Engaging Life with Courage and Intelligence
On May 12, 2025, retired General Stanley McChrystal was interviewed on The Daily Show. Among the wide-ranging topics discussed were personal character and fidelity to the truth. He was asked if he ever called or texted his wife with, “Hey honey, we are bombing Kabul today.” He said certainly not; if he had, he would…
Fake news and theories form a growth industry that prospers in America. While our counterfeit information might be cheaply exported, America will not require a protective tariff to import foreign misinformation across our borders. No other country is in our league since we are self-sufficient, and no country does it better. The various factions in…
As a history student, I have seen patterns in which normal social relationships break down. Government changes, unaddressed social inequities, wars, and famines often cause these pattern changes. In one example, from 1979 to 2015, the Communist Party declared that most Chinese couples could not have more than one child. Aside from the inevitable decline…
It is painfully obvious that the standards for truth have declined in America since 2015. Anyone who believes otherwise is certifiably delusional. Instead of making America great again, the MAGA movement has weakened America by converting public discourse into a chaotic propaganda war. We have all fallen down the rabbit hole of mendacity. Instead of…
The word truthiness crept into the English language in 2005. It was coined by the satirical comedian Stephen Colbert. Truthiness denotes something to be true without any supporting facts or evidence. It was accepted as “truth” because it felt true or desired to be true. Truthiness is based on a person’s quick-firing gut instinct. Unlike…
We have all heard a joke similar to this one: A doctor, Elon Musk, a little boy, and a priest were flying on a small private plane. Suddenly, the plane developed engine trouble. Despite the pilot’s best efforts, the plane started to go down. Finally, the pilot grabbed a parachute and yelled to the passengers…
The 1956 book When Prophecy Fails is a social psychology classic that examines the aftermath of the Chicago UFO religious group, the Seekers, who believed the world was about to end. The book’s authors study what the group members did when the apocalypse did not occur. It takes extraordinary mental tricks to recover after predicting…
Donald Trump has had a lifetime fascination with professional wrestling. As most people older than ten know, professional wrestling is entertainment, not a sport. It pretends to be a sport, but it is a carefully choreographed masculine drama in which the winners and losers are predetermined. Professional wrestling seeks attention and cathartic release from macho…
The terms lock-in (noun), lock in (verb including different verb forms), or locked-in (adjective) have been around for a while. They have a surprisingly broad range of usages in technical, slang, social, business, medical, religious, and political contexts. Likewise, they have a wide spectrum of connotations, from highly positive to extremely negative. A lock-in can…
Yogi Berra once said, “It’s deja vu all over again.” Economic history is repeating itself, although it appears more idiotic than in the past. The Republican Party was once a thoughtful, less radical bunch. They were not in a to-the-death war with the world and found ways to compromise for the good of the nation….