Roger Raffee's Blog

Is it unAmerican to ask questions and demand answers?

What about Giuliani knowing about 1st Comey letter before it was released?

Did Trump know?

Why did they lie about it?

What was the extent of the conspiracy?

Was Russian hacking tied to Trump?

Was the election RIGGED, and if it was, who rigged it?

Is Hillary guilty of what she's been accused of, or was she lied about, and the people lied to grossly misinformed?

Were the people accusing Hillary guilty of the very things they accused Hillary of?

Make no mistake, if you love freedom in America you are witnessing exactly the scenario that would occur if fascism was festering on our shores. The rhetoric against it would need to rival Churchill's in England, or Roosevelt's, in order to stop it. It would creep like a thief coming from out of the night. To save our freedom as Churchill and Roosevelt did, and as the millions of freedom loving individuals did, we would need to recognize fascism and stand up to be counted against it. You have to reach into your hearts and decide whether these are the signs we are seeing now:

1) A strong leader using nationalistic and jingoistic speeches, to rally the angry portion of the populous susceptible to representing and supporting causes and beliefs of hatred and excess pride, to rally around his, a dictator's cause.

2) Telling lies, because there is little truth that the rational would follow in the dictator's movement. Accusing those who refute the lies as part of the opponent's conspiracy against them.

3) Blaming the other side, demonizing them. Co-opting the arguments of their Opponents by .blaming their Opponents for doing what they, the fascists, are accused of.

4) Boldly telling lies against opponents so often, and so loud, that the fascists appear to be the victims of their own lies.

5) Using those who have been swayed or duped by the fascist arguments and beliefs to do the fascists bidding, to:

6) Change the opinion of much of the populous in order to persuade them to have casual disregard and disdain for the country's established laws and institutions, so that:

7) Replacing country's laws and institutions with fascist laws and institutions becomes an attractive alternative.

8) Replace country's laws and institutions with fascist laws and institutions, supporting fascist leader and his government

. If you read the above and you ask yourself; is not our country already fascist? Is it not time for a change? Keep in mind, that those would be the questions the fascists would also ask.

To answer, ask yourself which side supports the principles of Democracy: liberty, justice, fairness, and equality; and believes in laws and institutions designed to promulgate those principles of Democracy, for which those laws and institutions were designed to stand for. Which side believes in the rule of law, and seeks to apply it fairly.

If you question those principles above then you belong on the side of the fascists, and this warning would appear to you as ridiculous and cynical.

A corrupted Democratic system can be repaired by a populous that clings to its principles.

A Fascist system is corrupted to the core.

Franco's Spain was the only declared fascist government that survived fascism's popularity in the early 20th century. It was a country of political stability, even during hard times, but it eventually fell by the wayside, as the people grumbled, after Franco died, at having had to live for so long under the thumb of an oppressive government.

Putin's Russia is a fascist oligarchy, and all dictators in this current modern world, since WW2, could be called fascist. Their regimes are marked by lack of freedom. Unfairness in the justice systems. No guarantees of equality, especially if you are not in a group favored by the ruling party. Little regard for Democracy. Laws and institutions designed to protect the rulers. Peace and stability guaranteed by jailing and persecuting dissenters, or killing them.

If you believe and yearn for the principles of Democracy, then know that the biggest threat is your standing silent while they are being taken from you. Democratic principles are a joke to those who feel threatened by them. Democratic governments have made terrible mistakes, but Democratic governments learn and evolve and grow in positive ways if the peoples within their borders strive to make their lives better, not only for themselves, but for everyone around them.

A government is no better than the people it governs, or as Franklin D. Roosevelt said "a government can be no better than the public opinion which sustains it."

I was at a cocktail party the other night. An attractive blonde gave me a nice smile. I'm old(er) and I'm married, but I still like girls as much as most guys. I smiled back.
"You having fun?" she asked me, taking a sip from her martini.
"It's gettin' better," I grinned, toasting her with mine.
"What do you do?" she asked me.
"Nothing right now, just being here at the party," I answered, shrugging.
"No, I mean what do you do for a living," she asked, with a little laugh, taking another sip.
"Nothing right now," I answered, shrugging some more.
"So you're retired?" she asked.
"No, not really," I answered. "I'm working on a book I just wrote. I'm trying to be a writer."
"What's the book about?" she asked, taking another sip.
"It's about my great-grandfather who was the first Jewish Texas Ranger," I answered, over the noise of the party.
"Oh, so you're Jewish?" she asked.
"Yup," I answered, nodding my head, holding my glass.
"Are you voting in this election?" I asked.
"Trump!" she exclaimed with a big grin, raising her glass, and then taking another sip.
"Hillary," I said, not as loudly, a bit shy in the face of her enthusiasm, hoisting my glass up a couple of inches.
"All the stuff that's coming out, about him groping women and bragging about it, don't bother you?" I asked her.
"Oh sure," she said, making a jerking motion by nudging up her left shoulder and tilting her head towards it. "But Hillary's worse. Hillary's evil. At least Trump's a regular guy who tells it to you straight. You don't know what's up with Hillary, all the things she's hiding that they don't tell us about. I voted for Trump. I'm done. I mailed in my ballot. I'm for Trump all the way, no matter what. Anything is better than that evil bitch."
"I didn't know Hillary was that bad," I said, with a slight smile, downing half my martini.
"Of course she is," said the attractive blonde. "You can't believe anything the media tells you. The Clintons, the media, they're all part of a huge conspiracy. They're protecting the banks, wall street, and their rich friends all over the world."
I shrugged and hoisted my glass a little without saying anything. I couldn't argue with that. There was a certain logic to it I couldn't refute.
"You know what I'm talking about," she said, nodding as if she agreed with herself that I did know what she was talking about, and then taking another sip. "It's the Jews that run everything. You guys are born Hillary supporters. They raise you to be liberals, don't they? or be rich and part of their Jewish conspiracy."
"It starts when we're five," I said, with a polite smile, nodding my head. "It's part of our religion."
"I thought you guys aren't supposed to talk about that," she said, inquiring, with a slightly suspicious look.
"We're not," I said, "but once in a while, one of us at a party or something, has a little too much to drink, and the beans spill out. That's how you guys find out about it."
"Oh!" she tossed her head back in pleasant surprise and a big smile. "Well drink up," she said, finishing her glass. "I want to hear all about it."
"Give me your glass," I said, drinking the rest of my martini and reaching for her empty glass. "I'll go fill us up again."
She politely handed me her glass and I walked over to the bar. My wife was there, with her back up against the counter, looking at the blonde.
"You're talking to that Blonde girl?" she asked, without looking over at me standing next to her. I gave her a quick affirmative glance.
"I heard she's crazy," my wife said.
"Yeah, a Trump supporter," I said.
"Oh God," my wife said slowly, with sarcasm in her voice.
"Yeah," I said, giving her the sideways glance, then catching the bartender's eyes. "I'm getting us more drinks." I looked over at my wife again, but this time I was grinning.
"You're crazier than she is," said my wife, as I carefully began walking back to my new friend with a full martini in each hand.
"Here you go," I said, handing the blonde the undisturbed martini after making the dangerous climb through the crowd.
"So, what happens when you're five?" she asked, smiling.
I thought she was joking, but I kept it going.
"We start hearing voices," I said. I pointed to my skull. "In our heads," I explained.
"What kind of voices?" she asked, fascinated, and curious.
"Our ancestors, the Jewish bankers. Not all bankers, but most of them are," I said, perfectly serious.
"You're joshin' me," she said, suspiciously.
"Only Jews can hear them," I said. "How do you think there's a Jewish conspiracy?" I asked her.
"That makes sense," she said, understanding.
"They tell us what to do, how to take over the banks, and the media, how to run things without people knowing. They teach us in our heads. We start learning when we're five. It's the same for all Jews, and we never tell anybody about it except for once in a while when we're drinking and let our guard down."
"That's how you get all the money, and all the power, and own everything," she said, concurring.
"Exactly," I said nodding. "And we also get hundred million dollar bank accounts, to use however we want, to try and take over the world, but we have to keep it a secret."
"Wow," she said, staring in to space, reflecting on the possible importance of my revelation. Then she shook it off and came to her senses.
"Trump's gonna change all that," she said, lighting up with sudden alacrity.
"We got that covered," I said, smiling smugly. "We recruited his daughter. She converted to being Jewish. Also, we got control of the media, and we got all these stories going on about him."
"Well, I'm not saying he's going after the Jews," explained the beautiful blonde, holding up her glass to take a sip, while smiling comfortably. "And I'm not saying he's going to win either." She shrugged. "He's going to expose you guys. That's what's going on. That's what you don't understand. Even if he loses, he's still exposing what you guys are doing. Right now he's got almost half the country who are learning about what's going on. If he loses he'll still have plenty of people who follow him. He'll keep exposing you guys for what you're doing to this country, just like he tried to expose communist Obama.
He might not go after you Jews right now, but I guarantee you somebody will. Maybe not Trump, but somebody will in the future. All Trump's going to do, for now, is expose what you guys are doing. He's going to make it harder for you guys. Look how far you had to go in this election to suppress Trump." She looked at me with a penetrating, glaring grin. "You're going to have a harder time getting the blacks and the Mexicans to do what you want. Trump will educate them too. The illegals are going to be the first ones to go."
She nodded her head and smiled as she walked away. I walked back to the bar and told my beautiful wife, a Mexican girl, who has had poor relations scramble across the border, what the attractive blonde told me.
"It's scary," my wife said, reflectively, "how many Trump supporters think that way."
"They all do," I said, "to some degree or another. Even if they don't want to admit it, they don't mind being on the same side with people who think like that."
A little later I was talking to a friend of mine and he mentioned how Hitler actually got elected by a majority in the early 30's.
"That's not quite true," I said. "His party, the Nazis, had about 36 percent of the vote, but they were growing in strength. An old man named Hindenberg, the President of the country, got the majority of the votes, but he made Hitler the equivalent of a vice-president because the Nazis were the second biggest party. Hindenberg died and that's when Hitler took over, with less than 40% of the voters behind him."
"That's about probably what Trump has," said my friend.
"Yeah," I said. "Huh, what a coincidence."

Would I try LSD again? Hell no. I don't crave flying that high for so many hours again. It was fun a few times (OK, maybe it was a lot of times), and I actually learned something useful that improved my life, but I was lucky. I know people that tried it and got different results.
If they could make an LSD, which you could come on to in the same way, but then stay high for 20 minutes, and come down with no repercussions or lingering psychosis, then I'd be all for it. I'd probably take it a couple of times a day, some days. It would probably help most of us live better lives. Too bad it has to last 18 hours and drive a lot of people crazy.
My friend Chris and I dropped some L, about four o'clock in the afternoon one Saturday. We were probably sixteen or seventeen years old. We got in Chris's car to head off to a dance, about eight miles away, at a college auditorium. We got fascinated by the lines in the road, and followed them for a long time, laughing and tripping on how the lines came flying at us as we drove along. Chris said he was having a hard time controlling the car, keeping it in a straight line. That made us laugh so hard that we decided to get off the road and find out where we were.
We parked the car, still in the city, and got out to find people to ask directions. We got separated and lost each other. Finally, after some searching, we were overjoyed to find each other again, like two long lost adventurers in the jungle. We found someone who gave us excellent detailed instructions on how to get to the dance, which we promptly forgot and then spent an hour arguing over.
We got in to his car and the first decision was whether to turn right or left. I said left, but Chris said right. We parked the car again to spend another hour arguing about that. Then, finally, I acquiesced and we turned right.
We drove through the city. Every stop light was a momentous decision in our lives. Do we go straight? Turn right here? Or left? This continued for hours. We finally were getting close. I knew it. I could sense it. We stopped and asked directions again. This time we understood them. We finally got to the dance around midnight, just ten minutes before they ended it. I got to dance with a girl. Success.
I can't say it was a terrible experience. I was actually having fun, even though it was about the most frustrating experience I have ever suffered through.
When we finished with the dance, we had to figure out how to get home, something that would have been ridiculously easy if we hadn't been high, and we still had ten hours more to go of being high.
We made it to the beach, where we became fascinated with running up and down hills in the dark. That was fun. I mean it, it was really fun.
Chris dropped LSD a week or two later, without me. He got so high, walking around, that he wanted to rest and get off the street. He was walking by a hotel and saw an open door. This fascinated him. He walked over to the room and saw nobody there. He called out, and nobody answered. So he went in and turned on the TV. Something came on that blew his mind. If was the Flinstones, an episode with the Great Gazoo. Nothing could be more fascinating while on acid.
The maid came to the room and asked what he was doing. He showed her the Great Gazoo. Isn't that amazing, he asked her. An alien visiting the Flinstones. She called the manager, who called the police. The police came and asked what he was doing. The program was over. It was time to leave. He told them his business was finished, and he was going home. They arrested him.
The cops asked him what he was watching on TV. Chris told them how an alien from another world came here to make friends with the Flinstones. Later on, when his head was clear, nobody would listen to him when he tried to explain to them how great the Great Gazoo really was, except for me. Chris snuck out of his house a couple of days later and came to my place to tell me what happened.
"Makes perfect sense," I told him, "except that you blew it. You're no longer in the club, dude. You've lost your club privileges. No more acid for you. You knew that the two most important club rules are don't get caught, and never admit anything."
Chris smiled, embarrassed. He admitted he screwed up.
"Don't worry, " I said, patting him on the back. "You'll be fine."
A couple of months later, his family, a court agreement, and high priced psychiatrists convinced him he needed to start taking large doses of human tranquilizers. He gained about 60 pounds and rode around the neighborhoods on a bicycle, smiling like a zombie who just got fed.
I tried to talk him off the tranquilizers, but his zombie mind was convinced he needed them, so his family could control him and keep him from doing what was bad for him.
The wild friend I had, with the zesty personality, who surfed stoked and enthusiastically with me, was gone forever. It wasn't the acid that ruined him. It was his family's paranoia and horror, that he had eaten acid, and the drugs they then convinced him to live on, that killed him.
Did he really die? As far as I was concerned he did, because the guy I knew never came back, and the last I saw of the zombie was him riding his bike, a hundred pounds heavier, with no recognition at all when I waved at him.
I had to force him to come to a stop. He was annoyed.
Don't you know me anymore? I asked.
"Yes," he said, in his zombie voice, with a thousand yard stare. "I remember you but I have to be at home in fifteen minutes to take my medicine."

The internet seems to be made up of a multitude of writers who try to outdo each other by doing more of what everybody else is doing. The focus is on quantity rather than how to achieve quality. This makes sense in a world with a shrinking middle class, where most of us are poor and trying to figure out how to get by. Even the owners of the internet, who make their billions on what we pass through their portals, don't have to focus on quality as much as they do capacity. Better to get our 20 crappy books selling as efficiently as possible than to admit we could never write a great book, or that we could take the time out of our lives that would be needed for us to focus, concentrate, and find that deep well of inspiration a great book requires.
That old adage "Writers write", is the advice given to writers across the internet by all the so-called experts. Writing constantly is a good idea if you need to work on improving your writing technique, and your mechanics, but it won't necessarily help you write a great book. For some, it might, if it helps release the creative process.
For others, like me, and probably some small percentage of all writers, writing should take place when the inspiration, imagination, and the motivation, produce something in our heads worthy of being written down.
If you are busy writing all the time, you might have to pass on that great inspiration, that great idea, that next great book, because you'll be busy writing something else. Something mundane perhaps, because you're following the crowd, to find and create what everybody is telling you that you need to produce in order to get your share, which is supposedly just what you need.
Write, write, write. Get them blogs going. Produce, create a constant outflow. It doesn't matter what it is. Crap is fine, just so long as you stay busy piling it on, and piling it up.
There's another old adage. It's about the path less traveled that makes all the difference. Sometimes not following the crowd can be more rewarding. I'm glad I didn't write ten crappy books. I wrote a book I could be happy with instead. If I had written some of the chapters in it even one week earlier, they wouldn't have been nearly as good.

Morning in Puerto. Pinpoints of sun coming through the clouds parked low over the inland hills. Dropping down the steps to the sea. Turquoise big blue waves rolling in. Offshore white wind plumes spraying the skies. I say hello to Julio before I paddle out. Two happy souls, where we're headed.
A big wave with a steep curving ridge take off ramp on the top of it. A boy hoots. I go. The instant the wave has me, I'm up. At the top, a big gust hits me. Blasts me to a stop, holds me there. Instead of down, I'm elevating upward. The last possible instant before getting tossed from the pinnacle of heaving liquid muscle, I begin to drop straight down from out of the sky. Relax, don't move. A smooth landing, accelerating forward speed momentum out in front of this beautiful throwing mass of ocean. Shadows throw far out over my humbling head.
I bring it out, and under, and climb. Drop and climb again. Moving forward down the line. Released and roll to a stop, far away in the deep dark channel. I turn and paddle it back out, for another.
Morning in Puerto, just getting started. Adrenaline rushing. I'm riding waves in Puerto and my soul is ding ding dinging. Morning in Puerto, do you know what you're missing?
A girl is learning in the easy part. Just jump up, I tell her. It don't matter if you make it. Just jump up enough times and you'll get the hang of it. Don't be afraid. Keep jumping. If you keep jumping, you'll get it eventually.
Morning in Puerto, she seems to be happy.
Surf it often enough and you learn how to move your mind quickly. No time for fear or hesitation. Go, and go, and move and go. Twist your body. Body English and style helps your slide, and how you slide is your ride. An ocean glide fits perfectly inside a raging action morning in Puerto.
Don't forget your coffee, and hydrate, because you need to be relaxed when you get to a morning in Puerto. Hop on top of your water shooter and ride, because it's a rolling morning in Puerto. When you're done you'll be in a daze, all day. You made your way through a morning in Puerto, now what? And what could be better?