The Oppenheimer Reort 10/29/18

A pre-emptive Happy Halloween to all my readers! I’ve always liked Halloween, because it inspires creativity. Are you donning, or have you donned a costume this year? I love the transformation of the self that takes place during Halloween costume parties. Normally mild-mannered, reticent people become their costumed persona. Add a little alcohol to the equation, and the results can be hilarious. The sum and total of my Halloween involvement this year was to buy a tube of fake blood from Dollarama for my annual disturbing Halloween selfie, and to resurrect last year’s Halloween decoration outside our house. Seated on one of the Muskoka chairs outside our front door is a scarecrow-like body, stuffed with leaves and bearing an orange plastic jack-o-lantern head, also courtesy of Dollarama. I know I have dissed the amateurs who do their last minute Halloween shopping at the dollar store, but there’s nothing wrong with doing something creative with props purchased at the dollar store.

Lots of people decorate their houses for Christmas; some put up enough lights to create blackouts in their neighborhood, but a lot of people decorate their houses for Halloween as well. Steve Spencer, a volunteer at Hunters Bay Radio who hosts the radio show Spirit Of Radio, and who is responsible for creating our new and improved website, gets serious about his “Holiday Haunt”. I completely get this. Today I Googled “Best Decorated Halloween Houses” and saw some great examples. Just across the street from the Hunter’s Bay Radio station, there is a wonderful Halloween display, complete with moving blowup ghosts. 

All of the nut balls seem to be coming out of the woodwork. Last week, there were two disturbing attacks in America by people who seem to have been incited by the Orange Emperor. Nut ball #1 is Florida resident and lone wolf Cesar Sayoc, who mailed out 14 pipe bombs to people or organizations (including CNN studios in NYC) he considered to be enemies of his beloved Rump. Posted on his van was a collage of anti-media/pro-Trump images, along with Rump targets bearing crosshair graphics covering their faces.  While no one was injured by his stupid hate-filled act of violence, his actions could have killed or maimed a lot of unintended victims. Law enforcement had Sayoc in custody within 24 hours, a remarkable accomplishment, but I fear that Rump’s venomous rhetoric has opened a Pandora’s Box of hatred. Last week, 11 victims were murdered at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, when an anti-Semitic gunman opened fire during Saturday services.  

I don’t hate Donald Trump, but I certainly hate the evil he has unleashed through his ignorance and irresponsability. Maybe these attacks would have happened under the leadership of a decent human being, there are after all a lot of mentally ill people out there, but Rump’s rabble-rousing campaign rallies, designed to energize his increasingly unbalanced base, have clearly thrown gas on the fire. This is the opposite of leadership; this S.O.B. makes Joe McCarthy look like a choir boy.  I realize that the political status quo has sparked this outrage, and that there is plenty of blame to go around with regard to Washington's failure to solve the big problems of our country. But, Americans elected a liar, a bully, and a fraud, who routinely spreads hatred through his insanely irresponsible rhetoric, and it should be fairly clear by now that he will not solve our problems. If there is any good that will come out of this mess, it is that Rump has exposed how broken we really are. This one man has singlehandedly unraveled the myth that so many of us still buy into: that America is a beautiful tapestry of different races and creeds, united under one flag. 

One final question ... who’s dressing up as Pandora’s Box for Halloween this year?

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2018 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED