The Elon Musk Phenomenon
There are a ton of indicators as to how pathetic American society has become. One is that people actually care what Elon Musk thinks about what the Japanese and Italians should do.
Tagged with: Elon Musk Phenomenon
Another One of Those Moments for Trump Supporters
Jack Daniels’ home county in Tennessee voted overwhelming for Trump (obviously), but how happy are these people today?
The whiskey-maker’s largest customer, Canada’s province of Ontario, just cleared its shelves of their product and returned it without payment. The result (thus far): 650 lost jobs.
Normal people do not elect leaders who inflict extreme damage on the voting base. What’s going so wrong with these folks?
Tagged with: Trump Supporters
Is Trump Incompetent?
Trump’s lack of interest in learning about the workings of the world around him does, in fact, render him incompetent. He has essentially zero knowledge of the geopolitics that are required for his job, and that’s just fine with him.
Yet that’s not the true problem with the current U.S. president. Rather, it’s that the only things that matter to him are those that serve to make him wealthier and more powerful. What that translates to at this point is an ongoing set of ridiculous decisions that damage the lives of the common American, and destroy the nation’s standing on the world stage.
Tagged with: Trump Incompetent
The Deep and Painful Ignorance that Is Modern-Day America
We didn’t have something specifically called “Civics” when I was in elementary school, but by the time we were in 5th or 6th grade, every single kid in our class understood that the United States government consisted of three co-equal branches.
Fast-forward 60 years, and what do we have? Well, here’s one Ruth Jones offering some of the most intense ignorance imaginable.
Tagged with: Painful Ignorance that Is Modern-Day America
Trump May Be a Monster, But Not All Americans Think That’s a Bad Thing
Let’s be honest. Very few Americans dispute the assertion that “Trump is a monster.” Almost half of U.S. voters approve of Trump’s aggression in cutting spending on Ukraine, NATO, education, environmental protection, disease control, etc.
I can hear his support base echoing, “Yes, he’s a monster, but this is what it takes to Make America Great Again.”
The author of the meme at right puts this concept nicely.
Tagged with: Trump is a monster, Trump's aggression in cutting spending on education, Trump's aggression in cutting spending on environmental protection, Trump's aggression in cutting spending on NATO, Trump's aggression in cutting spending on Ukraine, Yes Trump's a monster but this is what it takes to Make America Great Again
Two Views on Empathy
At left are opposing views on the subject of human empathy, including one from German-American historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt, one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century.
What Elon Musk says on the subject is reminiscent of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, who really was a “thing” in the mid-20th Century until people realized that caring for one another was an essential part of what it means to be a human being, as opposed to, say, a tiger shark.
Sadly, we’ve seen a resurgence of this “mentality,” at least in the last decade here in the U.S. Almost half of American voters favor the dismantling of our government’s capacity to deal with disease, hunger, environmental collapse, ignorance, and corporate criminality. It appears that 250 years of government of, by, and for the people is no match for the Musk/Trump machine.
Tagged with: 250 years of government of by and for the people, dismantling of our government's capacity to deal with corporate criminality, dismantling of our government's capacity to deal with disease, dismantling of our government's capacity to deal with environmental collapse, dismantling of our government's capacity to deal with hunger, dismantling of our government's capacity to deal with ignorance, Musk/Trump machine
Travel May Be “Fatal to Prejudice,” But . . .
In an earlier post, Destroying America, I speculated that it is the decline in U.S. educational standards that is responsible for our electing “a conman with the IQ of a jar of mayonnaise.”
At left is a slightly different take on the subject, in which Mark Twain discusses the role of international travel in the development of people with “broad and charitable views of the world.”
There are two main problems with applying this principle onto present-day America, however:
• The growing chasm between rich and poor means that fewer people can afford to travel overseas than there were before the onset of “trickle-down economics” 45 years ago, and
• People steeped in bigotry, prejudice, and narrow-mindedness have very little interest in changing their character.
Tagged with: Travel is Fatal to Prejudice
Corruption in the White House
Recently, we learned about Trump’s practice of charging businesspeople $5 million for an audience with him. Now, we have the news at left.
Morally, America is in freefall. Is there no stopping this?
Tagged with: Corruption in the White House
Destroying America
At left is a subject of intense debate, i.e., how did the United States come to find itself governed by “a conman with the IQ of a jar of mayonnaise?”
The common wisdom, and I can’t offer any real improvement on it, is the decline in the U.S. educational system.
I had a dear friend about 45 years ago who hailed from the Netherlands, a country in which every boy and girl, by the time they graduated from high school and went on to college:
• Was fluent in Dutch, German and English
• Read Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes
• Played the piano fairly well–at least the intermediate pieces, e.g., the waltzes, nocturnes and mazurkas of Chopin
That was almost half a century ago. Think of how much further we’ve fallen since.
Tagged with: Destroying America
U.S.–Canadian Relations
Yes, Trump “blew up” our friendship with our neighbor to the north, but it seems that the Canadians are taking all this philosophically, which is typical of their demeanor.
Intelligent and decent people are aware that s*** happens. In this case, the U.S. has been temporarily laid low by a madman who will be gone at some point in the near future.
Tagged with: U.S.--Canadian Relations
