The death toll in Gaza has topped 30,000. But life goes on for the rest of the world, because we all have our own problems. We might hear the number and give momentary pause, but then it becomes a matter of “What can be done? It’s 5000 miles away, and we’ve got our own fish to fry. Let the battle of attrition unfold as they deem necessary. Besides, it doesn’t seem to matter what the rest of the world thinks. Thirty thousand deaths is just the cost of doing business in that neck of the woods.”

War is part of the fabric there, disagreements that come to blows are the cost of religious zeal, of a tortured history, a natural progression from inflammatory rhetoric to killing anything that moves.

Have at it, then, and may someone be left standing. Or not. Does it really matter? Does anyone on either side really care?

Even if it’s been all bluster, even if Trump is indeed the blowhard windbag we’ve suspected all along; even if he is the cold-hearted, incompetent, narcissistic braggard with the twelve-word vocabulary and wise-ass tone of voice—even if he is the world’s biggest fake who’s knowingly misled so many—shouldn’t we resent the fact that he’s taken up so much of our time and energy?

We’ve indulged him for so long that he has become no longer harmless. For the media, Trump has been the lines on the mirror that they just can’t refuse—even as they know what’s liable to dribble from his mouth.

He is a devil on the loose, energized by holding court with his sheep, his mesmerized, entranced zombie apostles and curiosity seekers who populate his rallies. It should be obvious to just about everyone by now that he is a leech, a power-hungry stooge who knows exactly nothing about how to lead this nation.

All he knows is how to capitalize on ignorance and gullibility, fomenting chaos.

The Supreme Court ain’t so supreme, of late.

Maybe it has always benefited from a certain undeserved mystique- its members aren’t gods, after all, just human beings tasked with important work. Justices over the years have produced many landmark decisions seemingly based on a sincere and fair treatment of testimony and applicable law, even charting new ground from time to time, especially when it comes to human rights and bodily autonomy.

Lately, though, there seems to be some backsliding. More suspicion, more doubt, more finger pointing in the direction of a hand-picked conservative majority on a mission to, oh, I don’t know, tighten things up, bring us back to a “better” place that pleases straight, white Christians everywhere.

In the midst of the Trump mess, the court seems to not want to stick its neck out and abide by the 14^th Amendment provision of forbidding insurrectionists from running for office. Though he hasn’t been accused yet, many know what Trump did and who and what he really is, and how dangerous he has become.

So maybe it comes down to how closely the court adheres to the letter of the law, along with its efforts to reel in the temptation to react to certain public sentiment, and to what many are seeing with their own eyes: Trump running roughshod over, and even making a mockery of certain norms that have long served as guardrails.

Sometimes it looks like nothing can be done to make him go away.

To hear the folks at MSNBC tell it, one could get the impression that this upcoming presidential election is the most consequential in the country’s history. Actually, they’ve been saying that for a while now, and I guess there’s truth to it.

I don’t know how it’s being painted on Fox or Newsmax, but it’s probably quite different. Or the same gravity but for different reasons. Another universe, Earth 2.

The diehard Trumpers are locked in, no hope of changing any minds in that camp. But their numbers are relatively small and apparently getting smaller. It’s just that they have an outsized megaphone, and whatever Trump and the little Trumps populating state legislatures and town councils are saying is landing on receptive ears.

It’s easy to be incredulous, to ask oneself how things possibly could have gotten this out of hand in the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” but it probably shouldn’t come as any surprise.

Hmm… free… brave… who are we talking about– the blowhard psychopath with the messiah complex, or the twenty-something soldiers and weekend warriors who keep having to pay for some suit’s power trip?

It’s messy.

Record highs, then snow. It’s where we’re at. Will it follow that, since the winter has been relatively mild, the summer is gonna be a scorcher, bordering on unbearable and life-threatening?

Hey, but there is no climate change, no global warming—if you’re Liz Cheney or just about any Republican. Or a fan of fossil fuels.

We can’t agree on anything anymore, except maybe that we can’t agree on anything anymore. Nor are there any universal truths. Just provincial truths, convenient truths.

I see what you did there, Mr. Gore.

Will we ever hear the end of it? Get ready for the latest assault on decency and decorum: Trump won handily in South Carolina.

It’s important to keep in mind that his victories, his momentum, are in the context of the Republican primary season, and not a general election. The hope is that, faced with the stark reality of actually having to vote for him for real might persuade many to swear off of this bombastic, idiotic empty suit.

Court storming. The college basketball tradition that has always seemed ill-advised and lately has turned dangerous, for some reason (have they started serving alcohol?). It’s a bit of mindless mob behavior leading to tense moments for all involved.

First it was Caitlin Clark, now Kyle Filipowski. The on-court crush of humanity has always appeared to have no upside, except as an excuse for home court fans to be crazy for a few minutes, maybe get on TV. It’s always seemed over-the-top and unnecessary, and it puts fans and personnel on both teams in danger of injury or even being trampled.

It’s a confined-space version of the mass hysteria that ensues on a football field after a big win. If this keeps up, there will be new rules coming. Can’t say it would be a disappointment.

And the old person signs off.

After reading Prequel, Rachel Maddow’s most recent book, it’s abundantly clear that a free society—or free relative to other countries at least—is an easy mark for a regime, say, like the one in Germany back in the 1930s and ‘40s.

The playbook Hitler used on us appears to have paved the way for the one Putin is currently using. And Putin has better tools with which to penetrate deep into society and mess with our psyche. It was then and is now all about generating rot from within. Sowing discontent among us, spreading disinformation, picking at and widening the divide between haves and have nots, appealing to an embrace of isolationism, grooming a sense of fear and mistrust when it comes to immigrants, along with an ever-present antisemitism.

Even going so far as to sweet-talking and bribing politicians, our representatives in Congress. There’s been little in terms of bombshell accusations in this regard, but all one has to do is listen to Bannon and Miller and Gaetz and Jordan and Johnson and even MTG and the rest to realize that we’re again dealing with a faction that desires a form of government much different from what the founders intended.

One can see why Maddow wrote the book– to remind us that we’ve been here before, and that the U.S. will always be vulnerable, because of our Constitution and the freedoms it provides. Sadly, there will always be a misfit somewhere who hates us, hates democracy, and who will go to any lengths to take us down- slowly, remotely even, in unnoticeable or at least plausibly deniable ways for as long as possible, focusing on peoples’ ignorance and all that would create friction and manufactured hatred, and people taking sides.

America is indeed an experiment, a rarity on the world stage, one that demands engagement, participation, and buy-in from its citizens. And one that apparently will always invite efforts at destruction.

No, I didn’t forget about Trump. He’s just a stooge, though. A pretender who’s been allowed to hang around for too long.

A panel of experts was going on about the state of the war between Ukraine and Russia. Two of them are, I guess, optimistic about Ukraine being able to hold its own, with help from the U.S. and other countries. The other was Donnie Downer and pretty much saying Ukraine has already lost. The writing is on the wall, he maintains—Russia has 10 times the fire power, five times the population. It’s a battle of attrition. Russia will do to Ukraine what it did to Finland in 1940.

One of the more rosy-sounding panelists said that 2025 will be a better year on the battlefield for Ukraine, taking for granted, sadly, that the fucking war will still be going on in 2025.

Putin sits back, with beady eyes and a face betraying coldness and derision, and the rest of the world just sits, paralyzed to do anything besides wait for the other shoe to drop.

Making war is the one thing we humans excel at. It seems there will always be the next megalomaniac to deal with.

So it’s come to this: a former U.S. President, running for the same office again, against all reason and sanity, is reduced to hawking gold tone sneakers to raise money.

Donald Trump is of course shameless—we already knew that. But he seems to find ways to lower the bar ever further, to subterranean levels.

Sounds like he got a less-than-enthusiastic reception when he introduced his gaudy high tops at Sneaker Con, a real event, in Philly. You can’t make this stuff up.

At least one die-hard supporter has apparently indulged him, forking over $9K for a pair. And millions more are going to vote for the guy, sans the ugly Chuck Taylors.