All There Is to Say
Beyond Pearl Harbor, 9/11, Oklahoma City, JFK, MLK, Dred Scott and Gettysburg.
Today, January 20, 2025, is a date which will live in infamy.
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Today, January 20, 2025, is a date which will live in infamy.
I think that about covers it.
It says a great deal about the American people in the 21st century, don't you think? 77 million of our fellow 'Murcans saw fit to vote for a morally bankrupt, life-long grifter and four-flusher who once as a sitting president tried to subvert a free and fair election. Quite a number of those voters identify as Christian or even Evangelical Christian. One wonders what, if anything, rolls around in their brain pans. A man who should have been tried for treason is today being inaugurated president.
It amuses me to imagine what the founders would be thinking today.
The president and his ilk bloviate making America great again by stripping away constitutional guardrails, debasing education, and making the nation safe again for semi-skilled labor to live a solid middle class life. Meanwhile, China graduates north of 600,000 undergraduate engineers each year (the US graduates about 70,000) and about 77,000 STEM PhDs, about double the number awarded in the US. A mere 50 years ago, China's was an agrarian economy. Today, China dominates a number of fields including solar energy and battery technology. Chinese metallurgists reportedly have modified stainless steel to allow it to replace expensive and difficult to machine titanium in its hypersonic missiles. Meanwhile the Trumpists chant "drill baby, drill."
Ours is a dying society. Truth doesn't matter. What matters is how we feel, how information triggers the flow of dopamine in our brains. We seek out sources that amplify what we already believe and increasingly have those sources force-fed to us by Twitter and Facebook and Tik Tok. We have fat, lazy, vapid, Pavlovian dogs, our mouths salivating on command.
I have long held that we enjoy the remarkable privilege and duty to elect our leadership (at least for now). That also means that we deserve the leadership that we get.