It’s no longer a matter of living in interesting times. Democracy in the US has always been on a roller coaster. We got started on a big hill by men (women only in the background at that point) who were flawed giants. Their principal flaw was owning slaves, In their defense, we can say that slavery was common at that time, and it hadn’t yet occurred to many that slavery was (and is) an evil institution. The country has had a variety of ups and downs since its founding, we’ve had numerous wars, including the military actions required to complete . . . → Read More: Bad to Worse
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 Comments are closed  Blog  African-Americans, Carter, China, Civil Rights, Clinton, democracy, economic decline, economy, Eisenhower, George Bush, GOP, Great Depression, Great Recession, greed, Harley Davidson, honesty, housing, industrial base, Interesting Times, Interstate Highway System, laves, mobsters, Native Americans, Nixon, North Korea, Pogo, political decline, presidents, Reagan, Republican, rich get richer, robber barons, Russia, slavery, tariffs, Trump, Vietnam War, War in Southeast Asia, women, WWII I haven’t posted anything new in a while. I’ve been too busy reading the political news and wringing my hands. My sense is that the world situation is getting worse. We have, of course, had “dark days” in times past. I’m not sure there has ever been a time the planet was without at least one war going on. Most recently, in the States we experienced the World Wars (I and II), the Korean War, the “conflict” in Vietnam, and whatever is currently going on in the Mid-East. We’ve also had Civil Rights challenges, and various other conflicts and difficulties . . . → Read More: Dumbfounded, Discouraged, and Dismayed Comments are closed Blog Ark, be fruitful and fill the world, birth control, Bosnians, Civil Rights, Civil War, climate changer, Cosmic Energy, dark days, earth, economy, fifth extinction, food, gap between rich and poor, global warming, humans, intelligence, Korean Ware, logical consequences, mass extinction, news, Noah, Pogo, politics, Serbians, slavery, Southern Heritage, species, territory, the All That Is, the South, Trump to bring back coal, Vietnam War, Walt Kelly, WWII With apologies to Paul McCartney, the winding road I have in mind for this blog is not to your door but to the 2016 elections in the US. For one reason or another, we seem to be off to an earlier and stranger start than is usually the case. The impetus for this blog post was an article in Salon by Heather Cox Richardson about the intellectual battle for the soul of the Republican Party. The article caught my attention because I started my political life as an “Eisenhower Republican” while I was still too young to vote. I liked . . . → Read More: The Long and Winding Road Comments are closed Blog 2016, austerity, Big Ag, Big Enders, Big Pharma, Charlie Brown, Chinese Revolution, conflict, Cuban Revolution Russian Revolution, Democrats, economic data, economic history, economy, ecosystems, election, evidence procedure, financial well-being, Food Stamps, football, French revolution, George Santayana, gerrymander, global mean temperature, global warming, greed, Heather Cox Richardson, incarceration, inequality, Jonathan Swift, Little Enders, Lucy, Lucy and Charlie Brown football, macroeconomics, microeconomics, Minimum Wage, national defense, November 2016, opportunity, Paul McCartney, politicians, reality-based, religion, Republicans, Salon, Social Security, values, voting, wakeup call, Wall Street In a recent article, Spencer Critchley discussed the difficulties a number of “conservative” Republicans are having coping with the complexities of the modern world. The part of his essay that caught my attention is the following: The truth, as usual, is complex. But complexity is what the right-wing historical revisionists don’t like. They prefer to reduce it to binary choices of right-wrong, good-evil. We see this on the extreme left, too, where some argue that because the founders did not extend full rights to slaves, women or Native-Americans, they were no better than any other white, male oppressors. For . . . → Read More: Coping with Complexity Comments are closed Blog argue, arguing, binary choices right/wrong, climate change, complexities, complexity, conservative, Critchley, debate, economics, economy, evolution, Fiorest Gump, fundamentalists, good/evil, intelligence, Islam, Islamic fundamentalists, Korzybski, macro-economics, mental maps, modern world, NY Times, Paul Krugman, reality, Republicans, Richard Bandler, sanity, science, slaves, territory With apologies to the Beatles and “A Day in the Life”: One of my daily habits is reading through the major online news sources to get a sense of what is happening here in the U.S. and in the world. I often find it fascinating to see what subjects are drawing the most media attention—and the kind of attention they are attracting. Here’s a brief round-up of recent “stuff”: Placebos are in the news (again): One of the things I find most interesting about placebos is that articles about them written by medical doctors studiously avoid the word . . . → Read More: I Read the News Today (Oh, Boy) Comments are closed Blog A Day in the Life, advertising, Beatles, belief, Chicago, corrupts, debt, deficit, Detroit, economy, evidence, experience, fiscal, history, hotel maid, hypnosis, IMF, Internet, John Edwards, Korzybski, lamestream, leaders, Lord Acton, map, media, men, metamodel, news, NLP, placebos, platitudes, political, politicians, politics, power, primaries, pundits, question, reality, Republican, Sarah Palin, scandal, Schwartzeneger, talking points, tax rates, taxation, taxes, territory, TV, Twitter, U.S., unemployment, Weiner |
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