Engaging Life with Courage and Intelligence
There is a strong tendency for Americans to ignore the realities of the past and the present. Many Americans ignore how and why our country was founded, slavery, periods when the scales of justice were tipped in favor of the ultra-wealthy, and unwise foreign policies. Americans typically revere the totems and symbols of past glory,…
The Surgeon General of Florida announced the end of laws that require children to receive mandatory vaccinations. The Nigerian doctor, Joseph Ladapo, was selected by Governor DeSantis because of his vaccine skepticism. The end of compulsory vaccinations in Florida is also consistent with RFK Jr’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement. Florida’s Surgeon General compared mandatory…
Mark Twain once said that “History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.” Twain’s quote makes a lot of sense to many people, but today, he might be understating the case. President Trump seems to emulate the so-called Gilded Age beyond mere rhyming. He seems to be REPEATING the past. For example, before William…
No one is quite sure of the motivation for Trump’s preemptive attack on India. Was he punishing India for unfair trade practices, India’s purchases of Russian oil, or for some other reason? The tariff on India’s products was 25% and it was raised to 50% effective August 27, 2025. The net effect of Trump’s “get…
Make America Like Yesterday (MALY) This article focuses on the MAGA-led march into a potential economic disaster. Ignore Trump’s tariffs, immigration, and deficit spending. A longer-term danger lies in how America acquires and distributes energy. Over the last year or so, I’ve read several articles about the energy policies in various countries. As much as…
Cookies can represent and fulfill many functions. Among them are to make people happy and to be used in hypothetical exercises. The President’s wife wrote Putin a letter about the children stolen during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, so we can imagine that a few Russian soldiers have compassion for these Ukrainian orphans. Cookies can…
The stationing of military troops in Blue States to “fight crime” is a questionable practice. The Trump Administration has proposed sending military forces to Illinois. However, the violent crime rate in Louisiana, the state of the Speaker of the House, is 628 crimes per 100,000, while in Illinois, it is 287. Wouldn’t military forces be…
American culture has a blind spot or a fatal flaw in its response to unproductive, sensational, or cancerous behavior. Today, many Americans celebrate and implicitly support people who act stupidly, immorally, and even criminally. They gravitate towards celebrities who promote chaos and away from those who are boringly competent. Our social media algorithms are aware…
This is another confirmation that the Trump regime is marching the USA toward a Chinese-style form of state capitalism. Trump’s economic advisor, Kevin Hassett, confirmed the possibility that the federal government was beginning to act like a sovereign wealth fund that interjects political leaders into corporate financing and decision-making. Hassett deflected the slippery slope fear…
The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt was a Wall Street Journal Top 10 Book of 2024. His book describes what he calls the transition from the “play-based” childhood to the “phone-based” childhood. He discusses the reengineering of the brains of America’s children by Silicon Valley’s social media. He asserts that the dopamine-reward systems of social…