Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca made a bold statement at left, though most of human culture acts as though there is no truth to his statement whatsoever.
We live our lives surrounded by never-ending war, torture, the death penalty, poverty/hunger, injustice, ignorance/the denial of science, greed/selfishness, xenophobia, and racial hatred.
What concerns the rest of the world more? Is it Trump, or is it a system and its people that’s so twisted and broken that it enabled Trump to come to power in the first place? There is no way of knowing.
Worse, the situation is getting worse by the day. Today’s new is Trump’s lust for sending American citizens to El Salvadoran prisons. But the shelf-life of these horror stories is limited to just a few days, and we have no idea what’s coming next.
This is where we are now, and it’s not an enviable position.
From CBS News:
Prosecutors are seeking more than seven years in prison for disgraced former New York Congressman George Santos after he pleaded guilty to federal fraud and identity theft charges.
A federal judge on Long Island is scheduled to decide Santos’ sentence during a court hearing April 25.
In a court filing Friday, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York argued that a significant sentence was warranted because the New York Republican’s “unparalleled crimes” had “made a mockery” of the country’s election system.
“From his creation of a wholly fictitious biography to his callous theft of money from elderly and impaired donors, Santos’s unrestrained greed and voracious appetite for fame enabled him to exploit the very system by which we select our representatives,” the office wrote.
Prosecutors argue Santos has a “high likelihood of reoffending”
Prosecutors also argued that Santos had been “unrepentant and defiant” for years, dismissing the prosecution as a “witch hunt” and refusing to resign from Congress as his web of lies was debunked.
There are a couple of aspects to the case that make it particularly sickening:
Santos was elected in southeastern New York, not some rural part of the Deep South that brought Marjorie Taylor Greene to power. It’s impossible to blame a lack of education for this humiliating catastrophe.
He actually is a threat to reoffend, because he’s crazier than an outhouse rat.
This whole revolting story illustrates how it’s possible that the United States re-elected Donald Trump as its president. As a population, we have very little capacity to differentiate between a decent human being and a criminal sociopath.
I had to laugh at this discussion on the video on sea-level rise and the post I just made:
Reader A: Bull, it’s not global warming. It’s part of the ice age cycle. As the gulf stream is near it’s (sic) pike (sic) towards the North Pole.
Reader B: How to tell everyone you’re American without actually saying you’re American. The next thing you’ll tell us is that you voted for Trump.
This video makes the point that melting ice on our planet’s surface is causing sea-level rise, which is correct, but it’s not the ice in the arctic that is of concern; it’s ice that’s on solid ground: Greenland and Antarctica.
If you want to prove this to yourself, put some water in a glass and add an ice cube. Mark the side of the glass with the new water level. Allow the ice cube to melt and note that the water level has not changed.
This from senior physicist Dr. Brian Cox.
I’d have to add in greed and selfishness.
As shown here, my old colleague Jigar Shah is still quite active in the field of clean energy and electric transportation.
Jigar was kind enough to write the introduction to my fourth book, Bullish on Renewable Energy. See below.
American political scientist, author, and entrepreneur Ian Bremmer writes frequently on global political risk. He notes: American consumer sentiment drops to second lowest level since 1952 (pandemic was slightly worse).
Vance is one of America’s top-notch morons, but I doubt he actually said this, as even he understands that China’s government and Chinese business interest own about 1% of all foreign-owned U.S. farmland. It’s negligible, and it’s not getting any larger, as shown in the Cornell University study linked above.
It should not come as a surprise that the only people concerned about this are those who know nothing about it.
