America is not an Orange Julius; is it?

It turns out our ambitions were quite similar, Donald Trump's and mine.

We were both interested in acquiring a franchise – a business opportunity.

I always had an affection for Orange Julius and its one-trick-pony stands at malls. I told my betrothed that when we had the scratch, the itch I'd pursue was an OJ franchise. We could have one stand and live out our days drinking in the proceeds. All it would take is some up-front money and some oranges.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the up-front, not the kind Mr. Dreamcicle Hair does. So I sat back. Meanwhile, Trump set out to buy The Franchise.

Trump's first comments as president-elect sound exactly like this. The government-by-the-people thing is just, in Molly Ivins' words, another bidness opportunity.

He will not shed his role as business mogul while he runs the people's business. He says he will meet with business partners in the Oval Office.

He told the New York Times, "The president can't have a conflict of interest" regarding business ties carried on while in office.

"In theory," he told the Times, "I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly."

Just like an Orange Julius stand.

          Voters can be excused for being confused by what Trump just said. After all, he and all those suckled on the Fox News loop foghorned righteous umbrage about potential conflicts attached to the Clinton Foundation.

          As Trump supporters crowed till hoarse, ethical issues flare when one with government ties wrangles monetary deals. In the Clinton Foundation's case, it was charitable favors to combat environmental devastation, starvation and oppression.

However, making a buck for Trump Inc.? That's just bidness.

          "Get over it," say Trump supporters. "You lost. Let him get on with running the country."

          But, you see, our government isn't something bartered, like one would acquire a casino or golf resort.

          Our government is ours, not Donald Trump's. So let the testing of his theories begin.

          Last week Elizabeth Warren penned a letter with Congressman Elijah Cummings seeking a General Accountability Office investigation into "conflicts of interest related to business holdings of Mr. Trump and his family," as well as a probe whether the president-elect's communications with foreign leaders violated security protocols by failing to use secured lines.

          I hear Trump supporters saying. "Sour grapes, losers."

          Actually, "loser" is not Warren's title. It's U.S. senator. The role of Congress, as with the courts, is to serve as a check on the executive branch. And so she's doing the job she was elected to perform.

          At this point, someone else needs to be reminded of his or her job. That would be anyone who claims the title of citizen.

          Some Americans have the impression that Election Day is the end-all of politics, or of policy discussions. The victorious. The vanquished. Let's get on with the bloodletting.

          That attitude not only is incorrect but wrong, so wrong as to spit on the document Americans say they revere.

The Constitution isn't a framework for one person to have his way with us. It is for us to require that person to comport himself in our best interests.

The only business Trump should do in the Oval Office is our business. We should demand it from day one. We should expect a free press to report on every conflict, and for commentators to explain the ramifications.

We should expect Congress to probe every conflict.

We should expect the courts to stand up to the man who would be king.

Oh, and we should expect of ourselves that we be well-informed, discerning, attentive. Unless we do, we have lost the franchise.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

OK, the second-worst dish known to man

It's time to tone down the hateful rhetoric, we're told. This being Thanksgiving and all, I hear you. So I come with concessionary tidings.

I'm going to stun many and concede that sweet potatoes aren't the worst-tasting food on our planet.

This will come as a surprise, yes, to readers who, if they've been with me for a decade or three, have received a seasonal message each year about sweet potatoes that all should hear:

You can't eat them. I tried that once. Once.

What my tongue told me, oh, back when I was 8, was all the proof needed. Any impression to the contrary is certifiably false.

I've endeavored to inform as many people as possible of this over the years, though some will always be deluded into serving and consuming heaping helpings of steaming orangeness in the Thanksgiving feast.

My brave and dogged crusade has not been without slings and arrows, and death threats.

OK, not exactly death threats. However, I've encountered deadly attempts to get me to eat sweet potatoes in falsified forms. Take the "pumpkin pie" I once found in my mail box at the office.

        Never a chance I'd fall for that.

And there was the letter from the president of the national sweet potato growers' association. He intimated a lawsuit under Texas' food disparagement ("veggie libel") law. I said I'd take the stand any day, any venue, as truth is my defense.

I stand by my critique of the horrid tuber, but now must admit that the claim that sweet potatoes are the worst food in the world could have been better researched.

This is because my researcher son found something worse.

It's called hakarl -- described as a national dish of Iceland, and, wow:

As WorldAtlas.com puts it, hakarl affirms for all time that "one man's trash is another's treasure."

Hakarl is a meal at the end of a long and smelly line. It starts with the harvesting of shark meat, which is then buried for the purpose of fermentation, also known as decomposition.

After it's been in the ground for weeks, long enough to acquire "a smell of rotten cheese mixed with ammonia," the shark flesh is hung for weeks to cure in a moss-covered shed.

My son just acquired a microbiology degree. In the process, he took some fermentation classes focused on making beer. In one of these classes, the professor introduced the class to the fruit of fermentation that is hakarl.

Few of the students actually tasted it. The smell drove most from the room.

This, my son said, should cause us all to think of bad food in a new light.

I've been told by many that sweet potatoes are delicious and nutritious. So is peat moss, says any moose.

The evidence of sweet potatoes' scant edibility is the waves and waves of marshmallows committed for the cause.

A local restaurant shamefully serves "sweet potato s'mores" – with drizzled chocolate and molten marshmallows. Oh, waiter: Smelling salts, please.

Did I say somewhere back there that it was time something about toning down the rhetoric? Ah, yes. So I shall. In deference to Iceland's vice, I take back my assertion that sweet potatoes are the worst food on the planet.

I pronounce them world runner-up.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

 

Treating white males with kindness, respect and inclusion

I consider myself progressive, compassionate, open-minded. Heaven knows I'm tolerant.

Yet in recent days I have realized that routinely I am engaging in profiling.

I see a figure up ahead of me on the sidewalk or in the store: I start making judgments. My mind takes giant leaps that cause teeth and hands to clench and pheromones to fly. 

This is something for which many of us have admonished others, like the president-elect. But here I'm admitting the same -- generalizing about others because of race and sex.

Confession time? Here goes: Since the election, other white males scare the hell out of me.

White males are the demographic most responsible for electing a man whose belligerent tendencies would put White House security on high alert, were he to show up there unannounced.

I realize my sudden disposition about white males is wholly irrational.

        Consider the first Thanksgiving. If the Native Americans profiled people like I have since the election, the feast in question might have been white meat, but not the fowl variety.

Instead, the first illegal aliens were greeted with kindness.

Once again, it's stupid to generalize – particularly about white males. After all, if we fled to Canada like my wife has suggested we do, I'd encounter a whole bunch of them. And most of them would die before voting for someone like Donald Trump. So, too, in Sweden, and France and, for goodness sakes, Scotland, where Trump couldn't be elected greens keeper.

So, once again, this attitude -- this stereotyping -- defies reason. And anyway, you can run, but you can't hide from white males. They appear to be everywhere. 

I've decided to start doing what great ethicists and spiritualists say: not be judgmental.

I'm going to take these matters one white male at a time. After all, the man at the hardware store who helped me find the drill bit I couldn't find was white, and, quite possibly a Trump supporter. He was accommodating, and he knew drill bits. That's one.

The optician who examined my eyes and told me my optic nerves were working efficiently was a white male. I found him competent and courteous. That's another.

The man in the checkout line in front of me was white. He seemed non-threatening, and we appreciate the same brand of toilet paper.

This is going to be difficult, but I can do it, one white male at a time.

I have several white males in my family. I am committed to maintaining correspondence. This is called courage.

What I'm saying is that the tendency to generalize is a mindless reflex. Regardless of the situation, I'll not make it a practice. I will not comport myself like Donald Trump has regarding Mexicans and Muslims.

Should more white males seek to come to our country, I will not resist it. Immigrants historically have been good for us. They bring enthusiasm, skills and new recipes.

Sure, white males have been involved in horrendous things – mass murders, kidnappings, sexual assault, insane wars. However, I am not for closing the borders to keep them out.

Oh, and this applies to heterosexuals as well. I realize that at least some heterosexual males cannot be trusted to keep their hands to themselves, that they tend to treat females as prey. But let's not judge them all for that.

Therefore I say to you, America: We must learn to accept white males. They are among us for better or worse, and they aren't going away, especially if Canada gets particular.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.