If there are days when I don’t even want to do what I want to do, doesn’t that seem like a rather good sign of being frustrated about a bunch of things — or at least it means I should expunge various items which clog up my muddled mind.
(TRIGGER warning: sarcasm ahead.) A couple of kids are shot to death (and 18 injured) at a Minneapolis church service – big deal. It’s a news item that will die almost as fast as the 8 year-old and the 10 year-old. It wasn’t even a mass killing; in the USA, you need four dead bodies to fit that definition (military units count differently).
Forget the inevitable prayers and memorials, stuff the performative politicized outrage, ignore the psychological profile of the killer – Minneapolis will bring no changes with respect to the rules and regulations concerning guns. We have world leadership, by a huge margin, in mowing down people, especially children, and we will slaughter without NRA remorse to keep our ranking.
Wait, there is a way to enact gun reform: do what the strict constitutionalists want, abide by the amendment which protects your right to obtain a gun easier than you can get a boating permit. Since the original intention of that right must logically be tied to the type of gun available at that time, we should all be issued muskets. No more AR-15 as the weapon of choice.
Susan Sontag reportedly once wrote about newspaper stories of war, “we either ignore them or read them only to reassure ourselves that we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering.”
MAYBE this is an inopportune time to talk about capital punishment, of which I am in favor. It would be administered by putting the convict in a locked room with teenagers and adults who cannot utter a combination of any words without inserting the word “like.”
PLEASE – can sports announcers, and others, stop using the phrase “so far” at the end of an observation about the contest in front of them. Unless they know the future, all they have witnessed is by definition “so far,” which means the words carry no meaning.
WHAT is the point of rounding up immigrants with civil violations but who otherwise have nothing on their rap sheet beyond a missing taillight, putting them in a detention facility not designed to be humane, then shipping them around the country to erode their ties to legal counsel and bring heartache to families and communities.
Who gains: businesses, colleges, churches, the poor – none of these. Maybe the rich, a touch.
I get it, there is a group who can say “I told you so.” It is those who have maintained that at the heart of the supposed American exceptionalism beats racial animus enforced with a gun, discriminatory laws, and/or common business practices.
IT is not unusual for people who have moved to country X to rhapsodize either about their homeland in general or specific aspects thereof. It would be interesting to know how many return to stay, not simply to make the equivalent of a tourist trip. Or to flip it around, for all the bitching and moaning people do about aspects of American culture, until recently there were still 100 people taking the oath of citizenship for every person who renounced their allegiance.
THE caller to the popular sports talk radio show WFAN in New York City, says “I don’t really follow the NBA, but do you think the Knicks should shoot more 3’s?” Sorry, if you don’t do the work needed to have a base of knowledge, you lose your right/ability to ask a cogent question.
IN less than two decades, the USA will have attained a completely unique status – there will be no ethnic majority: we will be a nation of multiple minorities. Maybe the Census Bureau will delete its increasingly meaningless racial/ethnic identification questions.
FOR thirty years, especially if you are a radio person like the undersigned, you have heard the jingle for Kars-4-Kids. It occupies a part of your brain previously set aside for a future NutraLink implant.
HAVING left my car at the repair shop at 8am, it was sensible to take a short walk to the local QuickChek, obtain a cup of coffee, and occupy a seat at one of its little tables. A book, a pen and small pad of paper, a phone, and the above beverage could be interpreted as accepting the fact that a bit of a wait was in my future.
Over the next two hours, there was a steady stream of customers, typically solo, more men than women, almost exclusively blue collar workers – their ages probably less than would be guessed from the miles on their tires and the abundance of beards. If they were more than thirty years of age, they were overweight, like the rest of us. If there was a 6am Cross Fit attendee among the group, it was not evident.
A few tapped the ATM for needed funds, a few invested unneeded funds (hopefully) on a lottery ticket. Virtually all left the store with some form of caffeine in hand, ready to deal with a life/job that many, if not most, simply live/do, without a great deal of introspection.
A young recruiter from the nearby Army Career Center walked in to get his morning fix. I was tempted to suggest he push for undocumented Americans to be allowed in the military; based on a small sample, it seems that many Hispanics are interested in signing up. Free education, health benefits, and decent compensation are the draws. Like African Americans during WW II, they would fight for a country that is not exactly hospitable to them. Maybe it is simply a probability calculation, not unlike walking into the country without papers.
In time, after an additional coffee at my normal haunt, Main Street Café, where I chatted with a Latina interested in joining the USAF, I was able to pick up my car. As the fellow explained the various auto parts and their upkeep needs, I thought this category of intelligence is on the long list of things I know nothing about. In fact, reasonably coherent writing is the only skill where I can create, do the work, and see a finished product.
AS the great Belgian detective Hercules Poirot articulated, “one must not disturb the facts to support a theory.” Unfortunately, headline writers and political advocates alike are prone to combining items in a manner designed to produce a particular result.
The headline screams, “inflation is down,” without immediately noting, if anywhere, that “prices continue to rise” — which is consistent with said headline.
Consider this word and meaning distortion found in “Lessons from America’s Historic Crime Drop,” written by the editorial board of the esteemed New York Times. “Crime is down in Washington, D.C. too, contrary to President Trump’s claims last week that it is a hotbed of violence.”
The first descriptor is a rate of change variable while the second is an absolute number; note that Washington, D.C. has the fourth highest homicide rate in the country.
Amazingly, the excerpt immediately follows with, “although the city’s murder rate remains far too high, it is now comparable to what it was before the pandemic.”
The first part of the sentence supports the “hotbed of violence” characterization, while the second is a comparison without any data that would put the pre-pandemic comment in a useful context.
WHEN Russia invaded Ukraine, the big tennis tournaments decided not to bar Russian players, but to delete the name of their country when they were playing. A show sans substance.
AFTER lengthy lawsuits, the Uvalde school system and police department released thousands of pages of e-mails and texts pertinent to the May 24, 2022 slaughter at Robb Elementary. After most observers were proven correct in claiming more information was being withheld, a second flood ensued. One paramount truth has remained evident: the sheriff (who will go on trial in October) tried to talk/negotiate with the killer for thirty long minutes instead of moving ahead with the mandatory breaching which is the first requirement when dealing with an active shooter.
ADD to the verities of life in 2025: you will see a drug commercial which will make you ill simply thinking about its side effects, not to mention its impact on your wallet and insurance coverage if you are unfortunate and must have the drug. Each commercial typically does tell you not to take the drug if you are allergic to it. Seems sensible!
P.S. Maybe I am in a funk because 2026 will be the first year in which I will make no new student multi-year funding commitments. Perhaps the emotions attached to this change are not totally dissimilar to those experienced by an athlete no longer sufficiently fit to continue what he has been doing for decades.
Or is it especially disheartening that a guy I know from birth refuses to discuss why he holds certain political beliefs, saying it’s none of my business.
Then again, there could be a much more serious interpretation of my mental well-being, or lack thereof: when I recently asked several people quite close to me what they had learned about our country in the past 25 years that was favorable, their silence was deafening …….. and not broken by me.
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