Opinion

By JOSE GARCIA For over a year, polling has indicated that most voters don’t want Trump or Biden in the White House next year. But just as human-produced CO2 pollutes the atmosphere, the political biosphere —contaminated by bipartisan gerrymandering; campaign finance laws that invite corruption; wacko leaders in Congress; media platforms that profit hugely from the political spectacles they encourage and then cover, and then lament; a Supreme Court that discredits itself more each day as it loses all connection to fair play — has rigged things to make it likely both Trump and Biden will be imposed on a frustrated electorate that desperately wants new blood. In other words, public opinion be damned. The attack on democracy did not begin with Trump or the Supreme Court or the Clintons— they just moved it along. It began with the termites of gerrymandering, campaign finance, and media deregulation half a century ago. Then it moved on to create rigged nominating rules that whisper loudly: public opinion be damned.

Occasionally the evening news reports on people keeping more animals than they can handle. Other times, children of deceased parents are astonished by how much “stuff” their parents or grandparents hang onto only to leave piles of unwanted things to be thrown out.

Today is Sunday, June 23, the 175th day of 2024. There are 191 days left in the year.

There’s nothing like the ferocity of a 4-foot-tall person whose face is painted like a lion to give you a start. Then you turn around and a snow cone has been dumped on your pants by a 3-foot young fellow frightened by the Sinclair dinosaur wobbling through the crowd at the oil field cook-off.