The following poem was composed by an old-man mystic with long white hair and a long white beard just before he disappeared into the mountains, for good:

“When the Tao prevails in the land /

The horses leisurely graze and fertilize the ground. /

When the Tao is lacking in the land /

War horses are bred outside the city. /

Natural disasters are not as bad as not knowing what is enough. /

Loss is not as bad as wanting more. //

Therefore the sufficiency that comes from knowing /

What is enough is an eternal sufficiency.”

This poem (#46 from the Tao Te Ching, see End Note re: the translator) was written 2,400 years or so ago, and it is as urgent and relevant now as the crumbling, fumbling, brutal, half-assed empire we see all around us right now in late June, 2026, when it will soon be the 250th b-day of the good ol’ United States of America. For the record, over two million people are currently incarcerated in the USA right now, the largest prison population of any nation on the Planet.

I reside in the middle of the country, which is to say the center of the nation, in more ways than one and to say I have an ambivalent relationship with Uncle Sam (personally) is the understatement of the century so far.

When it comes to the dreaded subject of politics these days, in many ways I follow one of my lifelong idols and heroes, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, who railed against figures like Tricky Dick, Ronnie Rayguns, and the lethally boring George Bush/es from his well-known hide-out in the mountains of Colorado.

Anything but “politically correct,” Dr. Thompson was also anything but a Republican and he often saw the white man as the pure demon that is depicted in Moby Dick, Heart of Darkness, and The Great Gatsby, among other books penned by white men who were not afraid to critique and even attack (in writing) their so-called own kind.

My own hide-out is in an urban adjunct of Chicago on the second floor so I can see them coming. I don’t have a gun in here but I do have a large, wolf-like dog who knows karate and his two best friends. You will have to take all four of us out at once if you’re gonna get us.

Our current president is Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and the George Bush Squad all mushed together and inflated to legendary proportions and with generous helpings of Nero and Mussolini thrown in. He is all that and more and he is even bigger than that in many ways, in truth. America has built him all on its own and he is utterly gigantic, like a hulking skyscraper, or like the Incredible Hulk who has somehow turned inexplicably orange instead of green (it can’t only be the make-up). You can also visit (no joke) the (online) Trump Store, which has made many, many millions of dollars during his presidencies selling things like gold sneakers, fake Bibles, three-thousand-dollar watches that were made for three bucks in China, and other wonderful items, like a guitar with bald eagles on it – also made in China. Many presidents have been lying pieces of shit, but never before have we had the privilege of having an actual snake oil salesman in the White House, until now.

You get what you deserve, that is, what you vote for. Profound ignorance rules the day as well as a certain FUCK-THIS (and fuck-you) attitude that comes from being treated like shit for so many years. (I admire his energy even as I am made nauseous by his motives and motivations.)

All I can say right now is that giving Donnie, aka the Fat Don, all the attention is everything of what he wants and nothing of what he deserves.

That goes for those who hate his guts as well as all those who love him to pieces.

END NOTE: Thank you to Charles Muller for his wonderful translation of the Tao Te Ching, 2005.

Dale Barrigar