For your consideration: there exists a remote stretch of beach on the Secret Oregon Coast where a shack sits upon a cliff. Several Japanese glass fishing floats dangle from the eaves of the cabin.

An old man with two angry dogs visits the shack a couple times of year. He sometimes sits outside and looks at the ocean. The shack is old, dilapidated, and badly in need of paint and roof repair. One gets the idea that this man, or his father, built the shack, but somewhere along the way, the always great notion of consistent maintenance drifted away. The cabin now was clearly going to seed.

Not too long ago, on a bright morning, a regular beachcomber walked past the shack and noticed something new about it. He was jolted by what he saw: TRUMP 2020 painted in red on the front of the blue shack. The shack was falling apart but here was a bold and freshly painted political advertisement in the middle of nowhere that virtually no one would ever see. Was the old man trying to convince the ocean to vote for Trump, or the whales and gulls and otters? It was an astonishing and unlikely sight for the beachcomber to encounter and it braced him. It made him think hard about the man’s act and commitment to the President’s reelection. Perhaps the ad was merely for him to read as a daily affirmation, but of course he was only there a couple times a year. Was it wholly incongruous to place a political ad in the midst of such sweeping natural beauty? Where did the fervor to paint the ad originate? Did painting the ad make him happy? Are Biden supporters doing something similar with their ramshackle beachfront properties? The beachcomber’s political beliefs did not align with the old man’s. (The beachcomber was practically a communist.) Still, he sort of admired the effort. The old man had at least got off his ass for a few minutes to declare a political belief. If more Americans did that (and voted), this would be a far better nation.

A final question entered the beachcomber’s mind: once the election was over, would the old man paint over the ad? Or it would it remain and fade and weather and decompose in concert with the cabin’s inevitable demise? Was it all one really big fat metaphor?

I didn’t really catch on to the Great Debasing of Americans (by Americans) until I landed in a domicile that offered free cable television. I hadn’t had cable in over 20 years, but a friend gave me a big flatscreen and I hooked it up…and Jesus…

As I surfed the channels, I noticed a pattern right away: many of the shows, whether reality-based or dramas, showed Americans being debased by some asshole boss/expert or the cops or their so-called friends and family. The debasement was subtle or loud, but usually loud. It came in the chef shows. The bar rescue shows. The wedding shows. The cops kicking ass shows. The wives of (insert city here) shows. The homestead shows. The losers at sea fishing shows. The pitch-me-your-bullshit-idea shows.

The latter is what the Great Debaser Donald Trump rode to not being elected by a popular vote majority in the 2016 election. (Remember he lost by three million votes.)

Trump has ratcheted up his Debasing via twitter and speeches to a heretofore unknown cesspool level in American history. He took to the gutter and slimed it into a vile rock and roll. He debases: Immigrants. LGBTQ. Liberals. Reporters in wheelchairs. Female (Democratic) governors. Blacks. Parents of a young man killed int the service of his country. Female reporters. The land. The ocean. Obama. Canada.

Why didn’t many Americans reject the Great Debasing in Chief and the debasing of Americans for sport and entertainment in general? How did it come to this?

Easy. It makes a lot more money than being a nation of Uplifting. Uplifting people doesn’t sell nearly as well or deliver the high ratings. Debasing does.

Cue the Pixies song “Debaser.” This is our real national anthem. Make sure you grovel when you listen to it here:

When someone is debased long enough or debases others for a long time, they will go insane. They will root for more debasement and relish in others getting debased. They love watching it on TV. They think it’s not them being debased as they watch. They are wrong. They are complicit. I’m not sure you really ever come back from that. There seems no way to break this spell in my country.

Steve Wonder’s “Higher Ground” just came on the radio as I was writing this. How to proceed as a nation is contained within that song. It’s all right there. Higher ground, let’s get there and get out of the gutter.

A special friend was having a landmark birthday. The occasion called for an extraordinary gift—a hard core Oregon gift. I thought and thought about what to give, and nothing came to me. Then one morning on the beach, I found a choice cut of beaverwood, and PRESTO! The idea came to me!

I presented the beaverwood to an artist who lives near me. I commissioned the artist to paint a beaver on the beaverwood. I told him I wanted the beaver to look maniacal. That was it. I pitched a price and he agreed.

The next day the artist knocked on my door and presented this piece of art. The beaver was maniacal all right. He was wielding a chainsaw! I was delighted beyond belief and gave him a tip.

A week or so later I gave the present to my special friend and she loved it. It’s now on display in her home.

“Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around a lake,” wrote the poet Wallace Stevens.

I was thinking about that quote and other matters of all things lakes in my life as I walked around a mountain lake on a cold and bright morning. My distance totaled almost five miles. When I completed my walk I sat down at a picnic table some 30 feet away from the lake and wrote up these meditations.

I believe if anyone, including my detractors, who wanted to really know the truth about me should: take a five-mile walk around a lake with me and engage in conversation and observation. I believe it would result in a truth-revealing outcome. No texts, no emails, no written words, just a walk around a lake and listening and asking questions and mulling over a person in person.

One of my favorite lines in rock and roll (RIP) is from “Watching the Detectives” by Elvis Costello and the Attractions. “She’s filing her nails while they’re dragging the lake.”

I had forgotten that distinct lapping-the-shore sound the wind whipping up a lake produces. I like it. I realize it had been decades since I last heard it.

I learned from a sign that sockeye salmon used to rear in this lake, only one of two lakes in Oregon with that distinction. Sixty years ago dams murdered that unique distinction. But watershed restoration efforts undertaken a decade ago are bringing it back.

A walk around an unnatural lake (reservoir) caused by a dam is an artificial experience in nature. Finding the truth during such a walk there might prove elusive because the place is a lie.

I saw three chipmunks and three geese on my walk. I saw campers cooking breakfast on campfires and smelled bacon and eggs.

I saw a tan lab fetching sticks from the lake. I could watch that kind of doggedness and unbridled joy for hours.

Veronica Lake is my favorite female name of all time.

The legend of Lady of the Lake is one of the most powerful stories in Western culture. There is just something so alluring about a mysterious woman residing in a lake, (and holding a sword). She wields vital secret knowledge to help the beleaguered race of humankind. She will rise from the lake when we need her the most.

Lake thoughts versus river thoughts versus creek thought versus estuary thought versus ocean thoughts. All so supremely different.

I saw a family with a couple of kids who turned back from a walk around the lake after a hundred yards. The kids didn’t want to go on. I thought: can a forced march end up being good parenting?

I remembered a weekend at Shasta Lake on a houseboat with a woman I loved. She didn’t live long enough to see me get the writing going but she always told me it would one day. Her name was Janet.

Ahhhh the Dexter Lake Club from Animal House. Is it still there?