I HAVE LONG been loath to say anything akin to “if you support Trump you’re a bad person.” It seems so arbitrary.

But it only seems arbitrary. 

To support Trump it is to support one horrid position after another. Positions that no good person would support.

This is not to say that you have no redeeming qualities. Maybe you’re nice to kittens. Maybe you’re good at your job. Maybe you’re a skillful chef. Maybe you’re a good raconteur. These are all things I can like about you. These are things that let me remain friends, or at least friendly, with Trump supporters of my acquaintance.

But you cannot at once support Trump and be a good person. 

It really is that simple.

For a quick overview of Trump’s horrid positions, please read this brief piece by John Pavlovitz.

A LONG–TIME resident was sharing with me a bit of our neighborhood’s unsavory, pre–development history.

The police, I learned, had once dubbed the area Felony Flats. Charming.

Some years ago, he told me, during housing construction that would vastly improve the neighborhood, a sex worker had commandeered a Porta–Potty for turning tricks. A senior citizen burst from her home, barefoot, glass of wine in hand, and chased the sex worker down the street, screaming, “Get your Black ass outta here!” He chuckled that the senior had managed not to spill a drop of her wine.

I winced. Choosing not to go into the empathy I have for a sex worker driven to that extreme, I said that I wish the senior had omitted “Black” in favor of, simply, “your ass.”

The man, who, I hardly need point out, is white, defended the word choice. He found it funny.

Not incidentally, he and his husband have faced their share of prejudice, intolerance, and hate. It saddens me when members of one marginalized community cannot summon empathy for members of another. Pitting the marginalized against one another is one way that a plurality maintains undue power.

In the lovely and spacious atrium of a nearby hospital stands a small grand piano. A little over three years ago, I signed up as a volunteer pianist. Each week for an hour or two, I hammer out tunes while patients, visitors, and staff filter through, some hanging out, some bringing their lunch.

During my first month, a man requested “In My Life,” by the Beatles. I had to reach back into my memory for that one, but there it was. He burst into tears as I played. I learned that his wife of 50–plus years had just passed, in that very hospital, and that he had heard the piano as he was leaving and followed the sound to the atrium. “That’s our song,” he choked out between sobs. I wept with him. I couldn’t not.

Not long after, a woman requested Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me.” It’s one of my favorites, and I was happy to play it for her. Her husband of 60–some years lay in serious condition in the upper floors. It was their song. Again, there were tears, and again I joined in.

Just last week, a woman in perhaps her 30s or 40s took a seat near the stairs, handkerchief to her face, shaking with stifled sobs. Who was this person? What was amiss? Of course I couldn’t know. More than likely, a loved one was fighting for life on a floor above. She was a stranger, and yet I cared. Lord, did I care. “Play something soothing,” whispered my conscience. I did, doing my best, not successfully, to fight back tears of my own.

Elon Musk once vomited that empathy is “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” He’s a fool. Empathy is a gift to be nurtured and cherished.

“See ya,” said my passenger, on whom I’d just spent a considerable sum, before exiting the car and disappearing down the walk.

I looked at the now empty passenger seat. “You’re welcome,” I told it. It said nothing. Off I drove, unthanked.

Yet it was fine. I was fine. My goal had been to treat someone I care about to a positive experience. Mission accomplished. Sure, a “thank you” would have been nice. But even so, well, mission accomplished.

I bring this up because it’s that wonderful time of year when advice columnists publish letters from people expressing outrage at gift recipients who fail to say “thank you.” 

Don’t get me wrong. For lots of reasons, “thank you” is important. If you expected and didn’t receive a “thank you,” I understand your disappointment or even hurt. You might even discontinue giving. Totally up to you.

But it’s not worth getting incensed. Why? See Paragraph 3 above.

Christianity’s version of forgiveness must go.

​To be clear, I’m not saying that forgiveness per se is bad. There’s everything healthy about not letting wrongs that you have endured fester and canker. If that’s what you mean by forgiveness, good on you. 

No; I’m talking about Christianity’s version of forgiveness. I refer specifically to the doctrine that Jesus’s atonement erases missteps from the eternal record. Repent, and all that sinning you did is magically undone. Thus you’re cleansed. Pure. Allowed to enter heaven.

Except, wait. The harm you caused remains. Sure, you can pay for what you stole, fix what you broke, apologize until your vocal cords cry out for a break. But you cannot un–betray, un–rape, un–insult, un–harass, un–oppress, un–depress, un–harm, un–scar. 

Worse, Christianity holds that when God forgives, the people you harmed damn well better forgive, too—in fact, forget!—or it will be they who are in danger of hellfire. Want to send someone to hell? Do something they can’t let go of while you repent and sail into heaven!

Which is why you have probably overheard, as I have, statements like this one: “God has forgiven me. You’re not being Christlike if you can’t forgive and forget.”

To forgive and forget, by the way, is impossible. You cannot forget on demand. Go ahead. I challenge you to forget that you have read this far. Do it right now. I’ll wait.

For that matter, if you could forget on demand, to do so would be downright foolish. If a neighbor hurls rocks at you when you walk by, you can work at trying not to let it ruin an otherwise good day. That’s sound mental health. But if you forget and walk by the rock–hurler again, you’re not saintly. You’re a bloody fool.

Healthy forgiveness is not found in deciding something didn’t happen, or that it happened but now is ok. It is found in not letting it fester. Let’s not make it sound easy. Like most things mentally healthy, it’s as difficult as it is worth pursuing.

The pictured ad keeps showing up in my local paper. Enough already.

Let me be clear: This critique is not of OHSU’s Knight Cancer Institute. I hold the Institute and its work in high regard. I lost my wife to breast cancer 30 years ago. I have been treated for cancer at an OSHU facility. Their work matters.

No, my critique is of this information–deprived, bravado–laden advertisement. It offers not one word about what the good people at OHSU’s Knight Cancer Institute are actually doing about cancer, how they’re doing it, or what kind of progress they’re making. Moreover, there is no call to action, no contact information, in fact, no useful information whatsoever.

As far as I can infer, the ad’s objective is pure bravado: to present the Institute as a valiant, anti–cancer martyr–crusader, possibly so Board members can puff their chests.

Now, I have always defined a “good” ad as an ad that meets its objective. If I have correctly inferred the objective, then in that regard this ad succeeds. My beef is with the objective. Abject bravado becomes no one.

At best, readers will mutter “Yeah, cancer sucks” and turn the page. Hardly a good use of the Institute’s advertising budget.

The author's lot is a hard one, and yet there are those who deliberately set out to make it harder for themselves. There are those who, in their pride and their innocence, dedicate their careers to writing humorous pieces. Poor dears, the world is stacked against them from the start, for everybody in it has the right to look at their work and say, “I don't think that's funny.” —Dorothy Parker

The first lumpy mail project I worked on (about five years before I launched my own agency, if you care) involved M&MS®.

“Lumpy mail” is informal–speak for “three–dimensional mail,” which contains some sort of object that illustrates a selling point. In this case, the point was that our client could deliver natural gas—same gas, same pipeline—to industrial users for about 25 percent less than the local utility charged.

To illustrate the point, we mailed pairs of half–pound bags of M&MS with a letter explaining that although the bags were identical, the bag on the left came from a discount grocery chain and sold for about 25 percent less than the bag on the right, which came from a convenience store.

The campaign helped our client sign up plenty of new customers, more than paying for itself, but that’s not what this post is about.

My boss felt it was important that our client be able to defend the M&MS price difference claim, just in case someone challenged it. So, off I went, visiting store after store until I found M&MS priced the way we needed. Remarkably, I succeeded. At a nearby convenience store, I found half–pound bags of M&MS priced exactly 25 percent higher than half–pound bags at a nearby grocery outlet. I asked for the manager and ordered several hundred bags. 

The manager said, “For that many, I can get you a discount.”

I replied, “Thank you, but if you don’t mind, I’d rather pay the higher price.”

My mind’s eye can still see his baffled expression. 

# # #

THE NIGHT AIR is perfect this time of year for sleeping with the bedroom windows open. But the other night, some neighborhood teens were having a great, noisy time of shooting hoops and using their outdoor voices a few hundred feet away. I thought they’d knock off by 9 pm. Nope. Maybe 10? 11? Nope.

I thought about but decided against going out there and asking them to wrap it up. Being a teen isn’t easy. Good for them, I felt, that instead of going out finding trouble, they were home, engaged in a wholesome activity. I wanted them to enjoy it. Were they being thoughtless? Sure. But thoughtlessness isn’t a crime. And maybe more than being thoughtless, they were being teens. That’s not a crime, either, and they won’t get to be teens for very long.

Besides, I had an alternative. 

​I closed my windows, turned on the AC, and fired up the CPAP. It pretty much blocked out their noise. I can’t speak for my other neighbors, but as for me, I slept quite well.

CONTRARY TO what Califorinia guv’s Gavin Newsom seems to think, the unhoused are not invaders. They are victims.

Here is Newsom’s latest on homelessness: “No more excuses. It is time to take back the streets. It’s time to take back the sidewalks. It’s time to take these encampments and provide alternatives.”

To be fair, Newsom announced over $3 billion in grants to treat homeless people who “struggle with mental health and substance use disorders.” Committing funds, along with “providing alternatives,” is laudable. But characterizing unhoused persons as products of “mental health and substance use disorders” only feeds the heinous narrative that would dismiss them as victims of their own doing.

The mischaracterization is as intellectually lazy as it is cruel and monumentally inaccurate. Homelessness is largely an economic outcome. Addressing it requires identifying and addressing myriad underlying economic — and social — causal factors.

Blaming the unhoused for being unhoused only serves those righteous souls who are looking for an excuse, any excuse, not to show a little compassion.