Category: Current Events

A BILLION BUCKS

AUGUST 26, 2021 – Today’s headlines could drive any thinking person into a cave, protected from a world on fire and free from people obsessed with their individual freedom—to hell with the rest of us. To calm myself down, I decided to play an old mind game: What would I do with a billion bucks? …

THE CATCH-22 OF 23-SKIDOO

AUGUST 24, 2021 – Yesterday I watched an exchange on FoxNews—my “go-to” source for rightwing propaganda. Tucker Carlson, a highly compensated creature of the rightwing audience-rightwing media feedback loop, was interviewing Brit Hume, the outlet’s stately “senior policy analyst.” The subject was “Biden’s botched evacuation” from Afghanistan. Mr. Snarly and Mr. Stately reveled in Biden’s …

“LIBERTARIA” DYSTOPIA

AUGUST 21, 2021 – I used to joke that in “Libertaria,” traffic lights would be privately owned, coin-operated, and voluntary. I’m no longer joking. Our biggest single threat is unfettered freedom to do whatever it takes to make a buck—and whatever purveyors of falsehoods, religious beliefs, or conspiracy theories order us (ironically) to do. What’s …

TIME MACHINE TALK

AUGUST 20, 2021 – In these days of debacle, I imagine a conversation with my long-gone elders. We’re sitting on the porch, sipping lemonade while discussing current events. Aging folks view the world differently from how they found it in their younger years. I thus apply a range of settings to my imaginary time machine. …

BUY HIGH, SELL LOW–NOT LOWER

AUGUST 18, 2021 – Yesterday I witnessed two family members exchange barbs over our exit from Afghanistan. As argument ensued (via texting), I was reminded how difficult it is to accept loss, mistakes, and failure. On an emotional/psychological level, denial of defeat is understandable: it’s a survival trait. If we surrendered whenever we “got things …

THE FALL OF SAIGON REDUX

AUGUST 17, 2021 – During a recent trip to Home Depot, we loaded a cart with several items manufactured in Vietnam. These prompted me to think about the intractable Vietnam War and our ignoble exit from the country in 1975. Those of us who were old enough to have noticed remember the Fall of Saigon, …

A WORLD AFIRE

AUGUST 12, 2021 – I used to worry our country would descend into civil war—Dems vs. Reps; haves vs. have nots; people who relied solely on Fox for news vs. those who didn’t. Now, I’m not so sure. Perhaps the outcome is simply . . . a wholesale breakdown of norms; a chaotic unraveling of …

DREAMING AT PRICE CHOPPER

AUGUST 2, 2021 – On Sunday we—my wife, son Byron, daughter-in-law Mylène, and I—made a Home Depot run in Middletown, CT, followed by a near total buy-out of current inventory at an adjacent Price Chopper grocery store. I was familiar with “Home Depot”; I’d never heard of “Price Chopper” As we grabbed “price-chopped” stuff off …

ROCK SOLID

AUGUST 1, 2021 – Yesterday, our son Byron and daughter-in-law, Mylène, gave us a walking tour of their new home-town, Chester, CT (pop. 3,994), then drove us to Rocky Neck State Park on Long Island Sound. On the rural route back, we stopped for locally-made ice-cream. As we enjoyed the scenery of these parts, where …

IT’S TIME

JULY 22, 2O21 – What’s worse: a. The violent, January 6 attack on the Capitol; or b. Republicans’ continued support of a disordered former president, who called the unruly mob, “a loving crowd”?  I say “b.” A country in which people who wield substantial political power will say and do anything to stay in the …

A HOUSE DIVIDED CANNOT STAND

JULY 15, 2021 – Daily, I visit www.fox[propaganda].com. (I eschew the TV version, which competes shamelessly with even more bizarre media outlets like Newsmax and OAN (“One America News”).) Fox and its competitors on the right are more than irritants. They’re irresponsible, anti-social, destructive forces leveraging an influence loop for the sole and soulless sake …

THE LEADING DANGER OF OUR DAY

JULY 13, 2021 – For today’s post, I’d intended to write about an observation quite apart from today’s appalling news. After several failed attempts, I yielded to the news. Yet my struggle wasn’t over. There’s the turmoil in Cuba and its root causes—a half-century trade embargo by the U.S. playing a much larger role than …

UNIMPRESSED AND UNINSPIRED

JULY 12, 2021 – Yesterday, British billionaire Richard Branson made a suborbital space flight. Media outlets made a big deal of it, thanks to the fact that Branson himself—self-promotor extraordinaire—made a big deal of it. The hoopla left me unimpressed. First, Branson wasn’t at the controls.  He was a passenger—one of six. Second, although the …

THE UNITED STATES OF MARKETING

JULY 9, 2021 – If I were an adversary of the United States, I’d be salivating over our current internal demise. Our self-destruction requires of our enemies, no outlandish military expenditure, no high-risk/low-probability-of-success sabotage, no complex of computer hackers, no advanced planning and expenditure of any kind; simply enough Americans—not even a majority—to believe their …

CONDO COLLAPSE: THE STORIES

JUNE 29, 2021 – Yesterday at noon I turned on our kitchen TV, selected CNN, and fixed myself a chicken sandwich. In his signature monotone, Wolf Blitzer led off from the site of the condo collapse in Florida. After 10 minutes, I realized there was no other news. As I reflected on the horrific story …

THE SENTENCE

JUNE 26, 2021 – While listening to the radio broadcast of yesterday’s sentencing hearing in the murder case of George Floyd, Jr., I recalled the horror of his death and the aftermath—the rioting, burning, and looting, some of it unnervingly close to our own neighborhood.  Hopeful souls say, “His life mattered,” and truly, it did, …

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS DARKLY

JUNE 21, 2021 – Yesterday we returned from a quiet, pleasant weekend at the Red Cabin, surrounded by the sights and sounds of nature. Our time up there always has a calming effect and helps put the noise and nonsense of “civilization” into perspective. Soon after arriving home, however, we returned to Alice in Wonderland—first …

NOT RUSHED ABOUT RUSSIA

JUNE 17, 2021 – On Tuesday, FoxNews “personalities” excoriated Biden for being “weak on Russia.” Huh? Rewind the tape and watch You-Know-Who reveal his weakness. If ever there was a time to cringe, all bells rang when the Dolt-in-Chief said (in so many words) in Helsinki, “My people tell me Russia did bad things, so …

TIME FOR LEAPFROG

JUNE 10, 2021 – Lately, extreme heat has descended upon our part of the world. My wife habitually announces that “It’s so hot” to remind me so. I’d adapted to warming trends. After all, I figured, isn’t adaptation a hallmark of evolutionary success? I used to hate the heat, but that was back when I …

A START

JUNE 2, 2021 – I watched most of President Biden’s speech delivered yesterday in Tulsa. If we can debate the details of how to diminish racial economic disparity in America, all responsible citizens must acknowledge the fact of that disparity. All of us must also give Biden credit for—acknowledging formally, officially, openly, and in Tulsa, …

REFERENCE POINTS

MAY 24, 2021 – One of my made-up maxims (page 47 of my imaginary book, Eric’s Adages) is this: To give a statistic meaning, you need to give it company. Whether the context is economics, demographics, or scientific research, to understand a figure, a number, a data point, you need to have a reference point—often …