The two principal problems in the US today are Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats tend to be inept. The Republicans tend to be evil. Neither considers the needs of the nation as a whole but instead concentrate on the narrow vested interests of its affiliated group. As a result, the country is not only polarized, but also paralyzed. It is easy to blame President Trump for our problems, but Trump’s presidency is a result of—not the cause of—our problems. Our problems won’t disappear if we remove Trump from office; they would simply coalesce around whomever replaced Trump as president. The . . . → Read More: Two Serious Problems
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 Comments are closed  Blog  a house divided, Abraham Lincoln, Animal Farm, cancer, Democrats, evolution, French film, French revolution, George Orwell, good and evil, land owner, Middle Ages, peasants, pigs, political parties, Republicans, rich and poor, Ridicule, royalty, society, States, Stevie Wonder, wealth We (humans) are doing all sorts of damage to Planet Earth. Humans have always been careless about their garbage. In primitive times, when a tribe accumulated a lot of waste in one location, the tribe simply relocated to a new place. We have, however, run out of new habitable places. We believed, of course, that we had been told to “be fruitful and multiply.” That probably made sense at the time it was originally said, as in those days there was a lot more space than there were people, and life was short and brutal for most people. The best . . . → Read More: No Planet B Comments are closed Blog Ancient Egyptians, be fruitful and multiply, build a wall, China, Civil War, epidemics, farmers, France, greed, humanity, infectious disease, Oedipus, planet Earth, politicians, politics, population, poverty, power corrupts, pressing our luck, Pretty Boy Floyd, revolution, rich, Robin Hood, space, starvation, technology, time warp, United States, world population, World Wars I borrow my title from Shakespeare’s Richard III, a play about what happens when a corrupt and power-hungry individual becomes king. Richard III is one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, ending in multiple deaths. As I write this, it is winter in the States, and it is increasingly looking as though we are heading into a national tragedy. The book, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, provides important background details about the last election for President in the States. The details are indeed scary, not only because it shows the connections between . . . → Read More: Winter of Our Discontent Comments are closed Blog Abraham Lincoln, cyber security, cyber threats, democracy, Democrats, dystopian, George Washington, Lord Acton, politics, power corrupts, profit motive, Putin, Republicans, Richard III, Shakespeare, the Fugs, The Second Coming, tragedy, Trump, U.S. Constitution, utopian, Wide Wide River, winter I borrow my title from Jonathan Swift, who was writing about the problem of starvation in eighteenth-century Ireland. Swift’s proposal for solving the problem, considered one of the best examples of irony in English literature, was for the starving Irish to solve the problem of starvation by boiling and eating their babies. Swift’s proposal was, of course, anything but modest. It was also satire—educated people of the time were not expected to take it seriously. Today’s Republican Party, however, has been proposing actions, while not as horrific as boiling and eating babies, would foster almost as much misery for the . . . → Read More: A Modest Proposal In the days of sailing vessels, there were two main problems: too much wind (see Typhoon) and not enough wind (doldrums). Sailors also speak of the quiet before the storm. That pre-storm quiet is a well-known warning of things to come. I suspect the metaphor also applies to political life: there’s a period of quiet before “all hell breaks loose.” Metaphorically speaking, the same concepts apply to political life, where we fluctuate between having too much going on or not enough happening. We seem to be in such a period now—not just in the States, but in many countries around . . . → Read More: Slow Start for the New Year Comments are closed Blog doldrums, Eisenhower, faculty, Fulfillingness First Finale, graduate school, impeachment, jungle boots, liberty and justice for all, military service, New Year, New Year's Day, Nixon, Oakland Army Base, political life, politics, progress, quiet before the storm, Republican Party, Republicans, Richard, sailing vessels, Stevie Wonder, University of Illinois, Vietnam This is Reality? I am old enough to remember when the U.S. government was being run by adults. That was also true for most of the governments in the so-called civilized world—we had International differences of opinion about forms of government and territorial concerns. Most of us agreed with some of them and disagreed with others, but we were fairly certain that most countries were making decisions about government by relatively rational means, with military conflict being a last resort. Lewis Carroll’s classic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, describes an alternative universe in which nothing is what it seems. Alice had . . . → Read More: Down the Rabbit Hole (Redux) Comments are closed Blog China, climate, climate change, corruption, Democrats, dinosaurs, Eisenhower, elections, enemy, environment, gerrymandering, government, humans, insects, Lewis Carrol, lions, Lord Acton, make the rich richer, mammals, monarchy, North Korea, oceans, plastic, Pogo, politics, power corrupts, rabbit hole, Republican Party, Russia, the few and the many, vote, voting, Walt Kelly I take my title from Shakespear’s play, Richard III. The main character, Richard, who is about to become king of England. is not a nice person. It is no surprise that he becomes a terrible king. The play is a tragedy (everybody dies). Although the time the play was written (1593) and the time depicted in the play were very different from our political situation today, the politics of power were similar. A few centuries later, another English writer, Lord Acton, said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Although the current political situation in the States is . . . → Read More: Winter of Our Discontent Comments are closed Blog Abraham Lincoln, character, conservative, corrupt, corruption, democracy, Democrats, discontent, fact, fiction, gerrymandering, King, King Richard III, land, learning curve, legislators, Lincoln, Lord Acton, met the enemy, morality, Pogo, political office, politics, power, power corrupts, Republicans, resources, Richard III, Shakespeare, States, term limits, tragedy, Walt Kelly, winter, WWII As everyone who ever read 1984 knows, George Orwell understood the importance of truth. In these times of Trump, it is worth revisiting what Orwell had to say about societies where “truth” is what the government says it is. For some relevant quotations, see George Orwell on truth. Verifiable honesty on the part of politicians is rare. I am old enough to remember . . . → Read More: 1984 Redux Comments are closed Blog 1960s, 1984, ancestors, Apian Way, Civil Rights, climate change, crucifixion, fossil fuels, George Bush, George Orwell, gerrymandering, gladiator, global mean temperature, global warming, government, political purpose, protests, resistance is futile, Richard Nixon, rising sea levels, Rome, sit-ins, Spartacis, Tennyson, The Borg, Trump, truth, Ulysses, War in Vietnam Democracy isn’t easy. That may be the reason monarchies have been much more common, starting with primitive, tribal chieftains back in the days of “pre-history.” The reason we don’t have more and better democracies in the world, is, as gerrymandering came about. The party in charge changes the rules to ensure that it will remain in charge. One of the ways the Ku Klux Klan gained political power, for example, was gerrymandering. That wasn’t their only way, of course, as intimidation also played a significant role. It is hard for individuals to resist a popular national movement. The . . . → Read More: Democracy Comments are closed Blog Abraham Lincoln, battle, battle strategy, daddy, democracy, elections, fool all the people, forces of darkness, forest and trees, gerrymandering, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, leadership, Lord Acton, monarchies, monarchy, nation state, Nazis, power, resistance, strategies I’m old enough to know that the U.S. hasn’t always enjoyed a peaceful political process. At one point, we had a major bell curve, with the right and left extremes representing only a few, and the big bulge in the middle consisting of those with more moderate views. We now seem to have bimodal distribution with the big bulges representing the extremes. The divisions lead to class conflict, which at its worse can become class warfare. Class warfare begins when the division between rich and poor is extreme. The poor outnumber the rich, and when they decide that they . . . → Read More: Civil Unrest Comments are closed Blog 1860, Africa, anger, bell curve, bi-modal distribution, bimodal distribution, Civil War, class conflict, daily news, death, French revolution, left-right split, McCarthy, Middle East, Nazis, political divisions, political process, politics, poor, rich, rich and poor, Russian revolution, tripping point, unrest. migration, WWII |
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