I find it distasteful and discouraging that pundits and reporters can declare the Republican nomination process to be pretty much over already.

There is no satisfying answer to “How can this be?” because we’re still dealing with an irrational base and a candidate who has never been good with taking No for an answer, who cannot bring himself to simply walk away for the good of a political party and the country.

Trump’s motives are obviously lowbrow and self-serving. He possesses not one public service bone in his body. He’s gonna leave it to the dark-minded incompetents around him to run the day-to-day things, and his main role, if he were to prevail in November (with sentences possibly handed down, and indictments and felony counts still looming), would be to continue as the mealy-mouthed front man he’s always enjoyed being. Playing POTUS, saying ridiculous, dangerous, mind-numbingly dumb things all the time. And in position to wreak havoc with the Justice Department.

His motives for seeking the office are no secret. And they are all nefarious.

Of course, echoes of the time-worn lament will reverberate in many a brain: “How could we let things get this far? Again!”

As tired as many may be, as ready as many may be, it is difficult to shake the feeling that a misguided, perpetually angry remnant of religious zealots will always exist, eventually rise, and do their best to sabotage what many would consider progress, a path toward peace.

The animosity between Israel and Hamas, between Israel and Hezbollah, between Israel and Iran, for so long seeming intractable and irreconcilable, can only turn a corner if, somehow, religious belief takes a back seat, or if people can be guided by canons within canons of their holy books that speak to peace and love—not hatred and mistrust and retribution and revenge and violence and infidels and unresolved history and endless savagery and all the other unhelpful imagery and messages.

It seems there are enough people who prefer peace to perpetual war, but what keeps them from moving forward is the authority they lend their holy books. It may seem impossibly hard to separate oneself from the holy writ, whether it’s Torah or the Koran, but it’s adherence to and interpretation of these very things that have perpetuated the misery all along the way.

What is so hard about living and letting live? Where people have a homeland in which to live peacefully, practice their religion peacefully, make a life peacefully—with the understanding (and maybe this is the hard part) that the gift is having room to coexist, since God has apparently chosen to speak in different ways to the citizens of Earth.

There is no winning, no best or only religion. People have to come to terms with this, and with the limits of evangelizing and proselytizing. Invitation works better than command. There is something to be said for learning to shake the dust off one’s feet and being able to move on.

There is no significant unity among religions. And if there is something that unites us all, many seem unwilling to invest the time and energy to look for it. It’s easier, or somehow feels more natural, to have a bone to pick.

One might rightfully wonder why a Loving, All-knowing Creator of the Universe would choose to operate this way– where some, many, across faith systems, behave as if they have a corner on perfect knowledge and understanding of what God is trying to tell us.

Frankly, it’s equally easy to get the impression that God doesn’t have it all together yet, and we’ve been suffering because of it. For a very long time.

A synthetic Paul Harvey voice touts Trump as a godsend in a way-over-the-top video. Yikes. AI has the potential to really mess with us.

Has anyone else envisioned a scenario where no one knows what’s real anymore? What’s truth? What and who counts as a trustworthy source?

Some AI bot telling people not to vote in a primary? That’ll be considered quaint by springtime, if not before.

Just another layer of subterfuge to be aware of as this election year unfolds. You can bet Russia and others are all in. Probably even the political parties here in the U.S. And it won’t just be Republican rogues—everyone will want to try their hand at it.

Sounds like a real rat’s nest.

To me, trying to listen to people like Trump, or MTG, or Jordan or Scalise or Cruz or the Johnsons– Ron or Mike– pretty much anyone on the right– is difficult because it doesn’t take long for them to start sounding like they’re just spitting words out before they forget them.

It’s like they’ve been given the words they must speak from some master list of talking points, and it doesn’t take long for them to sound a little—or a lot—off. The paranoia comes through, the provincialism and shallowness come through, the anger and naivete come through.

They’re all throwing spaghetti at the wall, spouting inane and insane rhetoric designed to throw shade at somebody and keep in the good steads of King Trump. It’s hard to take any of them seriously because their attempts at sensible, productive dialogue are so infrequent.

For many of the hotheads, it’s just hiding behind a Bible they don’t know how to read, spouting ridicule, accusing, blaming, defaming. Nothing of value exits their mouths, and the belief among many across the aisle is that there is no hope for them, that they want an America we must never return to.

Trouble is, their pathetic attempt at casting a vision for the country seems to be finding many receptive ears. There are many who aren’t averse to returning to the 1950s, apparently, or maybe even further back than that.

What’s striking is that Trump actually appears to believe he has something important to say, and that his audiences must of course be hanging on every word he utters.

Hate to break it to you, Donald, but you’ve got nothing. You never have. You’re an empty windbag, a narcissist who probably loves pontificating in front of the mirror before your biggest fan. Or is it that you look in the mirror anymore and realize you’re too far gone?

You’re a gameshow host who got some airtime and recognition, a guy who simply conned angry, frustrated people into thinking you were their savior, some big deal who spoke their language and—somehow—identified with them. That may be the cruelest con of all.

What are you still doing here? Your fifteen minutes ended a long time ago.

I’ve reached the point where I don’t want to check the newsfeeds in the morning.

I know what I’m liable to find there—thumbnails of an angry Donald Trump complaining and whining and fabricating, more bad news about Gaza, maybe a hopeful article about a possible ceasefire; the US getting deeper into it with the Houthis and who knows who else; an article about potentially deadly microorganisms being exposed in the Arctic because the permafrost isn’t so perma anymore. Worst case scenario at this point, but it sounds plausible.

Then more articles about the dysfunctional Republican party, the hopeless pursuit of the nomination by DeSantis and Haley, a head-scratching return to support of Trump, along with the regular reminders that we live in a violent society with too many damned guns.

There will usually be some mention of the stock market’s rise and the economy’s comeback and resiliency, despite other articles that highlight a weird disconnect between good economic numbers and peoples’ own sad economic situations (are they, really?). And they blame Biden to boot. Just another piece of the political witchcraft always being employed—say something long and loud enough and people will start believing it.

And then we can’t forget about the 155 million Americans under some sort of meteorological warning of Armageddon—cold, snow, rain, tornados, flooding, locusts. Maybe not locusts.

I usually end up checking things out, anyway, always hopeful that I’ll see a banner headline that reports Trump has decided to drop out of the race, face the music, maybe retreat to Mar-a-Lago for the rest of his days, if he’s not placed somewhere else. He comes clean. He even tells his legion of braindead that he’s been misleading them all along and that they need to raise their standards. He apologizes to them and to the country, and the country actually accepts his apology.

Oh, that’s rich.

The unmoving, undeterred Benjamin Netanyahu needs to rethink his handling of the Gaza disaster. Has it ever crossed his mind that he’s doing to the Gazans what he feels has so often happened to his people?

Yes, there is no getting around what occurred on October 7, but have there been any moments when Bibi and his cohorts have stopped and wondered if they haven’t already killed enough Palestinians—and some Israeli hostages— and done enough damage, destroyed enough of their infrastructure and leveled enough homes and made it impossible for nearly the whole territory to return to anything familiar?

How can people live this way? On the one hand, how can Hamas operate in such a cowardly manner by running tunnels underneath hospitals and even consider using the civilian population as built-in hostages? What is this mentality? Civilians, human beings as meat, as acceptable collateral damage.

Anyway, it sounds like some cracks are appearing among Israeli government officials, some differing opinions and a building frustration with the scorched earth policy on which Netanyahu seems so unyielding.

Good. Maybe this leads to a pullback, a reconsideration, a ceasefire.

Netanyahu has always been a hardliner, and talking tough on war is one thing hardliners do. But one might dare imagine that somewhere in Bibi’s thinking might emerge the thought that the relentless, scorched earth violence being perpetrated on Gaza will not—maybe cannot—eradicate Hamas, and will actually serve to create a whole new brand of animosity with different players, motivated by dreadful loss and seething anger and desire for vengeance.

The same old fuel sources, with a whole new generation of actors.

It is sad to think that there aren’t enough people who want to sit down and hammer out a solution that leads to coexistence, a two-state solution, where the sides create a framework for a lasting peace, where people have grown so averse to war that they are able to put aside their religious zeal and actually take a step down a more peaceful, trusting path.

The people of Israel, the people of Gaza– all Palestinians– must be exhausted beyond empty, and tired of living constantly under some threat of annihilation, caught in an endless cycle of defense and retaliation. How can anyone live this way forever?

If peace talks and discussions ever materialize, maybe the participants will need to leave their Tanakhs and Qurans at home. Leave the holy books out of it. Because there will never be peace if this boils down to just another godfight.

Maybe Republicans need to smell the coffee, make decisions on their own, and leave Trump out of it. He’s out of office, for crying out loud, though it’s hardly seemed that way. He’s clueless, no student of history, and he’s never had a handle on governance. He’s a pretender of the first magnitude, yet people keep lining up to ride his coattails.

Just because he’s running for POTUS again should make no difference whatsoever. He shouldn’t be able to run again, for one thing—the 14^th Amendment provision should have ended his run a long time ago. And his inherent offensiveness should have ended his eligibility before that. He’s his own attempt at being a thug, the kind of persona he seems intent on conveying.

He boasted about his “big” win in Iowa, where he got 51% of the 15% of eligible voters that ventured out on a cold night. Where was everybody else? Did they just figure Trump had it in the bag, or did they not care enough about Trump and the rest of the slate of candidates to make an effort to get to the caucuses?

Anyway, even though he’s yakking constantly, he says nothing, ever, and can’t offer a cogent, thoughtful commentary on anything. He’s perpetually angry, sarcastic, motivated more by vengeance and a need to prevail than any love of country. One might reasonably think he’d be unduly distracted by everything currently on his plate! And, for some reason, he’s still a media darling. Ugh.

How impotent can a party get?   

I recently had a two-night stay at a local hospital. My roommate had his TV on the whole time—24 hours a day, no lie—and often tuned to police procedurals and forensic files drivel that probably contributed to my headache and fever (actually, that turned out to be a mild case of pneumonia).

The layout of the average hospital room is such that there’s little hope of creating your own space without going into total recluse mode. In other words, even if you close the curtain as far as it will go, you’re always going to be able to hear whatever it is your roommate is watching. It often doesn’t matter that the intent of the combination call bell and TV remote with speaker is to keep it at a reasonable volume by your ear. The guy in the other bed had his raised to strikingly audible levels. I never complained, other than the time he knocked the speaker/remote/call button onto the floor while sleeping and the volume became ridiculously loud practically next to me.

Anyway, back to the subject matter of what was often on his screen. I realize that I was under no obligation to peek over and watch, but it was pretty hard not to. I could have turned on my own TV and listened in a more considerate and commendable way, with the speaker next to my ear, but that would have created a cacophony of sound that probably would have made my headache worse. So I just laid in my bed, tried to ignore what was going on next door, but occasionally sneaking a peek.

By the time of discharge, I sensed a change in the way I looked at the world. And I had confirmation that a lot of what passes for entertainment on TV is nothing more than dramatized, sensationalized accounts of people behaving badly. Garbage television. Viewed the same way as slowing down to take a look at an accident on the interstate.

Oh, there’s always the forensic pursuit, in which viewers are supposed to find some redeeming value, and which can be fascinating, but their whole reason for being strikes me as that of a fire company arriving in time to save a cellar hole.

I don’t really care how the crime is solved. What looms larger for me is that the crime happened at all, among people who, more often than not, really don’t have it all together, who are unhappy for numerous reasons, who have a deficit of coping skills, whose worlds are small, who are ignorant and stupid and driven by base desires they never learned or were taught how to handle. It was depressing, after a while.

As we drove away from the hospital, and through various neighborhoods, I was evaluating the likelihood that something like what I was watching could happen there, or around the next corner. Someone with a devious plan to collect on an insurance policy, someone else with unresolved jealousy or anger issues or mental illness, with depravity and evil in their heart.

These “shows” aren’t just shows. They’re intentional efforts at drawing us in, with little consideration for quality and content. They are appealing to some lowest common denominator, some prurient interest. The fact that a crime is solved is almost immaterial, an inconsequential aside. So much brain power and sleuthing and stupid luck are involved in solving heinous acts that should have never happened in the first place, much less made their way to a TV screen. A steady diet of such rot could make one lose their faith in humanity, start seeing monsters behind every tree.  

The NASA/Lockheed-Martin X-59 sounds like an interesting machine. The pilot will have to depend on feeds to 4k screens in the cockpit in order to “see,” all while cruising at Mach 1.4 (937 MPH) at 55,000 feet.

Sounds like a Darwin Award in the making.

Pilots say they aren’t worried, though, partly because it’s not a wholely IFR situation, not a totally obstructed view. There are windows– just not front-facing ones. Talk about having faith in your instrumentation.