Tag: Trump

Civil War??

I’d say this analysis from outside the United States and about the United States is dead on and reflects my thinking about the end of the American dream. I don’t think things will change, certainly not for the better. My sense is that there will be a “Civil War” in this country and it probably has already started.

The United States is a dangerously volatile country. There has always been a palpable element of derangement in its social order. It has a record of assassinations and attempted assassinations, and a perennial problem with violent crime which is matched by almost no other first world country. But what is happening now feels different: apocalyptic and inexorable. And the reason it cannot be stopped is that the people, both the population at large and those who are supposed to be in charge, do not want it to stop whatever they may claim.

If they sincerely wanted to put an end to it, they could do so in a moment of reasonable consensus. But they have consistently resisted any attempt to enforce standards or controls on the virulent social media activity which is undermining the real freedoms they revere. So the tide of what would once have been called “extremism” – the incitement of violence and the perpetration of blind hatred – are now the accepted currency of political discourse.

Janet Dailey The American Dream is ending in a Psychotic Breakdown The Telegraph

From Sunlight to Shadows

At 73, this Labor Day weekend makes me wonder: How many summers do I have left?

I don’t miss the heat or humidity of summer. I miss the sunlight—the early sunrises, the lingering evenings. A metaphor, perhaps, for life’s stages.

Leisure reading is fading. Only 16% of Americans read regularly for pleasure—down from 28% in 2003. In the UK, just 41% of parents read daily to toddlers, compared with 64% in 2012.

I wandered into a Barnes & Noble last week, my first visit in over a year. Chairs and cozy nooks were gone—B&N is all business now. I left without a book. Even their sale couldn’t entice me; I balk at paying more than $20 for a hardcover.

On my nightstand:

  • King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution—A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson
  • Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus by Elaine Pagels

Haruki Murakami once wrote:

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

Mortality hovers. I don’t fear death, but I do fear dying. Sometimes I feel like a man with his head beneath a guillotine, staring at the blade. I’ve been fortunate with health, but around me I see friends whose luck has run out. The blade will fall on me too.

Meanwhile, the U.S. falters. Ineptitude, cowardice, hubris—displayed daily. A recent New York Times photo showed India’s Modi with Putin and Xi, a tableau of shifting power. It captured the failure of American diplomacy and leadership. One man bears much of the blame: Donald Trump. As summer declines, so does America as it retreats further into the darkness.

This is the Week That Was

I’m amused by Trump’s reluctance to release the Epstein files—as if there’s anything left that could truly shock us. His behavior has long been an open book. At this point, what more could possibly lower public opinion of him?

Replace Jerome Powell as head of the Federal Reserve? Makes about as much sense as firing the fire department while a building is still on fire.

The CEO and the HR Director of Astronomer were caught on a kiss cam in a romantic embrace at a Coldplay concert. The CEO is married with children and the HR Director is recently divorced. Due to the public and rather unusual nature of the disclosure of the relationship, this story is all over social media and other news outlets. My guess is that the HR Director will either resign or be let go but that the CEO will keep his job after publicly confessing his infidelities and promising to reform.

Though I’m not a late-night viewer at my age, I recognize that some of the sharpest political and social commentary in recent years has come from the desks of Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, and especially Jimmy Kimmel. The upcoming end of The Late Show with Colbert marks more than just the close of a program—it signals the fading of a cultural force that once helped us laugh through the chaos.

Weekend Update

Chief Justice Urges Political Leaders to Tone Down Rhetoric Chief Justice’s admonition to political leaders has as much chance as happening as he and the rest of the Supreme Court showing spine and good impartial judgment.

Alzheimer’s research in peril. Will Trump budget cuts set progress back by decades? President Trump wants to cut the budget of the National Institutes of Health by 40%. I would think that a man approaching 80 years of age and reputedly evidencing signs of dementia would want enormous amounts of money directed to finding a cure or treatment and quickly. For all the 65 and over voters who voted for Trump last year, here is what your support is getting you – – the possibility of a horrible ending of your life. If you have ever had a family member or friend who had Alzheimer’s, you realize how tragic and devastating this disease is.

Catholic Bishops Try to Rally Opposition to Trump’s Immigration Agenda President Trump got 64% of the white Catholic vote as many bishops and priests urged support for him primarily to overturn Roe v. Wade. My admonition to the bishops: you reap what you sow. Too late now that the Trump Genie is out of the bottle. Your support helped uncap the bottle.

Elon Musk rips into ‘utterly insane’ Trump-backed megabill.Buyer’s remorse! Guess Elon is not happy with his return on investment?

Discordia Ascendant (Chaos Rules)

Reading the news is not necessarily the best way to start your day…

“Big, beautiful” tax bill would add $2.4 trillion to US debts, CBO says.

Trump bans 12 countries’ citizens from entering the US.

Emergency Abortions: The Trump administration announced that it had revoked a Biden administration requirement that hospitals provide emergency abortions to women whose health is in peril, including in states where abortion is restricted or banned.

Too many Christians are transforming Christianity into a vertical faith, one that focuses on your personal relationship with God at the expense of the horizontal relationship you have with your neighbors. Selfishness Is Not a Virtue David French NYT 6/5/25

The consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble said on Thursday that it would cut 7,000 jobs globally over the next two years, or 6 percent of its total work force, as it seeks to reorganize amid uncertainty caused by President Trump’s trade war.

A federal judge in Colorado on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting the wife and children of the Egyptian man charged with attacking an event in Boulder, Colo., honoring hostages in Gaza….“Punishing individuals for the alleged actions of their relatives is a feature of premodern justice systems or police state dictatorships, not democracies,” (Eric Lee, Attorney for the family)

But with the Trump administration slashing spending on science, Dr. Patapoutian’s federal grant to develop new approaches to treating pain has been frozen. In late February, he posted on Bluesky that such cuts would damage biomedical research and prompt an exodus of talent from the United States. Within hours, he had an email from China, offering to move his lab to “any city, any university I want,” he said, with a guarantee of funding for the next 20 years…Applications from China and Europe for graduate student or postdoctoral positions in the United States have dropped sharply or dried up entirely since President Trump took office. The number of postdocs and graduate students in the United States applying for jobs abroad has spiked.

When the current Congress was convened in January, there were nearly 120 members who were 70 or older — 86 in the House, including nonvoting delegates, and 33 in the Senate. This number, which is unmatched in modern history, included 14 octogenarians in the House, five in the Senate, and 91-year-old Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa.“Big, beautiful” tax bill would add $2.4 trillion to US debts, CBO says.


Notes on Democracy by H.L. Mencken Still Relevant Today

H.L. Mencken’s Notes on Democracy was written about 100 years ago, yet the reader will be struck by how sharply his observations on 1920s politics and culture mirror the political landscape of today.

Mencken’s caustic style and biting sarcasm run throughout the book. He held little confidence in the judgment and wisdom of his fellow citizens, particularly regarding politics and voting, as evidenced by this remark:

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”

Mencken’s disdain was not reserved solely for the electorate. He was equally unforgiving when it came to the judgment and competence of elected leaders, describing their primary motivation with brutal clarity:

“It is his business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying; if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths.

One quote in particular struck me—written a century ago, yet hauntingly apt in describing the Trump administration’s approach to governance:

“No man would want to be President of the United States in strict accordance with the Constitution. There is no sense of power in merely executing laws; it comes from evading or augmenting them.”

The relevance of Mencken’s skepticism and critique of American democracy is both startling and disheartening. His writing is a reminder that the flaws he saw in the democratic process and its leaders are not new—they are simply dressed in the colors of each era. We could certainly use more writers and journalists like Mencken today: fearless in their observations, unyielding in their criticism, and unafraid to expose the flaws in both our political culture and the electorate that sustains it.

Murder the Truth by David Enrich: Brief Review and Recommendation

There is little doubt that investigative reporting, journalism, and legacy media are under full-scale assault. When politicians or public figures are confronted with articles or reporting that challenge their narratives, they are quick to sneer, “fake news.” In Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful, David Enrich details the escalating legal and political efforts to undermine press freedoms in the United States. These efforts, he explains, are largely initiated and financed through right-wing groups and MAGA followers.

One glaring example of this shift is the recent resignation of Bill Owens, executive producer of 60 Minutes. Owens cited that “over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience.” This resignation is symptomatic of a larger fear permeating newsrooms. Newspapers like The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times have even become hesitant to make political endorsements. Fear of lawsuits, loss of subscriptions, and dwindling advertising revenue have left many media organizations wary of publishing anything that might stir controversy. As a result, crucial stories and investigations—those that expose government corruption, public official malfeasance, and corporate irresponsibility—often remain buried, locked away in the dead files of an editor’s desk drawer.

More than 2500 newspapers in the United States have stopped publishing in the past two decades, a rate of about two per week. Most counties in the United States are no longer home to any daily papers, and many surviving outlets have been gutted by layoffs and other cost-cutting. 70 million Americans live in what researchers have dubbed “news deserts.”

As staffing at local newspapers, declines, mayoral races, become less competitive, and voter turnout wins. Misinformation spreads. Politicians and other public figures are rarely held to account for lies and misdeeds. Today, state, legislators, city Council members, and small town mayors – – not to mention companies that pollute or mistreat workers or sell dangerous products – –are operating with a degree of invisibility and impunity that they have not enjoyed in a century

This book contains interesting stories and analysis of several free speech battles including:

Sarah Palin vs. The New York Times
Donald Trump’s Lawsuits Against Media Entities
Dominion Voting Systems vs. Fox News
Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker
Melania Trump vs Daily Mail

Enrich’s book may come too late to reverse this tide, but it serves as critical research for future historians who will undoubtedly question how a nation that once prided itself on free speech allowed censorship and political pressure to erode First Amendment guarantees.

An excellent read. Highly recommended for anyone who values a free and independent press.

More Notes and Asides

I can understand Trump’s desire to have the title of Pope. It would confirm at least in his own mind, his infallibility.

Recommend listening to Is the Sun Setting on America’s Financial Empire? | The Ezra Klein Show for an interesting discusssion between Ezra Klein and Kenneth Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and a professor of economics at Harvard University on Trump’s tariff policy and its implications for the U.S. dollar and economy. Rogoff is rather blunt about how moronic the current economic path is.

Also suggest a listen to Where in the World Is Trump Taking Us? | TED Explains the World with Ian Bremmer. Bremmer is articulate, candid and very conservant about global affairs, the world economy, geopolitics and U.S. domestic policy. Like a professional referee, he calls them like he sees them.

I believe that our freedoms include the right to die with dignity. If an individual who is cogent and psychologically stable believes that she has lived life well, that her life is complete and that her future will not bring improvement or joy, she should have the right to make the decision to terminate her life. Period.
Joan Temko Anyon
San Francisco

Daniel Kahneman’s Decision: A Debate About Choice in Dying NYT

For those who have not seen it, I hardly recommend viewing Four Seasons, a romantic comedy movie from 1981 starring Alan Alda, Carol Burnett, Jack Weston and Rita Marino. I looked forward to the reprise of Four Seasons, 2025 Netflix version starring Steve Carell, Tina Fey, Will Forte and Kerri Kenney-Silver. However, I found the 2025 version to be dark, depressing and not very funny. The one bright spot in the movie was the acting of Steve Carell, whose character in the movie was most entertaining of the seven characters featured.

Maybe the most irritating commercials that I see on TV come from injury lawyers who probably boast of exorbitant cash settlements they get for their injured clients. Who winds up paying for these exorbitant cash settlements? The insurance companies? Not really. Consumers are on the hook for paying huge cash settlements as our annual auto insurance premiums continue to rise exponentially.

“Changing your mind once about a theory, an investment, or a person, is healthy. Changing your mind twice is not.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb