We really are suckers for appearances. Surface attractiveness, skin-deep beauty. Our national symbol is a bald eagle—beautiful and intimidating, majestic even, but by nature just a deadly scavenger.

We elect people with “charisma,” people with the gift of gab who are physically attractive even as they are deficient in character, and often devoid of traits needed for meeting the challenges of competent leadership.

We fixate on fame and fortune– Hollywood notables who need almost constant ego feeding, who ride the wave of visibility and get paid megabucks for immersing themselves in a role and memorizing lines and playing make-believe; musical “artists” who become commercial successes while lacking substance or any real talent, and titans of industry who love their lifestyles and pedal influence merely by virtue of having a ton of money to throw around.

We spend too much time wallowing in the shallows.

We must try to find the words, even though Donald Trump and the misfit toys around him have tried to dull our senses and flood the zone and exhaust us with the constant drama and misdirection. This nightmare of an administration has upped the ante now, with the assassination of the Ayatollah and attack on Iranian targets.

It is not easy to settle for the obvious calculus—that this is, unbelievably, still all about the Epstein files. But Trump has been caught in lies so often that maybe we’ve learned to maintain our focus on what makes the most sense: the man is desperate and deprived, and he would most definitely encourage this vast military build-up and put Americans in harm’s way simply in order to divert attention from the domestic rat’s nest he appears to be consumed by.

And, as Rachel Maddow suggested last night, he pre-emptively has paved the way for who-knows-what sort of measures to ensure that the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election are tampered with—because, you know, Iran was involved in attempts to tamper with the 2020 and 2024 elections and we must guard against such eventualities going forward…

With this outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East, Trump and Hegseth and the rest have perhaps unleashed the latest unwinnable 20-year war, or worse– because it gave Hegseth a chance to live into his self-proclaimed moniker– Secretary of War– and it provided yet more false praise and cover for Trump, who, as it turns out, is nothing more than putty in the hands of people like Miller and Vought and Putin and Netanyahu.

All the home improvement shows have one characteristic in common: the Reveal, and snippets of Before and After. I think this is what makes any project worth doing. Seeing transformation, change for the better.

I get a dose of this even when I mow the lawn, get the dishes done, or do laundry. There’s great satisfaction in developing a plan, no matter how modest, and then committing and following through.

I’m obviously not understanding the rationale. Lindsey Vonn has a stellar skiing career, decides to call it a day, but then decides she wants another shot at the fame and glory. So she works her way back, comes to Milan with an anterior cruciate ligament injury, and subsequently takes a fall during Olympic competition that brings her close to losing a leg.

It begs the question: Why?

She tried to explain away the opportunity she took from someone else who could have made the team, saying her competitive spirit wouldn’t allow her to not make a comeback bid, but that all sounds quite feeble to me. Was she having trouble adjusting to life away from the slopes, with all the fame and notoriety it brought her? Is there an addiction to the bright lights and attention? Or is it truly all about being ultra-competitive?

Either way, I have my doubts.

The response to the attack on Iran has been immediate and somewhat visceral. And with good reason. There is so much not to like about the once-again-unilateral decision to rain death and destruction down on Iran.

On the surface, it’s a confab between hardline criminals—Trump and Netanyahu, though obviously planned with some intent to decapitate Iranian leadership capabilities (they had it coming…). But to basically say to the people of Iran, “Here, now it’s up to you to take your country back,” – like we’re doing them a huge favor—is simply convenient, pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking.

And of course Trump gets off on being the one who sells it on the home front with appeals to patriotism and sacrifice—things he knows nothing about. It’s dumb and tragic, yet one more reminder of the lengths these two will go to distract from their own tenuous existence on this side of prison.

After 9/11, it was WMD, this time it’s nukes. It was bullshit then, and most likely bullshit now. And take the damned hat off, Donald, when you’re breaking such God-forsaken news. Deep-six the hats. They’re not a good look.

Noise and lament and a throwing up of hands. It’s pretty much what we get anymore. The folks at MS Now can ponder and pontificate, raise their voices, talk over each other in panel discussions when they dare welcome a dissenter to the mix. But in the end, none of the alarm and anger and incensed tones really matter to the Trump administration. All the concern and worry seem to roll off of them, easily dismissed as the rantings of soft, liberal, socialist snowflakes.

Maddow and Psaki can ring the alarm bells, Velshi and Melber and O’Donnell can rationally, if not passionately, expose the lack of a moral compass and outright diabolical intent. But who’s paying attention, besides the choir?

I know I should hold my nose and wade into a Fox News broadcast, just to get a sense for what half the country is absorbing and apparently embracing, but I just can’t bring myself to do that. More often than not, what emanates from their talking heads feels like poison to me, like they live in a totally different place with a vastly different set of core beliefs. Like they’re watching a totally different game.  

So, the battle for hearts and minds rages on.