I have prostate cancer. Gleason 7.
I'm undergoing two different anti-androgen therapies to try and eliminate testosterone from my system and thereby shrink my prostate gland. If that should succeed I may be able to pee on my own and not have to have this catheter anymore. And then I may have some targeted radiation. Which I cannot have here where I live. I would have to spend some time in Victoria.
If the world survives for another few months.
Big if.
In my lifetime there have been 15 different presidents of the USA. Seven democrats and seven republicans. One of those republicans was elected president in two different election cycles separated by four years.
The first president that actually registered in my young consciousness was Eisenhower, a republican whose first inauguration happened eight days after my fifth birthday. "I like Ike." Then JFK and LBJ, both democrats. Cuba, Dallas and The Civil Rights Act of 1964. Then Nixon and Ford, republicans. The televised tragedy of the Vietnam war, Watergate, the recognition of Mao’s China and the infamous pardon. Followed by Carter, the democratic peanut farmer and the Iran hostages fiasco. Then Reagan, another republican whose influence led to the Berlin wall coming down and the first president to be shot since the assassination of JFK in Dallas. George H.W. Bush, Reagan’s vice president came next and the first Iraq war aired in our living rooms. Next up came the democrat Clinton along with an Oval Office sex scandal and the meaning of the most used conjunction in the English language. Then another republican George W. Bush, the second son of the first Bush, the fall of the twin towers and another middle east war but against the wrong foe along with mugging for the camera while attempting to open a locked door. Then America’s first Black president, the democrat Obama, the resulting racist backlash, the vengeance against the architect of the destruction of the twin towers and the first attempt to lower the costs of health care insurance for Americans. Then followed the first of two White septuagenarians, the first being the republican Trump, who had never before held elected office of any kind and the second being the democrat Biden, who had held some form or other of elected office for 50 years and served as the oldest president in history.
And so we come to today.
The nominal republican Trump is once again president, the second time in history that a candidate has been elected for another term after losing the office after the first term.
And if he is to be taken at his word he will be the last elected president of the United States of America as he has declared his intention to be dictator.
So far at least the prospect of never again having a presidential election seems not to disturb a great majority of US voters. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case. Many of his most ardent supporters are eager for him to be presidential dictator for life and to then bequeath the office to one of his sons or even, as he has said, to his daughter upon his death.
