug, but if he said: ‘A guy just hit the car’, I would drop the plate I was holding in my hands and run outside to assess the damage. Read more...