women's soccer/football champs

Two nights ago, there was an attack of constipation that brought new and more lustrous meaning to "being an asshole." It was not a good night. Things seem to be on the mend today, but I'm still wary.

Megan Rapinoe

Yesterday, the women's soccer team was feted with a ticker-tape parade in New York City after the team won yet another world cup.

Of all the rejoinders to a self-centered and ignorant president of the United States, the team's unwillingness to make a trip to the White House for congratulations strikes me as enormously -- if not most -- telling.

Here is a flag, however inconsequential in the wider picture, around which Americans might rally. And here is a president whose gaffs and guffaws and cruelties are just too goddamned much to rally and unite the country he claims to represent. A political slam-dunk you might have thought.

Donald Trump's misogyny is challenged ... and largely by the team's openly-lesbian ace, Megan Rapinoe, who is on my list of heroines. What is a do-nothing president to do in the face of honest accomplishment? How about "Make America Great Again ... for a Change."

Yes, he got the tax relief the Republicans squeezed out of George Bush as well. The rich get richer.

But other than that, he is a loose and ignorant cannon who imagines that if he can't buy it, it ain't worth having ... you want peace in the Middle East? Just buy off the Palestinians. Rip up a nuclear peace treaty with Iran. Fuck global warming. Fire anyone who disagrees with you. Leave top positions vacant. Women can kiss his bloody ass. Separate and sardine-can children along the Mexico border. Hob-nob with dictators and the buyers of American arms and other goods.

And in the face of all this and plenty more like it, the Women's Soccer Team won.

From where I sit, I cannot help but think of the line, "Peace be upon them!"

Honest to goodness, it's damn near enough to make me cry.

And I'm not even much of a sports fan.