It’s easy to take pot shots from the sidelines. And universal acclaim is a pipe dream.

PBS Newshour recently featured a long segment on Henry Kissinger, who died a couple days ago at age 100. As it is known for often trying to do, PBS offered an actual fair and balanced attempt at summarizing Kissinger’s legacy.

On one side was a fellow diplomat, a contemporary who was familiar with Kissinger’s efforts during much of the Nixon administration and beyond, and who offered a predictably positive assessment of Kissinger’s achievements. On the other side was a professor who wrote a book decrying, among other things, Kissinger’s support of the bombing of Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

Starkly differing opinions of the same person. And I have to say that I was a bit annoyed by the professor, who lambasted Kissinger and painted him as something of a pariah, even guilty of war crimes.

No doubt, some horrible things developed in Cambodia after the bombing, namely the rise of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge and the killing fields. Such policy decisions might not be feasible in today’s world. But in the early 1970s, Kissinger’s opinions were influenced by a dogged desire to keep Communism at bay and maintain American democracy, at pretty much any cost.

The reason I find the professor’s badmouthing so grating is not because his opinions aren’t without merit, but more so because he wasn’t there, he wasn’t involved in the day-to-day, down and dirty work of trying to broker deals with bad players and angry leadership in situations where there were no perfect solutions, situations that might have appeared intractable to most everyone else.

Kissinger might have seemed ruthless, and like he enjoyed being in the limelight and rubbing elbows with the powerful, but he also had an almost unrivaled gift of vision and language—intelligence—of being able to create a climate in which progress could be made, deals could be hammered out, and wars and conflicts would cease.

I don’t see international diplomacy as being for the faint of heart. It’s not an exact science. Deals and concessions and seemingly impossible decisions must be made. Henry Kissinger was in the middle of many of these situations not only because he seemed to revel in them, but also because he had the once-in-a-generation skill set to handle them and to help render palatable outcomes, as unpopular as these may yet be to some.

We’ve drifted so far into la la land that, apparently, many in the group considered “potential voters” are more interested in being entertained than expending the effort to think and wrestle with issues.

When it comes to voting for a person running for public office, many, sadly, are easily bored, not impressed by a candidate’s intelligence or experience or familiarity with policy or ability to move legislation. They’d much rather have some manufactured drama, some excitement and stimulation.

You know—Entertainment Tonight or something that comes across as more reality show than reality.

And thus we can start to make sense of Donald Trump’s popularity. It’s less about substance and more about image, persona.

Make believe. Faking it.  

Advertising.

If you have a creative streak, relentless drive, and you can put any sense of morality you might possess on a shelf, you can probably have a nice career in advertising.

Name the product—cars, trucks, prescription drugs, pet food, personal hygiene—if you can weave a story and convince consumers that what you’re selling is the greatest thing since sliced bread, appeal to their sense of eco-awareness, pride and identity, all the while blurring the lines between want and need, then people will definitely consider buying what you’re selling.

One reason I miss big chunks of programming I want to watch is because I close my eyes when the five or seven minutes of commercials start, and I end up falling asleep.

For me, the latest crass commercialism to make me wretch is an ad that starts with a guy asking, “Do you want to win Christmas?!”  And then a woman I assume is his wife or significant other chimes in and asks “Do you really want to win Christmas?!” In my head I long ago started saying, “STFU.” Anymore, we Skip as soon as we’re allowed so we can go back to watching the selected YouTube clip.

Advertising in general is sickeningly loud, slick, contrived sludge, created with much forethought, targeting various audiences using guilt, pride, excessive drama, a tug at the heartstrings, patriotism, and anything else in order to merely sell stuff.

Even PBS can’t avoid obligation to its sponsors, but at least they get everything out of the way up front. Commercial television pretty much amounts to an annoying homage to commercialism, with a bit of programming thrown in.

Data doesn’t lie. Well, it can if it’s manipulated, but that’s a topic for another post.

Data sounds one-dimensional, clinical, dry, unglamorous. But numbers got us to the moon and back. They can take us other places as well, like down the path to enlightenment, to saving our hides—if we pay attention to them and heed them, listen to the people gathering and crunching them.

Numbers tell all sorts of stories. They translate to things that are less boring and more relevant, if we make the effort to tune in. But many won’t make that effort, so the data will most likely continue to be ignored, collect dust. And we will eventually miss the boat.

Because we needed to be entertained. By data.

How freaking sad is that?

Unless there are tireless watchdogs willing to monitor and speak up, the big companies will keep preening and congratulating themselves on how forward-thinking they are in matters of environmental stewardship, i.e. being carbon neutral.

By 2050.

I’m sure someone at Honda has done the math, but in case they haven’t, that’s still a few weeks more than 26 years from now. More than a quarter of a century. From now.

If there’s no sense of urgency being impressed upon these behemoths, they will be only too happy to pick comfortable dates for themselves. And the desired effect will be achieved: they can make it look like they care without really caring.

Poor Joe. It seems he can’t catch a break lately. Every misstep, every audible gaff is poked and probed and added to someone’s list of reasons why he shouldn’t be running for reelection. I admit to thinking he’s getting up there in years and does, on occasion, appear frail and tired and not up to the challenge of keeping a schedule one might associate with being POTUS.

But… Mr. Biden does come across as being a genuinely kind person. And he does love America—more so for what it can be than for what it once was and must not return to. Which is unlike his opponents on the right, who want to make America into a cold-hearted bastion of whiteness and a so-called Christian nation dependent on an easily and frequently misinterpreted and narrow reading of what the Bible says.

If the DNC deems Biden our best option against Trump or a Trump wannabe who’s beholden to the mindless Base, then I have to go with the elder statesman, and hope that his supporting cast can pick up any slack.  

Besides, Trump is no Spring chicken. Age-wise, we’re pretty much talking apples and apples.

Trump revives push to eliminate Obamacare.

First of all, it’s The Affordable Care Act. Secondly, what?

We already have at our disposal all we need to know about Donald Trump and his fitness for holding any elected office, never mind POTUS. In his and his reelection team’s inimitable opinion, it apparently seems like a good idea to add this to his long list of grievances, er, talking points. Fine, all this does is confirm the man’s heartlessness and that he operates with a debilitating chip on his shoulder.

Years have passed since the last time he brought this up. More people are covered by the program now than were covered a few years ago (35 million, according to a recent HHS report). What’s he doing? Does he know?

Sounds like he’s just lashing out. Playing the old, tired hits. A loser on so many levels.

Why is the story of Joe Burrow’s wrist so important? Is it merely because the Bengals didn’t follow NFL protocol in reporting an injury? And it’s Joe Burrow? Who needs to know about the injury? Why is it so critical that an investigation take place and people get to the bottom of this?

In my cynicism, I can’t help but think that it’s more about informing the millions who bet on games and who have turned fantasy leagues into an alternate universe, taking these as seriously as the players do the actual contests on the field. And even if this isn’t the reason, the whole wagering/fantasy league piece of the NFL experience seems overwrought and unworthy of such affiliation. The players should not be beholden to any of these peripheral interests.

Betting on games? All the warnings and 800 numbers and speed-talking disclaimers in the world won’t keep people from placing bets when they don’t have the money, or maybe even preventing a player on the field in a certain situation from throwing an intentionally errant pass, or giving up on a tackle.

Bottom line—who needs to know about Joe Burrow’s potential injury—the teams themselves, or the cadre of wagering concerns and fantasy football leeches hitching a ride on the NFL gravy train? Looks like the answer might be “Yes.”

Russia targets Ukraine’s power grid as winter sets in. Cruelty knows no bounds. War creates its own momentum, because people just get increasingly pissed at each other. A huge, sad game of tit for tat.

How much longer can the world stand by before we’re looking at WWIII? What are the spoils going to be? What is the purpose, the plan for when the bombs stop and the dust settles and the blood stops flowing?

Is there a victor who emerges, who now rules the roost and enjoys the spoils? Or is it just more hardened feelings and long memories for revenge, and unwilling subjects who want no part of being ruled by some remote, power-hungry kleptocracy who couldn’t care less about anyone else’s well-being?

Who knows, maybe this will be when God shows up—when the cry “How long?” grows to a crescendo, a world-wide lamentation.

What a sad, cruel joke.

I’m proud of our kids and spouses and the lives they’ve carved out for themselves. Hard-working in their jobs, dedicated and kind, attentive parents trying to raise their children with the right mix of oversight and free range.

I guess what concerns me is that the youngest generation is growing up in a world that really doesn’t have its shit together. What is their world gonna look like in 5 or 10 or 20 years? What’s on tap for their future?

We can only control what’s going on in the household, I guess, though one might hope that what is taught in the home that is good and wise has a way of seeping into the wider community and changing a corner of the world.

It seems there are always forces at work that are so much bigger than any one family. Impersonal, evil, self-satisfying, the opposite of altruistic, with little interest in shared victories and progress. It might infuriate a person to think that so much energy and will are focused on narrow agendas with such misplaced intensity.

What kind of world will today’s children inherit?

Sometimes it’s hard to think that we have to fight for everything. Why can’t there be a baseline of expectations and norms for how we treat one another? What is so difficult about live and let live? Why is it viewed as naïve to think that we could opt for cooperation and helping each other get through the day, instead of harboring suspicion and mistrust and just grabbing for what we think is ours, forcing our will, and to hell with everyone else?

The easier path, survival basics, I guess. Seems like we should be turning the corner on that way of thinking, if we are to exist as anything more than isolated clans and tribes.