A riveting novel set in a bygone America that explores family, wealth and ambition through linked narratives rendered in different literary styles, a complex examination of love and power in a country where capitalism is king.
Thursday, April 3, 2025
#93 / Trust Me On This
Wednesday, April 2, 2025
#92 / An Autoimmune Reaction
If the immune system malfunctions, it mistakenly attacks healthy cells, tissues, and organs. Called autoimmune disease, these attacks can affect any part of the body, weakening bodily function and even turning life-threatening. (emphasis added).
“Another wipeout walloped Wall Street Friday,” Stan Choe of the Associated Press wrote today. The S&P 500 had one of its worst days in two years, dropping 2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 715 points, losing 1.7% of its value. The Nasdaq Composite fell 2.7%. On Tuesday, news dropped that the administration’s blanket firings and wildly shifting tariff policies have dropped consumer confidence to a low it has not hit since January 2021. Today’s stock market tumble started after the Commerce Department released data showing that consumer prices are rising faster than economists expected (emphasis added).
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
#91 / The "End of History"? Maybe Not!
Allow me to suggest that those who counted History out did so prematurely. It’s time to consider the possibility that all too many of the very smart, very earnest, and very well-compensated people who take it upon themselves to interpret the signs of our times have been radically misinformed. Simply put: they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Viewed in retrospect, perhaps the collapse of communism did not signify the turning point of cosmic significance so many of them then imagined. Add to that another possibility: Perhaps liberal democratic consumer capitalism (also known as the American Way of Life) does not, in fact, define the ultimate destination of humankind.
It just might be that History is once again on the move—or simply that it never really “ended” in the first place. And as usual, it appears to have tricks up its sleeve, with Donald Trump’s return to the White House arguably one of them.
More than a few of my fellow citizens see his election as a cause for ultimate despair—and I get that. But to saddle Trump with responsibility for the predicament in which our nation now finds itself vastly overstates his historical significance.
Let’s start with this: Despite his extraordinary aptitude for self-promotion, Trump has shown little ability to anticipate, shape, or even forestall events. Yes, he is distinctly a blowhard, who makes grandiose promises that rarely pan out. (If you want documentation, take your choice among Trump University, Trump Airlines, Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump Magazine, Trump Taj Mahal, and even Trump: the Game.) Barring a conversion akin to the Apostle Paul’s on his journey to Damascus, we can expect more of the same from his second term as president.
Yet the yawning gap between his over-the-top MAGA rhetoric and what he’s really delivered should be instructive. It trains a spotlight on what the “end of history” has actually yielded: lofty unfulfilled promises that have given way to unexpected and often distinctly undesired consequences (emphasis added).
Monday, March 31, 2025
#90 / Short-Term Pain And No Long-Term Gain
Who bears the costs?The 2017 tax cuts disproportionately benefited higher-income households, according to most independent analyses. Medicaid cuts would overwhelmingly hurt low- and moderate-income families, as would cuts to other government services. Tariffs likewise tend to be hardest on poorer households, which spend more of their income on food, clothes and other imported goods.
The short-term pain created by the administration’s policies, in other words, could fall hardest on low-income Americans — many of whom voted for Mr. Trump in hopes of improving their economic situation.
“It’s really hard to see how the Trump voters come out ahead,” Ms. Clausing, the former Treasury official, said. “Prices are going to be higher, disruptions are going to be higher and the safety net is going to get cut."
Even some defenders of Mr. Trump’s policies, such as Mr. Cass, say cutting benefits to pay for tax cuts runs counter to the administration’s stated goal of restoring the middle class (emphasis added).
Sunday, March 30, 2025
#89 / This Is The Day!
This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Psalm 118
Mr. Hays changed his mind about same-sex relationships, he said, because God changed his mind....
In “The Widening of God’s Mercy,” published in September by Yale University Press and written with his son, Christopher B. Hays, Mr. Hays maintained that if the Bible is read holistically, as a complete narrative, it reveals a God who continually extends grace and mercy to ever wider circles of people, including those who once were outcasts....
In Mr. Hays’s view, the Bible repeatedly presents a portrait of a God who changes his mind and evolves his thinking — a concept that might make many Christians flinch.
Saturday, March 29, 2025
#88 / Three Branches
Friday, March 28, 2025
#87 / Going Rogue On America?
Mr. Trump seems to view his job differently than many voters, which is one reason for his falling poll numbers. He strongly believes that he was elected to return to Washington as a disrupter, this time with significantly more experience and effectiveness than in his first term. He sees himself as bringing strength back to the Oval Office after four years of a weak Joe Biden. In this, he believes he has the latitude to go big and bold, to create some turbulence and cause some prices to rise in the short term as he asserts himself in Washington and around the globe. All of this, Mr. Trump says, is in hopes of establishing a stronger American position over the long term.
But as I dug into Mr. Trump’s polling data, it looked increasingly that American voters’ mandate to the president was more narrow than he sees it. After a prolonged period of inflation, with a Biden administration that told Americans not to believe their lying wallets, voters clearly wanted the next president to stabilize the economy and make their cost of living more manageable (emphasis added).
Are Mr. Trump’s actions in step with what voters want from him, or is he going rogue on America, doing his own thing, polls be damned? Did people want him to remake the government and disrupt the global financial order, or did they just want cheaper groceries (emphasis added)?
Why am I confident that Trump's defiance of the judiciary will not “finish our democracy?”
Because we have broken faith with the Constitution on numerous occasions in our past but always managed to return to our founding document, which serves as our north star and moral compass. We will do so again.
There is danger in telling people that “democracy is finished” if Trump successfully ignores a court order. If we make that claim often enough, people will believe us—even though it is not true, not by a long shot. American democracy will not end so long as we do not give up on the Constitution.
And we aren’t going to give up on the Constitution. I am not. You won’t. Your neighbors and friends won’t. Hundreds of millions of Americans are not going to quit. In the words of Alexei Navalny, “You are not allowed to give up” (emphasis added).
William Faulkner Banquet Speech
Ladies and gentlemen,
Thursday, March 27, 2025
#86 / Preppers
There is no bright line dividing general emergency preparedness from prepping in the form of survivalism (these concepts are a spectrum), but a qualitative distinction is often recognized whereby preppers/survivalists prepare especially extensively because they have higher estimations of the risk of catastrophes happening. Nonetheless, prepping can be as limited as preparing for a personal emergency (such as a job loss, storm damage to one's home, or getting lost in wooded terrain), or it can be as extensive as a personal identity or collective identity with a devoted lifestyle.
Survivalism emphasises self-reliance, stockpiling supplies, and gaining survival knowledge and skills. The stockpiling of supplies is itself a wide spectrum, from survival kits (ready bags, bug-out bags) to entire bunkers in extreme cases.
Survivalists often acquire first aid and emergency medical/paramedic/field medicine training, self-defense training (martial arts, ad hoc weaponry, firearm safety), and improvisation/self-sufficiency training, and they often build structures (survival retreats, underground shelters, etc.) or modify/fortify existing structures etc. that may help them survive a catastrophic failure of society.
Use of the term survivalist dates from the early 1980s.
Many countries in the world (including the U.S. and Finland), already advise people to prepare to survive for three days without help from authorities. For those who want to make a modest investment in preparedness, here are our top tips for the everyday family prepper:
A “basics” kit kept somewhere accessible. It should include a couple of flashlights and spare batteries, a wind-up radio (governments still plan to broadcast on radio in an emergency), hand sanitizer, a pack of face masks, a charged battery pack for devices, foil blankets for emergency warmth, baby wipes in case the shower is out of action, a basic first aid kit that hasn’t been raided and a supply of any essential medication. And don’t forget your pets!
You certainly don’t need an underground store, but having a few days’ supply of nutritious food items that don’t require cooking (baked beans, soups, cereal, etc.,) would likely be helpful in the event of a major crisis. Some ultra-high temperature (UHT) and powdered milk would come in handy and some spare powdered baby milk too if you need that. I’d definitely add spare toilet paper to the list (for some reason this is what sold out first in pandemic panic buying.)
Bottled water and a water filter. You can survive on not a huge amount of food for quite a while, but a lack of drinkable water becomes a problem pretty quickly. We keep a few large bottles of water tucked away, but also have a camping water filter that is effective in making safe pretty much any natural water source if we ever need it.
We would never advise keeping dangerous stores of car fuel lying around in gas cans, but if you can keep your vehicle topped up with fuel or electricity rather than filling up from empty, you won’t run into immediate difficulties if the supply is suddenly interrupted for any reason. You can also use your car battery to tune into emergency radio channels — and to charge your cell phone. We keep a road atlas, a couple of blankets, long-life snacks and some bottled water in the car in case we ever get stuck on the move.
Keep some cash tucked away in a place you will be able to find it in case of emergency. In a disaster, credit cards might not work.
You don’t have to obsess about every eventuality; that way madness lies. But having a few of the above things in place is peace of mind that the family will have the basics in most circumstances.
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
#85 / The "-Ism" Trap
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
#84 / Let's Shake On It
Monday, March 24, 2025
#83 / Power Up, II
Power comes into being only if and when men join themselves together for the purpose of action, and it will disappear when, for whatever reason, they disperse and desert one another.
Sunday, March 23, 2025
#82 / Boredom (Watch Out; It's A Sin!)
ACEDIA, BOREDOM, is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. It deserves the honor.
You can be bored by virtually anything if you put your mind to it, or choose not to. You can yawn your way through Don Giovanni or a trip to the Grand Canyon or an afternoon with your dearest friend or a sunset. There are doubtless those who nodded off at the coronation of Napoleon or the trial of Joan of Arc or when Shakespeare appeared at the Globe in Hamlet or Lincoln delivered himself of a few remarks at Gettysburg. The odds are that the Sermon on the Mount had more than a few of the congregation twitchy and glassy-eyed.
To be bored is to turn down cold whatever life happens to be offering you at the moment. It is to cast a jaundiced eye at life in general including most of all your own life. You feel nothing is worth getting excited about because you are yourself not worth getting excited about.
To be bored is a way of making the least of things you often have a sneaking suspicion you need the most.
To be bored to death is a form of suicide.