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IS OUR FUTURE BLEAK? (Updated on July 18, 2024)

Is Our Future Bleak? NOTE: I am updating this on July 18, 2024                      After President Biden gave a good press conference on July 11, 2024, I am left both reassured and troubled. The reassuring part is this: we have a current president who understands foreign policy and that understanding is built on a long career in the United States Senate. It is also built on his own belief in the value of collective defense with allies. NATO stands as a shining example of a necessary defense treaty organization that is, in real-time, helping stem the advance of the new Russian Empire into Ukraine. President Biden is right: no one thinks that Putin would stop at Ukraine. The reason Finland and Sweden have both joined NATO since 2022 is that they know that Putin is dangerous. They know that a lot more than most Americans do about Putin and his intentions. And keeping NATO intact is vital to the stability of the West. That Joe Biden is the Joe Biden who gave complete answers about those s
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ARE WE IN CRISIS? July 6, 2024 UPDATES as of July 18, 2024     Do we face a situation similar to what the German Weimar Republic faced in early 1933? That was the year the Adolph Hitler was appointed as Chancellor of Germany. Now, let's stipulate that Americans get confused about how Hitler came to power. Chancellors were not elected, so Hitler was not. President Hindenburg appointed him. The previous Chancellor, Von Papen, was already ruling under an emergency decree. A devoted right-wing nationalist himself, Von Papen convinced Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor and Von Papen as Vice-Chancellor. Von Papen assured Hindenburg that he could control Hitler. Of course, he could not. Von Papen is one of the few high-level officials that survived both the Third Reich and the Nuremberg trials. But that does not make his moves in 1932 and 1933 any less cynical and it does not make him a "good guy.". He convinced an aging and possibly cognitively impaired Hindenburg to pu
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Let's Talk About "Traditional Marriage"

  Let's Talk About "Traditional Marriage"                     It is PRIDE MONTH. That means, among other things, that pundits like Ben Shapiro will seek to inform all the rest of us that even tolerating, let alone celebrating, a person being gay or trans, or acknowledging marital rights of persons in this community, is certain evidence that civilization is collapsing. Here is a recent Twitter post from Mr. Shapiro. Any society that isn't normatively based on heterosexual family formation is definitionally doomed to collapse. Pretending that society ought to be apathetic about such matters -- or even worse, condemnatory of the presence of traditional norms -- is civilizationally suicidal.                    In other words, if Target sells Pride merchandise, Target is, as a corporation, somehow condemning the traditional norm of heterosexual marriage. It is no accident that Mr. Shapiro is a favorite of conservative, Evangelical Christians. That is because "God'
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Would a Good Samaritan Apply a Chokehold?

  Would a Good Samaritan Apply a Chokehold?                 First, a bit of disclosure. I am a former Evangelical. I am a baptized Baptist. I attended a Bible College for one year. I have read the entire Bible in a couple of versions and have memorized portions of it. But like a former anything (former smoker, for example), the actions of current users or adherents is at least bemusing to me, if not disturbing. One of those actions is the pronounced habit of quoting Christian scripture to make a point. Unfortunately, the pushback some of these folks get for doing that comes from people who say things like "Your Bible is baloney," or "Isn't it nice that you believe in an invisible sky fairy."  Instead, those who inappropriately quote scripture should be challenged, not with ridicule and snark, but on the basis of the scripture itself.                  A recent example of this is the rush to judgment in the New York City subway strangulation death of Mr. Jordan Ne
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Can We Exercise Some Common Sense?

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  Common Sense on our Debt               If Janet Yellen, Secretary of the Treasury, is correct, the United States could default on its sovereign debt on June 1, 2023. That would be the first time in our history, and by all accounts of economists and others who know what they are talking about, that would be bad. But I am not an economist, I am a somewhat simple person, so I want to write about this in terms that I can understand.                First, let's acknowledge that borrowing to pay expenditures has been a feature of the United States and its political system since the Founding. The warring colonies borrowed to prosecute the Revolutionary War. And in fact, the people who wrote the Constitution and were there at the creation, the people we call "the Founders," knew this was a problem. While Jefferson and Madison on one side of an argument,  disagreed with Hamilton on the other, Hamilton won the argument. The Funding Act of 1790, which Hamilton pushed for, allowed
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Why I Imposed a Twitter Moratorium on Myself--Why I am Lifting It

  My Twitter Rules               I imposed a Twitter moratorium on myself in April 2023 because I did not like the person I was becoming. I do not want to be a snarky, small-minded person who responds to petty insults and becomes angry because someone questions me. But I have thought through a set of self-imposed rules which I think will help me produce useful content on Twitter and also help me preserve my own sanity. Just a note to anyone reading this: the rules apply to me, not to anyone else. But the rules help any other readers understand where I am coming from.  WHY I NEED TO WRITE: 1. I have worthwhile things to say. I returned to this blogger site now, in May 2023. As I read my January 2, 2021 post, I realized that my thoughts are worth reading. At least they are to me. I wrote that blog post four days prior to January 6, 2021, the day Donald Trump and his followers attempted to violently interrupt American democracy in progress. It genuinely impressed me how prescient I was. S
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 The Final Assault will Fail               It appears that as of this date, January 2, 2021, Donald Trump has largely failed in his attempt to hold power after the Inauguration on January 20, a little less than three weeks from now. However, he has dramatically succeeded in his attempt to divide Americans, to pit American against American, to make Americans decide whether to love him or hate him, and there is very middle ground remaining. That does not mean that middle ground is not viable, nor is it invalid. However, simply put, the middle ground is a return to our Constitutional norms and the institutions that keep our society somewhat intact.                First, Trump's efforts to intimidate voters, bully voters, delay ballots, and in general suppress enough votes in key states to win the election was, thankfully, a failure. The response of Trump and his team ("The Election was Rigged") was less a reflection of a belief that genuine fraud occurred, and more a shock t
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