“War itself is, of course, a form of madness. It’s hardly a civilized pursuit. It’s amazing how we spend so much time inventing devices to kill each other and so little time working on how to achieve peace.”   – Walter Cronkite

Yes, Mr. Cronkite, we do seem to spend an inordinate amount of time in pursuits that lead to the desired upper hand on a battle field or in the skies, or whatever front needs attention. Our priorities are severely skewed, a reflection of our mistrust and fears and blind ambition, and love of money.

It’s entirely maddening, isn’t it?

The list of descriptors is long, when it comes to giving voice to our anger over such misguided pursuits and principles. We see a better world seemingly within our grasp. We talk about it a lot, but we can’t reach it.

We are haunted by the past, hardly learning from it, it seems, unable to turn a corner and emerge from the long shadow of the vile, unspeakably evil misdeeds of people, mostly men, who behave as if their views of politics and world order should be embraced by all, spread around the world, whether or not the rest of the world shares their zeal and vision.

The supply of these types– deluded and damaged, paranoid, angry, lured by the siren song of power and riches, and suffering from a debilitating deficit of affect– seems to be endless. There is no evolution of thought and action. More time needs to pass, apparently, before future generations– if we still exist as a species– may see a softening, an emerging wisdom that looks like patience and compassion and a deference for difference, for living and letting live. For having had enough of the violence and death and heartbreak and assault on the more prevalent desire to live in peace.

Co-existence may be a cliched bumper sticker, but it deserves a more prominent place in our thinking and acting. We are not all the same. Human beings are not all the same! We’re largely averse to being herded, though it may not always look that way. Why is that so difficult for some world “leaders” to understand? Certain leaders aren’t leading. They’re merely reaping the benefits of their position, motivated by power and the need to hold onto it, immune to feeling anything approaching genuine love for the people they govern. They live in a world where everything is transactional, and reduced to wins and losses.

China promises to “reunify” Taiwan, Ukraine is fighting an increasingly mobilized Goliath, Israel is behaving like a cornered rat, though justifiably so, and the Middle East in general appears to be heading toward some sort of violent reckoning that will draw the rest of the world into yet one more conflict turned world-wide conflagration.

This seems to be what we do best– set our sights low and just give up on light. It seems we prefer perpetual darkness.

What’s happening to church? Have people just stopped believing? Has church somehow outlived its usefulness?

Everyone went to church a couple generations ago, or at least a high percentage of them did. Were we all sold a bill of goods? Were we like lemmings? Or is it just about scheduling and calendars anymore?

Did congregations in the same denomination spring up across the street from each other simply because a small group of leader types didn’t agree with how “that other church” was interpreting scripture? Or they thought they could do it better(!)? Or that they were better, or at least had a more enlightened understanding of God’s word?

What the hell was up with two or more (pick a denomination) congregations literally in the same block or on opposite corners of the street, building cavernous structures that said more about penis envy than any amount of reverence or “if you build it…” faith?

It was a model destined for collapse, as it turns out, because untrained “experts” who just wanted to show off decided their understanding of what the Bible does and doesn’t say was superior to what “those other people” were peddling.

Scripture is dynamite, deadly dangerous in the hands of those who think lazy, convenient interpretation will do. Think Mike Johnson, or legislators in Texas who apparently would love to keep women in their place. Congress is full of these types, and it looks like their star is rising.

The best news on the Google newsfeed this morning is that Leo the Golden Retriever was rescued from a 300-foot cliff somewhere in Oregon.

The rest of the headlines were more of the same old head-scratching, gloom and doom—China is now patrolling the South China Sea, and RFK, Jr. has gathered enough signatures to be on the primary ballot in Utah as an Independent candidate for POTUS.

RFK and RFK, Jr.—one of these is not like the other. I don’t know who this benefits more in November, but I can’t imagine the Biden camp is any too happy.

I watched Jamie Raskin explain the validity of Article 3 of the 14^th Amendment last night. For most Democrats, and anyone who wants to see Donald Trump get what’s coming to him, what he said made perfect sense and was nice to hear.

For most Republicans, and those who STILL think Trump walks on water, it was as if all that Raskin said was pulled directly from his ass and was offered up only in service of spreading lies and misinformation and a liberal bias.

There is no winning of arguments here. One can listen to a Constitutional scholar explain things in plain terms, and you will either hear something rational and sensible, or something horribly misinterpreted and offered only in the service of glorifying the “weaponized” justice system and adding fuel to the fire that Trump indeed is the victim of a years-long “witch hunt.”

Positions are hardened. It’s difficult to know exactly what happens by early November, but the gut is telling many that it’s gonna be a patch of rough road, to put it mildly. In no small part because millions continue to be deceived by a fallen “star,” just another “celebrity” whose qualifications aren’t even skin deep.

Sorry for all the quotes. They feel justified, though.

Removing Trump from ballots isn’t going to solve anything, because not every state is going to follow the lead of Maine and Colorado. Such efforts may only end up amounting to a form of public protest that doesn’t really change anything. Just more evidence of the partisan divide.

This potential electoral mess must be on a lot of peoples’ minds already. Without unanimity, or even with it, nothing will be solved, and the anger index might be ratcheted all the way up to Civil War.

I understand the premise, the why of such a removal attempt—because there is a Constitutional provision for removing bad actors, even if it originates post-1865—but we’re in too deep for any such righteous move to actually mean anything. One can envision red states ignoring a SCOTUS ruling that doesn’t go in their favor, and maybe even removing Democrats from ballots, just because.

So, as much as it sounds like the right thing to do, and as much as we’re way past tired of his ugly mug, it’s not going to solve the problem that is Donald Trump. Our only hope is a pre-election guilty verdict in one of the indictments (dream on…), or denying him in November.

Saying that last part out loud is beyond depressing, because there is no reason for his inclusion in any conversation about electability or fitness for the job. He’s horrible, and a lot of people on both sides of the aisle know he’s horrible. But that has never mattered.

This is feeling like one of those times when we describe the slow-motion inevitability of a car crash—we could see it coming but were helpless to change the outcome.

It can’t unfold that way.

(But it did.)  

Day One.

College football is front and center today, but in the background a lot of us are probably already asking, “Where the hell are we gonna be on Day 366?”

We don’t need pundits and prognosticators to tell us that this is gonna be a very challenging year. The maddening thing is that it didn’t have to be this way. Global warming and all the other assaults on our pursuit of happiness aside, if Republicans in Congress had had a backbone, Trump might have already been impeached, and the judicial wrangling and civil unrest that would have inevitably followed might have already started to subside. As it stands now, we’ve got a country on edge— arsenals at the ready, dug in, tired, angry, confused, and ready to pounce, ready to release the pent-up frustration, misdirected as that may be.

Maybe this is the year when our adversaries around the world stand by and watch to see if we implode, if we destroy ourselves, do the job for them. Of course they’ll do their best to hasten the process with outright military aggression, or AI-fueled disinformation campaigns that will succeed to one degree or another in trolling millions.

And another four years of Trump? That just can’t happen. To even utter the possibility stretches credulity to its breaking point. It’s looking like millions of people will be pissed in early November, regardless of how the election turns out.

So, if there is a God in heaven, here’s a prayer that the divine presence come and dwell among us in the months ahead– to shine some light, soften many a heart. We’re going to need all the help we can get.

Donald Trump has made it necessary to familiarize ourselves with the basic tenets and provisions of the Constitution, even as it remains open to interpretation.

Trump’s lawyers claim immunity for their client with regard to January 6; Jack Smith warns that if Trump can prevail with that claim, then the country will have no recourse when it comes to calling to account rogues bent on pushing boundaries and testing limits and fabricating excuses for awful behavior.

A Trump win here leaves the country in the unenviable position of suffering long-term damage at the hands of a needy attention hound who doesn’t give even one shit about America and the majority of Americans who’ve known all along that he is, indeed, an overmatched weakling.

The die will be cast, going forward, for a country with no safeguards, no actionable provisions in place to contain and stop the next (or is Trump the end of the line?) power-hungry maniac with designs on the seat of power.

Hands will be tied, and the best anyone can do will be to lament as they witness the place crumble. A fallible yet once proud nation de-clawed, with a porous backbone and a heartbreaking number of traitors calling themselves patriots.

Sorry for harping on this, but maybe there are too many bowl games at the end of the NCAAF season.

I know, I know—it’s good business for sponsors and teams and all that. But the product on the field is suffering, less than stellar and engaging. Even the Orange Bowl turned out to be a bust, mostly because FSU was severely depleted by injuries, and no-shows due to portal transfers and players sitting out to preserve their health for the NFL draft. And maybe Georgia piled on in order to be part of any conversation about why they weren’t in the final four. Lots of asterisks, though.

Anyway, these New Years contests just don’t have the same panache they used to, though the CFP contests oughta be interesting.  

Angry waves—though not rogue waves, I guess—in Ventura County and elsewhere in CA, flooding streets and businesses, injuring multiple people. Pretty wild.

Is this an example of the rising sea levels and more intense storms scientists have been warning about for years? Are we seeing the coming to fruition, before our eyes, of predictions that naysayers still insist on ignoring?

Probably just a one-off, right? Let’s chalk it up to El Nino, and start cleaning up.

On a related note, the end-of-season bowl results are reflective, to some extent, of the absence of certain players who chose not to suit up, because they’re getting ready to move on to playing on Sundays and don’t want to jeopardize their chances by sustaining injuries that end their careers before they even start.

This is understandable, but it all kind of dilutes the product on the field.

Oh well, the bottom line is still the bottom line– back-ups get to play, voracious fan bases get to watch one more football game, and schools get a bit of notoriety and some decent financial compensation. So, it’s all good.