America's Homegrown Fascism

Yet again, Facebook proves an ample supply of various yahoos with their bizarre delusions.  I’d like to address many of these issues.

TRUMP = HITLER?  I addressed this before and will do so briefly here.  We managed to avoid descending into a fascist dictatorship under Trump.  Partly this was because Trump himself is far too lazy to be an effective dictator; the man has never worked a day in his life and doesn’t plan on doing so anytime soon.  Partly this is because, fortunately, most Americans don’t want a dictatorship.

LEFT-WING SUPPORT for DICTATORSHIP.   Somewhere along the line, the American Right Wing (ARW) decided that the Democrats and their fellow travelers were determined to give America a communist dictatorship.  Nowhere close to the truth and of course no evidence to support this.   What most Democrats would like is universal health care and a social safety net, and they don’t care how high the taxes would have to be to pay for it: they expect Mr. Amazon and Mr. Facebook to pay for it.  I can’t say I support that agenda, but it falls well short of Castro’s Cuba or Mao’s China. 

I can imagine a very tiny percentage of the far left wing who would be happy under a communist dictatorship provided they were the ones running it.  As a rank and file worker or peasant – or a prisoner in a gulag – they would be much less satisfied. 

RIGHT-WING SUPPORT FOR DICTATORSHIP.   Provided the dictatorship was nationalist and gave us all the trappings of traditional American patriotism, much of the ARW would be perfectly happy with a fascist dictatorship.   Presumably this dictatorship would enslave or eliminate Jews, blacks, Hispanics, gays, Asians, etc. any undesirable non-white people.  And these people would be content being rank and file workers and peasants under such a regime – so long as the regime got rid of all those aforementioned undesirables.   These people are far too stupid to recognize the irony of an “American dictatorship”.  The Founding Fathers worked their butts off in 1787 to make sure we didn’t wind up with another despot, which is what the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are all about.  “Right to be white” seems to be the only one these people recognize. 

BIDEN STOLE THE ELECTION.   Please.  Hillary Clinton was much more divisive and less popular than Joe Biden, so there was no reason for a Hillary voter to switch to Trump.  That being the case, Biden could expect to get at least as many votes and states as Hillary did.  Moreover, all the “battleground” states in 2020 were states that Trump won in 2016, so he’d have to win ALL of them to win his 270 electoral votes, and of course he didn’t.  And high profile Republicans endorsing Biden – and no Democrats endorsing Trump – likewise didn’t hint that Trump would win this time around.  Also, if the Democrats could steal the White House, they would also have arranged to flip close races in the Senate and take control of Congress.  But idiotic conspiracy theories are the basic bread & butter of the ARW.    

TDS.   Trump encouraged his Yahoo Army to storm the Capitol on January 6 to prevent Congress from certifying Biden as the next President.  He refused to concede the election to Biden and made various idiotic noises about the election being stolen – and 50+ frivolous lawsuits alleging theft with no support behind them.  Even his own attorney general, Bill Barr, told him these claims had no merit and he had lost the election. 

To the extent Trump has committed federal or state crimes he needs to face prosecution.   Bringing him to justice thereon is no more “Trump Derangement Syndrome” than the Nuremburg Trials were “Hitler Derangement Syndrome”. 

TRUMP & PUTIN.  I’m hearing some Trump supporters complain that Biden isn’t taken seriously by Putin and other leaders whereas Trump could deal with them as equals.  More idiocy.  Trump didn’t “deal” with Putin – in between blasting our own allies, proposing ending NATO, and other foreign policy missteps, Trump essentially gave Putin whatever the Russian leader might possibly hope to be a US foreign policy ideally calculated to favor Russian interests.   We should count ourselves lucky he didn’t turn over the “football” and CIA control to Putin. 

Trump epitomizes every vice and character flaw which Americans could possibly have and hold the office of President.  He embarrassed us in Europe and overseas to the point where foreigners actually felt sorry for us.  Trump was the Ugliest American.  You’ll notice that to the extent foreigners did love Trump, these were foreigners also loved Boris Johnson (UK), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil), and other similar foreign leaders at the far right of the spectrum.  We think of the Ku Klux Klan as being a Southern institution in former Confederate states, but the Klan exists in former Union states as well, and even in Canada.  That being the case, I wasn’t surprised to learn that some Canadians love Trump too.  Whenever you have people willing to support quasi-fascists due to a misplaced concern about a nonexistent communist conspiracy, you’ll find enthusiastic supporters of Donald Trump.  The smarter ones know and understand the difference between the North Korea which the dumber ones claim the Democrats want and the Sweden and Denmark the smarter ones know is the Democrats’ ideal for America, but still see fit to cynically support Trump anyway. 

There were cynics in the 1930s convinced that Stalin was bad enough to justify supporting Hitler.  In the US it was Charles Lindbergh, who pissed away the goodwill he earned as an aviator by jumping in bed with Hitler; and no one took him seriously after WWII, rightfully so.  How morally corrupt to do you have to be in 2021 – long after the Holocaust is common knowledge – to support a fascist agenda?  After US troops liberated Buchenwald in 1945, Eisenhower made it a point to bring local German civilians to the camps to see for themselves what was going on – and what these people disingenuously claimed they had no idea was happening.  Where did all the Jews go?  Hmm?  Looks like we found what’s left of them.  And even today you have people either denying this happened or even more provocatively, bark and bray that “six million wasn’t enough.”  These are your Trump supporters.  

CANCEL CULTURE.  Various private entities, like the Seuss estate and Disney, determined that some of their earlier work had some less palatable elements, and voluntarily withdrew these materials from public sale and domain.  This wasn’t the US government or state governments banning the items in question, but voluntary acts by private parties.  Naturally, the same yahoos who can’t recognize the inherent incompatibility of American patriotism with Confederate and Nazi flags, also don’t understand that “censorship” and the First Amendment only applies to government actions, not private parties or boycotts. 

MAINSTREAM MEDIA.  ABC, CBS and NBC are obviously slanted in the liberal direction, but there’s a limit to which they can portray the news to fit their agenda.  Moreover, we’ve had FOX for some time – and the Washington Times, here in the DC area – balancing out with a more conservative slant.  But even FOX isn’t inclined to abdicate wholesale to a President who summarily dismisses anything remotely unfavorable as “fake news”.  Once it became apparent that Trump expected everyone to make him look good, even news agencies such as FOX which might have been sympathetic to him found there was a limit to what they could tolerate.  That doesn’t mean FOX is lying to us if it reports anything unfavorable to Trump.  Dismissing the “mainstream media” as outright lies and fiction to be completely ignored altogether is yet another example of the consistent idiocy of the ARW.    

BLUE LIVES MATTER.  As I write this, the trial of Officer Derek Chauvin, accused of holding down George Floyd to the point where he died, is going on in Minnesota.  Chauvin has his defenders, remarkably enough.  Yes, there are people in the US who believe that no matter how egregious the police misconduct, the cops are always right.  Not more often than not or most of the time, but literally always.  Most of us remember in 1992 when a jury in Simi Valley, California, presented with videotape evidence of four LAPD officers beating Rodney King as he was on the ground and not resisting, acquitted them.  Mind you, both California and Minnesota were Union states during the Civil War, so former CSA states hold no monopoly on racism or this misguided worship of the police as infallible and completely unaccountable.  If you believe the police are right 100% of the time, bravo: you're a fascist.  

Fortunately for America, actual support for a fascist dictatorship is at the margin and not widespread.  Our latest candidate for dictator -  himself a fan of Russia’s dictator and contemptuous and rude to any foreign leader with any decency - was a lazy moron who couldn’t be bothered to leave the golf course long enough to be an effective despot.  We’ll see what criminal and civil actions emerge to bring him to account for his 4+ years of crimes, corruption and incompetence.  Stay tuned.  

Intelligent Evil

 

The events of January 6, 2021 provided the spectacle of a mass of clue-deficient, so-called “patriots” storming the US Capitol in a traitorous attempt to prevent Congress certifying the November 2020 election victory of Joe Biden, according to a bogus and idiotic assertion that somehow that election was “stolen”.   Trump himself tried to have his cake and eat it too by tweeting law and order, respect for the police, but also reiterating the underlying premise of the protest, that the election was stolen.  By doing so he encouraged the protesters to make a clumsy and retarded attempt at a coup.  Sorry, but incompetence in attempting your crime is not a defense.

For all the rampant idiocy among Trumpers, sadly there’s also a more subtle, behind-the-scenes support by those who “should know better”.  That’s all the Trump supporters out there, not wearing MAGA hats or carrying misspelled racist signs, Confederate flags, or swastikas, who nonetheless defend Trump and criticize his opponents.  They are very intelligent, but sadly use their intelligence not to objectively evaluate which candidate is best for America, but simply to take Trump’s superiority as an irrebuttable fact and then work backwards to justify that decision. 

From January 1933 to April 1945, Europe in general and Germany in particular suffered the scourge of the National Socialists, better known as the Nazis.  While the mass of brownshirted stormtroopers may have struck many as idiots and morons, unfortunately for Germany not all Nazis were stupid.  Probably the cleverest Nazi was their propaganda minister, Josef Goebbels.

In “Life of Brian”, the People’s Front of Judea, led by Reg (John Cleese), demand, “what have the Romans ever done for us”?   The answer?  Sanitation, wine, and – it goes without saying (!) – the roads.   I was re-watching “Band of Brothers”, and there’s a scene later in the series in which two German boys look from an overpass as US troops in troop carriers travel east through Germany on the Autobahn, on both sides of the highway, while German POWs march on foot, using the grassy median, westward into camps for the duration of the war.  Then you’ve got the Blue Oyster Cult album Secret Treaties, the cover of which shows an ME262, the first widely used operational fighter jet (with BOC markings rather than the swastika).   The Stg-44 was the world’s first assault rifle.  The Nazis also gave us reel-to-reel tapes, Adidas and Puma shoes, and Hugo Boss.  Generals such as Rommel and Guderian were very good at what they did, and the Waffen SS had no shortage of capable commanders.  Again, sadly for Europe, intelligence and evil are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  We can be thankful that the world’s best nuclear physicists at the time were Jewish, and the non-Jewish German nuclear scientists took a wrong turn at the conceptual level, a dead end which prevented them from developing nuclear weapons.  See Stephen Fry’s Making History, an alternate history novel in which a different, more astute leader led Nazi Germany, hiding his anti-Semitism until after the Nazis had developed nukes and won WWII – and then wiped out Europe’s Jews. 

It’s clear to me that Trump himself and many of his minions definitely have fascist tendencies.  Fortunately for us, Trump himself is too lazy to be a dictator.  That’s too much work.  Moreover, the critical mass of public opinion in this country is sufficient to induce his more intelligent supporters to keep a low profile, rather than actively work to make him an effective dictator.  For all his dull mediocrity, “Sleepy Joe” Biden managed to persuade a majority of American voters to support him.  As I noted earlier, that itself doesn’t surprise me; what surprises me is that his margin of victory wasn’t higher.  He was less divisive than Hillary Clinton, who herself won the popular vote in 2016.   Trump himself alienated so many Republicans that prominent ones such as GWB and Colin Powell actually endorsed Biden.  When top level politicians in your own party endorse your opponent, that’s a sign you may lose the election.  Certainly it was NOT stolen. 

That being the case, however, we’re on notice that a subsequent potential dictator who is smarter and more motivated than Donald Trump has a deep and wide – though numerically minority – wellspring of support on which to build and draw should the occasion arise.   This isn’t over yet. 

Trump: It's Not About Politics

Lately I’ve been vocal about calling Trump himself and his supporters idiots, and gotten some flak about insulting people because I disagree with their politics.  What they don’t seem to understand, is that with regard to Trump’s incompetence and our opposition thereto, it’s not about his politics.

First off, I’m a Libertarian who was originally Republican.   Here are my presidential votes, starting in 1988, when I was 19:  George H. W. Bush (1988), George H.W. Bush (1992), Bob Dole (1996), Harry Browne (LPA) (2000), Badnarik (LPA) (2004), Bob Barr (LPA) (2008), Mitt Romney (2012), Gary Johnson (LPA) (2016).   I have never voted Democrat, at any level.  I default to Republican candidates unless a Libertarian happens to be running for that slot.  I have some issues with Democrats, which I’ll address in a later blog; for now, suffice to say that I am not a Democrat and never have been. 

FYI:  Libertarians are a third party whose basic premise is that the proper function of government is to protect individual rights, not to redistribute wealth (the Democrats’ major problem), to legislate morality (the Republicans’ major problem), or to start wars abroad or favor businesses with subsidies and regulations at their request (both parties’ problem).  As a practical matter most Libertarians seem to be former Republicans fed up with the GOP, and when it comes to stealing votes, the LPA’s votes are mainly at the expense of Republicans.  In addition to defending gun rights, Libertarians also support legalizing marijuana, which leads them to be slammed by Democrats as “Republicans who smoke pot.”   Among the Republicans themselves, the “Libertarian Wing”, as it were, is Ron Paul, Rand Paul (his son), Justin Amash, and Thomas Massie.  The LPA candidate for president in 2012 and 2016 was Gary Johnson, former Republican governor of New Mexico.  

Trump’s Politics.  He really doesn’t have any.  This was a guy born rich from the start, spoiled for his entire life.   A doctor renting space from his father falsely diagnosed him with bone spurs, which kept him out of Vietnam.   Even Al Gore knew enough to go to Vietnam, albeit in a non-combat unit, just so he could say he went; GWB went into the Air Force National Guard, a unit which would not be sent overseas.  Trump has not been mayor, state legislator, state governor, or US congressman.  His sole experience in politics has been in local, shady real estate deals, “you scratch my back, I scratch yours”.  He lacks the ability to understand politics at the abstract level; he wouldn’t know Das Kapital from Mein Kampf from Wealth of Nations.  Tell him, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” and he would zone out, not even recognizing the nature or source of that quote.

NRA.  About the only consistent political position Trump seems to be able to articulate is support for gun rights.  This isn’t because he loves guns, or is passionate about the principle behind the Second Amendment.  It’s because he simply recognizes the NRA as a political ally, so he’ll support whatever they ask him to do.   If someone else tells him, “maybe it’s not a good idea to allow private citizens to own guns which outwardly appear to resemble the M16s our own military carries,” he’ll say “yeah, sure” and unwittingly orally advocate gun control as a principle.  Then a few days later the NRA will helpfully remind him of their position, he will be utterly confused, but will then simply repeat what they told him to say.   Given that I support gun rights, own several guns, and am myself an NRA member, I have to say that on the one political position which Trump most consistently supports, I agree with him.  Not for the same reasons, but hey…

Under normal circumstances I would agree that calling someone an idiot because you disagree with their political views is wrong.   But I don’t do that with Democrats, who are ostensibly on the other side from me.   At the extremes, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who explicitly identifies as a National Socialist (Nazi), I may have met a few people who self-identify as communists, socialists, or anarchists, and do not recall ever calling them idiots for that reason, if any.  I do it with Trump supporters, not because they’re nominally Republican, or because Trump is nominally the Republican president, but because Trump is an idiot, Trump is incompetent, and his politics are irrelevant in this whole equation.  

Maybe you can imagine someone you went to high school with, someone you could sit down and have a beer with, and discussing politics the two of you would agree 100% on the issues.  But this person has never held office and is not qualified to be the mayor, much less run the United States.  Would you say this person should be the President simply because you agree with their politics?   Come on, now.

Trump Is NOT Hitler

Thank GOD.   Now we’ve had about one year of our new President, and Alec Baldwin remains a free man.   As do I, and I’ve made my own share of jokes at Trump’s expense – publicly, on Facebook - though obviously with a considerably smaller audience than Baldwin.

As Bill Maher complained, the problem with incessantly comparing anyone you dislike to Hitler is that when someone rolls by who IS Austrian, has a small mustache, and is bent on world domination and hatred of Jews, no one takes you seriously.  It’s the Fraudulent Lupine Outcry by Pre-Adult Male.  

The Dolfmeister realized in November 1923 that his potential subjects were sticklers for law and order, so a Putsch wouldn’t do.  He bided his time, and in January 1933, despite having lost the prior year election to the Blimp, succeeded at getting appointed Chancellor by a cabal of clowns who should have known better.

This didn’t give him full control, however.  It took the Reichtag Fire of March 1933 to result in emergency powers, which then wound up with socialists, communists, and everyone else who didn’t like Hitler round up and put in the fresh, new camp known as Dachau. 

So where’s our Reichtag Fire?   It’s been a year and we’re still waiting.  Is the NSA that lazy?

The closest we’ve seen to this was 9/11 >> Patriot Act >> Gitmo.  But on January 20, 2009, Bush Jr. voluntarily relinquished power, without the Red Army above his bunker.  Come on – Gitmo couldn’t hold all the people who badmouthed Bush. 

Trump is definitely self-centered, egomaniac, narcissistic, etc.  The world revolves around him.  He’s definitely full of himself – I would argue, even MORE than Hitler.  But he’s also lazy.   I don’t think he wants to be Fuhrer.  That’s TOO MUCH WORK.  When’s the last time you saw a picture of Hitler playing golf?  

Then there’s the Night of the Long Knives (June 1934), in which Hitler purged the SA and Party of any and all party rivals, notably Ernst Roehm and Gregor Strasser, anyone who might pose a threat from within.  What we’ve seen with Trump is a piecemeal purge, ad hoc, including his erstwhile Goebbels, Steve Bannon – not a swift, comprehensive purge of his administration.  It smacks more of incompetence than consolidation of power.   

If I were Hitler, I’d be offended by the comparison.  Hitler worked his butt off to be Fuhrer.  He took it seriously.  He wrote a book, raised a movement, etc etc. and didn’t play golf.  He didn’t inherit millions from his father – or anyone else.  Nor was he a nepotist.   In fact, he gave his nephew such a hard time – no handouts and a threat to involuntarily join the Wehrmacht – that the boy went to America, joined the US Navy, and settled on Long Island. 

Whenever I see complaints that the President is playing golf, instead of invading Poland or nuking North Korea, I say, “Thank GOD.”   The less he’s in the White House, the less we have to worry.

Finally, I’ve discovered the closest analogy to Trump, aside from Trump himself:  He’s CARTMAN.

The Monarchist Party

Now we have President-Elect Donald Trump.   Whoa.

Watching the election night coverage on Tuesday, and seeing Trump’s electoral vote tally rise far faster than Hillary’s, it dawned on me that, “Trump is going to win this.  After all….”  And my first reaction was to think…

“Well, we all have to die someday anyway.”

Now I see that Trump is backtracking on some issues and making a few proposals (Second Amendment) which sound like they came from Mitt Romney or John McCain.  I believe that – bluster and bullshit aside – he did NOT really expect to beat Hillary Clinton and now is faced with the task of actually being President.  That includes a real platform, not this random nonsense he farted out during the election.  I mean, if he didn’t expect to be elected, what difference did it make what he proposed?   YUGE WALL?  Why not?  Repeal Obamacare?  Why not?  Execute Hillary?  Sure.  All under the vague and pompous banner of “Make America Great”. 

Was there anything else?  I don’t recall.  He couldn’t articulate anything more than that and since he contradicted himself daily and had no chance of winning (right?) I paid little attention to this orange Casino Hitler, his stupid speeches, or his Kool Aid Minions.  My vote was locked in for Johnson. 

All this reminds me of the Monarchist Party.   Back at the University of Maryland, College Park (1986-1990, AD), there was student government.  It had very little power and was mostly a joke.  So much so, that a group decided to take that to its logical extreme and actually run AS a Monarchist Party.  Their leader was King Tom, and his #1 campaign promise was building a moat of beer around the campus.  College Park is the main campus of the University of Maryland, mostly on the west side of Route 1 inside the Beltway, though Frat Row, Leonardtown, and Richie Coliseum are on the east side.  I don’t recall seeing a map of this plan, but it would have to involve bridges north and south of College Park for Route 1 to cross.  Nowadays it would be filled with some hipster-approved IPA.  Anyhow. 

Despite – or perhaps because of – these ludicrous campaign promises, the Monarchists did win, and King Tom did become student government president.  Guess what – NO MOAT.  Drive down Route 1 if you don’t believe me.  Nope, so far as I can tell, he simply did what the last student government president did, and most likely what his successor, whoever that was, did after him.   I believe their only power is to distribute student activities fees among the groups.  Beyond that, I couldn’t tell you – except that building moats was probably outside his power.

While I’m on the topic of the election, I’d like to address three issues.

Reasons for Hillary’s Failure.  We went from “Hillary will win in a landslide” to “Trump has been elected.”  Why did this happen?

1.         Many feel that Hillary’s email issues caused Democrats to defect en masse to Trump.  She messed up on email security and you’ll vote for the enemy.  Yeah, I don’t think so.  For every confused Democrat I’m sure there was at least one GOP-er who was horrified that Casino Hitler won his party’s nomination.

2.         Trumpers Drank the Kool Aid.  Actually, Trump won less votes than Mitt Romney.   The GOP candidate won less votes than the prior guy.   GOP voting numbers have been relatively stable for the last few elections.  Try again.

3.         Hold on, who is voting?  I think the biggest issue was that since the election was said to be a foregone conclusion, why bother voting?  This lulled too many voters – most of them Democrats - who normally would have come out to vote in a close race, to stay away from the long lines at the voting booths on Tuesday.  I find that the most plausible explanation for Trump’s victory over Hillary.

The Protests.  Apparently not everyone is happy that Trump won.   So we have protests.   A few observations about this.

1.         Your proper time to “protest” was on election day.

2.         If you didn’t actually vote for Hillary, and stayed home, what business do you have protesting?

3.         Let’s assume that 100% of the protesters did in fact turn out to vote, and voted for Hillary Clinton.  Despite that, Trump still won.  Doesn’t that show that more people wanted Trump to be president?

4.         The protests will not convince Trump to step down.  They won’t induce Congress – controlled by the GOP – to change the election.  They won’t induce the electors to change their votes.  They won’t convince the Trump voters.  They won’t convince the third party voters.  And they won’t convince all those people who stayed home instead of voting.  So who will it influence?  The protesters themselves.  If they can get this crap out of their systems without interfering with the rest of us, fine.  Whatever makes you feel better.  But don’t try to prevent the rest of us from getting on with our lives.

5.         Stories of people dying because an ambulance couldn’t get through traffic blocked by protesters appear to be recycled stories of Black Lives Matters protesters causing similar fates, themselves originally made up.

6.         People have a right to protest for whatever reason they want, no matter how stupid or unpopular the cause.  This includes KKK marchers.  What they don’t have a right to do is block traffic, kill people, beat people up, or destroy property.   None of that endears the protesters to the nation at large and is in fact counterproductive.

7.         As asinine as I find these protests, the litany of Trumpers telling protesters to get back to work – if they have jobs – is equally annoying.  The Trumpers are showing just as much arrogance and cluelessness as the PC crowd and SJWs they bitch about. 

Not My President.  For the last eight years we’ve endured the anti-Obama crowd whining, “not MY President”, “it’s the WHITE House!”, “kick out the Kenyan”, etc.  Now that Trump has won, his supporters somehow expect us all to fall in love with the guy and shut up.  Nope.  Facebook – among other forums for public opinion - will be full of anti-Trump stuff for the next 4-8 years.  We’ll make fun of his bizarre orange tan, his Boris Johnson hair, his tiny hands, his thin skin, his bankrupt casinos, his hot immigrant wife, his spoiled kids, and whatever mistakes he makes will be blown up 100x.  The slightest hint of dishonesty and corruption will be grounds for incessant demands for impeachment.  Turnabout is fair play.  If the Trumpers want to deny they’re fascists who expect complete obedience to authority and no tolerance for dissent, they can prove it by showing the same thick skin to criticism and complaints as Obama had to all this time.  From what I’ve seen so far, Trump is incapable of laughing at himself – unlike Obama – and his followers likewise do a poor job of tolerating opposing viewpoints.   It’s like they need trigger warnings and safe spaces.  Trump won?  Tough s**t for everyone who didn’t vote for him.  Trump is ridiculed and made fun of?  Tough s**t for him and his minions.  Consistency is all we ask for….

Anyhow.

As of November 18, it’s still two months to go before Obama moves out and Trump moves in.  That’s two months for him to figure out what the hell he’s going to do for the next four years.  My subjective impression – and we’ll see how accurate my prediction works out to be – is that his more outlandish proposals will fall into the same oblivion as King Tom’s moat of beer, leaving us with a platform of politically feasible policies indistinguishable from what any other conservative Republican president – e.g. Mitt Romney, John McCain, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, etc. (except for outliers like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul) – would do.  If that’s the case, I think we can all sleep a little easier.  We survived 8 years of Reagan, 4 years of George H.W. Bush, and 8 years of Dubya.  A properly restrained Trump – assuming that’s possible – is not something to worry about.   And if it is? 

“Well, we all have to die someday anyway.”