Peter Thiel and the rest are detached from reality. They live well in their own reality, and of course they think so far out of the box that they have no patience with anyone they perceive as not keeping up, which is a substantial percentage of the rest of the world.

Yes, Thiel and Musk and others may be groundbreakers and visionaries, but they seem to think they have exclusive rights to deciding how the future should go for all of us.

This is concerning because they appear not to think much of humans as a species. Thiel has said, out loud, that evil isn’t bad, since at least evil people are “competent” and they’re “getting something done.”

Money equals power. It’s a reality, but it is also a stone-cold monument to vanity and hubris and indifference. It inhibits sight and deadens the heart.

This miniscule minority of billionaires? Turns out they can get Trump’s attention anytime they want. They appear to be the puppeteers, along with Xi and Vlad.

The Nobel Committee is in no way obligated to defend or explain itself to Donald Trump.

I can’t believe this is even a thing. Isn’t the world tired of this man baby by now? The fact that he feels snubbed—again—is just the latest evidence that Trump indeed lives in a bubble, that he is off his rocker.

He starts a war with Iran that looks to be expanding into something larger. He blames Mr. Zelensky for the world’s fossil fuel shortages, cozies up to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and has the audacity to think he’s owed the Peace Prize?

A tired trope revisited.

Please, Nobel Committee, just ignore this guy. He is perhaps the most needy, immature, and pathetic human being on earth.

Then again, we’re not talking about the Epstein files.

Did anyone think it would trend in any other direction? All that’s left for Trump and the rest is the heavy-handed stuff now.

In some ways they’ve become quite predictable—draconian Executive orders, favorable Supreme Court rulings, WTF distractions—but the thing everyone fears is what will ultimately be rolled out: attempts at martial law, unwarranted monitoring of polling places, bald-faced terroristic threats, and violence. It’s the whole desperate times, desperate measures thing anymore.

Maybe our law and order folks will stiffen their spines and just say No.

Among the sad and disgusting aspects of the Trump era is the loathsome disregard he seems to have for recognizing any sense of obligation to being a role model.

I suppose toddlers and younger children don’t really notice or care how Donald Trump and those around him behave, but at some point, in the cognition and awareness process, people of a certain age start paying attention. I wonder what they see, what they make of their President.

Trump obviously doesn’t care, or if he does it’s all about presenting himself as an example of wealth and success. Impressionable youngsters might take note and for some reason want to be like Donald, though I might give POTUS the benefit of the doubt and choose to believe that he has just enough self-awareness to offer up a cautionary tale about himself.

Nah, probably not.

According to a recent YouTube post from Jamelle Bouie, the lurking elephant in the room is a seemingly deep-seated opinion—belief?—that all politicians are liars. Two-faced, self-interested, more often subscribed to CYA than being honest with the people who have voted them into office.

Talk about being caught between a rock and hard place.

If this is indeed the way many of us feel, then we can’t hold out much hope for reaching or returning to a place where we feel confident about anything being done to address legitimate concerns.

Of course, another way of looking at things is that most of us can smell a rat when there’s one around. We are realistic and clear-eyed and perceptive enough to tell the difference between a scoundrel and someone who has a good heart and takes their job seriously. As Bouie asserts, we know that Presidents and Senators and Representatives and mayors and governors and school board members and solicitors may offer up shades of the truth from time to time. But we pin our hopes on most of those we elect to be decent people who aren’t on some mission to line their own pockets and burn the place down. At least that’s what I’d like to believe.

Still, if distrust and suspicion are as deep-seated as some say they are, then it’s no wonder we’ve ended up with the cast of characters currently running rough-shod all over D.C. and the rest of the country. To enough of us, it’s a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. Apparently, enough of us are OK with a steady diet of lies and excuses and deterioration, because they perceive the opposition as somehow being worse.