Serena, In a Man's World

Serena has let it be known that rather than being referred to as "one of the greatest female athletes of all time", she would prefer the moniker, "one of the greatest athletes (period)." The only problem with that is she has only competed against other female athletes. If she had competed against male athletes, she would still be called the "greatest female tennis player ever" because she, doubtless, would have been the one female who came closest to defeating a male tennis player.  She would, however, have "zero" grand slam titles (instead of the 23 she accrued against women), and there is the real chance that, on the tour, competing against men, she would not have won a single match. 

I understand what people would prefer to hear. That would be politics, however; sentimentality, and a subjective desire to ignore reality for what feels better - a pleasant fiction.  

Of all human endeavors, none so starkly draws the line between men and women as does athletics. Women can compete with men on a multitude of levels - the classroom, the boardroom, on the political stage. But, they cannot out-hit, out-run, out-throw, out-jump, or out-fight their male counterparts. They lack the requisite muscle mass, plain and simple. That fact has not changed in a million years. 

Certainly, a trained female sprinter can outrun a pedestrian male, just as the tennis great Billie Jean King out-played the hustler Bobby Riggs, in a tennis match. But, Billie Jean could never have defeated Arthur Ashe, Jimmy Connors, or any of the other professional male tennis players of her day. That would be as unlikely that it would have been nearly impossible. 

ESPN's Stephen A. Smith, in a fit of verbosity, declared he would place Serena on the Mt. Rushmore of Athletes. First, most sports aficionados never speak of the tennis greats - Nadal, Federer, Djokovic - with the same breathlessness with which they extol the titans of football, baseball, basketball, and boxing. Second, Serena on Mt. Rushmore" That would mean, after placing Muhammed Ali, Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, and Jim Brown upon those glorious heights, you would remove one of them and replace him with Serena. Really? 

I could devise ten Mt. Rushmores - fully 40 all-time greats - and no female athlete would make it to the foothills of any of those mountains. Try to remove Jim Thorpe, Willie Mays, Lebron James, or Tom Brady from Rushmore II. Or, have at Joe Louis, Tiger Woods, Josh Gibson, or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Rushmore III, etc., etc., etc. When it comes to athletics, it truly is "A Man's World", and we do not need James Brown to remind us. 

Serena, respect the Mt. Rushmore of women athletics. Take your plae alongside Diana Taurasi, Simone Biles, and Babe Didriksen Zaharias. Be honored to stand among the first pantheon of female sports legends. 

(All Secrets Are Classified)

Trump continues to harp about the FBI "raiding" his home and taking his stuff. He is like a child, a hard-headed child. He takes things that do not belong to him, declares them his, then feigns injury when the rightful owner sends agents to take them back. Part of his problem is he does not take "classified" seriously. Trump's take is this: "It's serious when I say it's serious."

America's rivals love it. They want our top secrets and are giddy when we are cavalier about guarding those secrets. Twenty years ago, China took down an American jet that happened to stray into Chinese airspace. The Americans demanded the jet back. The Chinese responded, "We'll send it back to you when we finish with it." That jet was a form of classified material. The Chinese took it apart piece by piece. 

The Iranians, likewise, took down an American drone and took it apart. (Classified.) Now, the Iranians are building such sophisticated drones, the Russians want to buy their product. 

Our rivals will take our secrets any way they can get them. They will shoot them down, or they will seek them out in your wife's closet if you're foolish enough to keep America's secrets there.  

Parenting

Most of us have been raised, and have raised our children to refrain from name-calling, vindictiveness, and other baser instincts that Trump would liberate in Americans. No other president has lied so, been so investigated, so impeached; none other has been so decried for his insults - like when he called countries on the African continent, "shit-hole nations," or when he call Omarosa, a black woman, and one of his top White House advisors, "a dog." Yet, he is as popular with much of this country - especially his infamous base - as he has ever been. 

Trump's words, his actions, do not exist in a vacuum. The way he thumbs his nose at the law and social norms, and is then lionized, would weaken the fabric of any nation. How do parents in this country hold children to account when those same children watch their parents prostrate themselves before the Trump circus, and become accessories to his unprecedented boorishness? 

This nation is fast becming irrelevant as a moral authority on the world stage because so many American adults have become irrelevant as moral authorities in their own households, which is where America gets its start.  

Universal Jurisdiction

Isaac Newton's Third Law of Motion states, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." People continue to chafe at the Justice Department's "unprecedented" decision to search Trump's home. They might want to consider how unprecedented was Trump's decision to take top secret documents out of the White House, store them at his own residence, and then refuse Justice Department entreaties to return the materials to their rightful place. There are 44 previous presidents to serve in America's White House, none of whom committed such a willful violation. Trump's indefensible action - the hoarding of top secret material at his private residence - was unprecedented and required an equally unprecendented response. 

It is not easy to do something that is unprecedented. We are, by nature, creatures of habit. Often, the only reason we do unprecedented things is when something unprecedented happens to us. 

Marrick Garland did not want to go into Trump's home, if for no other reason than he knew it would create a firestorm. But, firestorms or no, he knew that once Trump committed the bad act, he (Garland) was the only one uniquelly authorized as the US Attorney General, to hold a former president accountable for his blatant flaunting of the la. 

What A.G. Garland did was bigger than American law, bigger than its politics. Whether Garland knows it or not, he was driven by the forces of nature, itself. Physics compelled him. It is the law of the universe. 

UNPRECEDENTED!

The Republicans are in an uproar over the FBI's search of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago: "This is unprecedented!" 

Let's face it: Trump, himself, is unprecedented. As much as we may want to treat Trump like all the other presidents in American history, he never gives us a chance. When he is not behaving like a spoiled brat, he is carrying on like a mob boss. 

By the way, shouldn't two "unprecedenteds" equal a precedent? 

Killing Fields

In Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, the Russians occupy the largest nuclear power facility in Europe. The Ukrainians claim they are using the plant as a military base, and storing weapons there. Now, the plant is being shelled, risking a nuclear catastrophe. Both sides are blaming the other for the shelling, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) claims to not know which side to believe. 

First, who would be so irresponsible as to use a functioning nuclear power facility as a military base? (The Russians.) Who would be so reckless as to fire on that military base? (The Ukrainians. Why would the Russians fire on a plant it controls?)

What is happening in Ukraine is similar to what happened when the Germans invaded the USSR in 1941: Total War. The destruction Germany visited upon Russia, and what the Russians gave back in return, is unlike anything that transpired between Germany and its enemies on the Western Front - France, England, the U.S., etc. The eastern front was the ultimate "killing field." Twenty-five million Russians died in less than four years, as did over five million Germans. 

Today, America and its NATO allies are pouring advanced weaponry into Ukraine on a biblical scale. That, along with Russia's grim determination to subjugate Ukraine, threatens to turn that land into the "killing fields" of the 21st century.  

How Precious is Life

We all think life is precious, especially our own lives. How many times have you heard someone relate an experience, and at the end exclaim, "I almost died!" How unthinkable one's own death can be. 

Roe v. Wade is about life (and death), and when it matters most (and least). It is about women (and men) who declare their rights to live unencumbered by the children they conceive. It is about children waiting, and in their pre-nascent, simply hoping to be born at all.