Gold refining is one of the most common metaphors in Buddhist teaching.
The Upakkilesa Sutta (Defilements, Corruptions, Impurities) names five metals that contaminate gold: iron, copper, tin, lead, and silver. Contaminated gold is brittle and dull. These are matched to the five hindrances: sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and doubt. Once they are removed, the mind becomes pliant and radiant.
Some might say that Trump appears to have an unhealthy obsession with gold.
Maybe it is not unhealthy. Maybe it is not what it appears to be. Maybe Trump is aware, maybe unconsciously, of his impurities and corruption. Maybe, as Buddhism teaches, he is looking for a way to remove those impurities. Maybe the gold is a constant reminder to him of his need for refining so that his mind will become pliant, radiant and compassionate.
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades! There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China.” –Donald Trump, September 14, 2026
We’re going to be fine. We’re all going to be fine.
It is reported that the Mapquest app—yes, Mapquest—became the number one app in the Apple store, after Mapquest refused to give in to Trump’s attempt to rename Lake Ontario.
Google gave in without a fight.
My first thought was that I would protest by discarding Google from my digital life. Yeah well. Easier said than done.
My AI life is not a problem, since it is already squarely based in Claude, with Gemini in distant second place. And unlike many other users, I don’t do much with other Google apps like Google Docs.
Mail and search are a different story. I could shift both away from Google, and I should, but convenience in that case outweighs conviction. Though if Google continues its kiss-ass ways, that could change.
One place that is vulnerable to my principles is Google Maps. It is admittedly pretty useful, and alternatives are slim. Waze, one of the leading alternatives, is of course owned by Google.
Then my search (yeah, okay, a Google search), turned up Here We Go. Here We Go was developed by Nokia, and evolved into a mapping app supported by multiple car makers.
It is well reviewed as a Google Maps alternative, highlighted for its lack of clutter and especially for its ability to download maps that can be used in offline settings.
I have downloaded Here We Go to my phone but haven’t used it yet. I will. (I also downloaded Mapquest to send a message to Google. I could send an email to Google too, though it would be a Gmail and anyway Google could care less.)
Dada and Surrealism were significant art movements in the early 20th century. One of the most famous works is Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain* (above), though Duchamp refused to be classified with any of the movements he informed and inspired. These movements also included performances, many of which made no sense then—or now. It was art.
Trying to make sense of the action, speech and thought of the current president defies understanding. Perhaps we have been looking at him through the wrong lens. We think of him as a businessman and currently as the most powerful leader in the world. This has left us shaking our heads. But maybe we are looking at it all wrong.
We may say to ourselves, “This can’t be real!”
Maybe it isn’t real. Maybe it is surreal. Maybe it is the work of an artist so supremely talented that his work and performances go right over our heads.
A beautiful Rose Garden buried in concrete. A giant Reflecting Pool covered with green algae. Every wall in a stately historic mansion decorated in ugly and gaudy gold. Historic texts, a Declaration and a Constitution, burned in front of our eyes. Just a few of the extraordinary works that are still being made.
If all that isn’t cutting edge art, deserving of multiple prizes, I don’t know what is.
* The original Fountain from 1917 is no longer available. Replicas of the original are worth between $2.5 and $5 million. Something for a presidential artist to think about.
Donald Trump Jr. says he admires India’s poor people because of their spirit and smiles
Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, is in India this week to promote his family’s real estate empire and more than $1 billion worth of luxury Trump Tower projects in four cities, but he still had time to praise India’s poor for their smiles.
“I don’t mean to be glib about it, but you can see the poorest of the poor and there is still a smile on a face. It’s a different spirit that you don’t see in other parts of the world … and I think there’s something unique about that. I know some of the most successful people in the world, and some of them are the most miserable people in the world.”
You can draw your own conclusions about what this says about Don Jr. and others in the Trump family and circle. You can guess who the miserable successful people might be.
As for the happy smiling poor he admires, I quote from the movie Sullivan’s Travels by Preston Sturges. A successful Hollywood director of nonsensical comedies, John L. Sullivan, wants to confront the grim reality of the Great Depression, and so plans to travel in disguise as a tramp. His butler Burrows sets him straight:
Burrows: I have never been sympathetic to the caricaturing of the poor and needy, sir.
John L. Sullivan: Who’s caricaturing? I’m going out on the road to find out what it’s like to be poor and needy and then I’m going to make a picture about it.
Burrows: If you’ll permit me to say so, sir, the subject is not an interesting one. The poor know all about poverty and only the morbid rich would find the topic glamorous.
John L. Sullivan: But I’m doing it for the poor. Don’t you understand?
Burrows: I doubt if they would appreciate it, sir.
And:
Burrows: You see, sir, rich people and theorists – who are usually rich people – think of poverty in the negative, as the lack of riches – as disease might be called the lack of health. But it isn’t, sir. Poverty is not the lack of anything, but a positive plague, virulent in itself, contagious as cholera, with filth, criminality, vice and despair as only a few of its symptoms.
The emailed response from the Guggenheim’s chief curator to the White House was polite but firm: The museum could not accommodate a request to borrow a painting by Vincent Van Gogh for President and Melania Trump’s private living quarters.
Instead, wrote the curator, Nancy Spector, another piece was available, one that was nothing like “Landscape With Snow,” the 1888 Van Gogh rendering of a man in a black hat walking along a path in Arles, France, with his dog.
The curator’s alternative: an 18-karat, fully functioning, solid gold toilet — an interactive work titled “America” that critics have described as pointed satire aimed at the excess of wealth in this country.
For a year, the Guggenheim had exhibited “America” — the creation of contemporary artist Maurizio Cattelan — in a public restroom on the museum’s fifth floor for visitors to use.
But the exhibit was over and the toilet was available “should the President and First Lady have any interest in installing it in the White House,” Spector wrote in an email obtained by The Washington Post.
The artist “would like to offer it to the White House for a long-term loan,” wrote Spector, who has been critical of Trump. “It is, of course, extremely valuable and somewhat fragile, but we would provide all the instructions for its installation and care.”
“I would never donate to any charity that helps sharks. I hope all the sharks die.” –Donald Trump
As you’ll see in the below post from 2018, Stormy Daniels reported Trump’s attitude towards sharks, which she said was an obsession. At that point, I suggested that shark jewelry might be a way to protect us from Trump. We don’t know whether or not enough shark jewelry or other shark items were used. Obviously, whatever was tried, so far it hasn’t worked. Nevertheless, if you want to keep trying, with shark jewelry or supporting shark causes, please continue. It can’t hurt.
If you’re wondering whatever happened to Stormy Daniels or Melania Trump, you can look it up.
In Touch Weekly has published an interview with Stormy Daniels about her affair with Trump—while he was married to Melania, starting just after the birth of their son Barron.
It is profoundly sad, dispiriting, and disturbing. But not surprising. Not surprising either is the silence of his Republican henchmen and supporters, who seem to put up with anything, provided they can make more money or keep their jobs and power.
Among the non-sexual tidbits that have caught everyone’s attention is her relating Trump’s obsessive fear and hatred of sharks:
“The strangest thing about that night — this was the best thing ever. You could see the television from the little dining room table and he was watching Shark Week and he was watching a special about the U.S.S. something and it sank and it was like the worst shark attack in history. He is obsessed with sharks. Terrified of sharks. He was like, “I donate to all these charities and I would never donate to any charity that helps sharks. I hope all the sharks die.” He was like riveted. He was like obsessed. It’s so strange, I know.”
Just as vampires are put off by crosses, it is possible, just possible, that shark jewelry can protect us from Trump. Either figurative sharks or shark’s teeth might work. No guarantees, but it’s worth a try.
Update
From Mashable:
Mashable reached out to the Shark Week network after reading a report alleging that Trump once said, “I hope all sharks die.” Its response was measured.
“Shark Week celebrates the wonder of these majestic creatures and their critical importance to the ecosystem,” a Discovery Channel representative told Mashable when asked for comment about the president’s Shark Week viewing habits and fears. “Their safety and conservation is the most important message conveyed throughout the week.”
Note: The immediately previous post explains who David Dennison was. This post, also from 2018, is more philosophical. The final line, “at least we will have the open-eyed, open-hearted hope of getting it right the next time”, can be seen as an ironic dagger. The point about karma, about reaping what we as Americans sow, eternally applies.
A man reaps what he sows. Galatians 6:7
Karma: A term used to refer to the doctrine of action and its corresponding “ripening” or “fruition”, according to which virtuous deeds of body, speech, and mind produce happiness in the future (in this life or subsequent lives), while nonvirtuous deeds lead instead to suffering. Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism
When I experience the presidency of David Dennison, I wonder how we got here. One answer that won’t go away is that it is the sum of everything we have done and are doing as an American society—or everything we haven’t done and aren’t doing.
This isn’t to say that we are somehow being punished for transgressions, or that socially and culturally we haven’t done some admirable and adaptive things. It is just to say that some elements (not picking on social media, just using it as an example) have the potential to take us down the wrong road, and that when you add up the elements with potential for future misdirection, and the choices we have made, maybe it should not be surprising that we woke up one day—literally—to discover that the most unlikely human being in the world was the leader of the most powerful nation in the world.
So maybe the best response is to look at every one of those elements and choices, and mindfully consider whether they might have played a part in getting to this point. That might not rid us of Dennison soon, or of our national karma, or of our weird political harvest, but at least we will have the open-eyed, open-hearted hope of getting it right the next time.
Note: This is the first of two posts exhumed from the wayback about David Dennison. The other, which requires knowing who David Dennison was, is next.
Update: Following this post, I realized that “DD” are also the initials of Dirk Diggler. Diggler, the main character in the movie Boogie Nights (1997), is a well-endowed male porn star based on the famous porn actor John Holmes. So is the choice of “David Dennison” about a porn star’s breasts or about a porn star’s penis? Or both?
In the non-disclosure agreement signed by Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about her relationship with Trump, he used the name David Dennison. The signature line—which according to her new lawsuit he didn’t sign—doesn’t even have that fake name. All it says is “DD”.
Why David Dennison? The initials tell it all.
Stormy Daniels bra size, reported in the multiple sites that keep track of such things, is 34DD. This is Trump’s juvenile little joke. Get it? If you’re not laughing, that’s because nothing Trump does—including his attempted jokes—is a laughing matter. Just, as he would tweet, SAD!
“All my people are businessmen; their loyalty is based on that…and on that basis, anything is possible.”
“Free to make our profits without the Justice Department, the FBI…looking for a man who desperately wants to be President of the United States.”
The Godfather Part II
The Godfather Part I and Part II are more than near-perfect movies, two of the most critically-acclaimed films of all time. They are compelling pictures of the unrestrained grab for power and money, fueled by mutual self-interest and governed by no other values.
These two quotes from The Godfather Part II (1974), more than forty years old, encapsulate where America finds itself today:
MICHAEL CORLEONE
“All my people are businessmen; their loyalty is based on that. One thing I learned from my father is to try to think as the people around you think…and on that basis, anything is possible.”
HYMAN ROTH
“If only I could live to see it, kid; to be there with you. How beautifully we’ve done it, step by step. Here, protected, free to make our profits without the Justice Department, the FBI; ninety miles away in partnership with a friendly government. Ninety miles, just a small step, looking for a man who desperately wants to be President of the United States, and having the cash to make it possible.”
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