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.

The weather is front and center in the newsfeed this morning. Bitter cold, snow, coastal flooding in New England and elsewhere. Water in places it rarely goes, maybe a reminder that the predictions of rising water along the coast aren’t the sky-is-falling, unfounded warnings of crazed scientists after all.

It’s hard to know if what’s going on now is just a perfect storm of simultaneous onshore winds and high tides, or if there’s some consequence of global warming in the mix. Either way, winter is making itself known, after a relatively tame December.

Talk about banging your head against a wall… The U.S. undertook a second attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen, and of course the Houthis have vowed revenge.

Of course they have! Because that’s the way these things work. This early in the proceedings, one side doesn’t suddenly wake up to the fact that they’ve been bested in a fight and should probably sue for peace. They take it personally as an affront to their nationhood, their manhood, their religion, so the back-and-forth commences. The hostilities simply escalate, the cycle of violence deepens, and maybe other countries decide to get involved.

And before you know it, we have ourselves a shootin’ war. There’s nothing like a war to pull countries out of whatever malaise is laying heavy. Nothing like a war with Islamic adversaries who have long memories for payback. Gotta keep Allah happy.

And we have to keep the shipping lanes open and protect the flow of black gold.

What’s the master plan here, and who’s behind it? Because whoever it is has succeeded in drawing us in. And here in America, there’s always been a faction who’s more than willing to get drawn in. Suckers for a good fight, or a bad one.

They’re all bad, even the “good” ones. The price we stupid humans keep paying.

South Africa’s claim of genocide is Israel’s claim of defending itself and taking revenge for what happened on October 7.

The high court at the U.N. is hearing a case positing that what the world is seeing in Gaza is genocide at the hands of Israel. Israel, of course, begs to differ, and its reasoning is not all unreasonable. No one has ever been able to crawl inside Israel’s head when it comes to how they behave. They live with deep scars and unimaginable hurt. A switch was long ago flipped when it came to how it reacted to animosity and aggression directed at them. They take no prisoners because they have been prisoners way too frequently.

The disconnect with all of that, the dissonance with regard to what’s currently happening in Gaza, is that, from what the world is seeing and hearing about the humanitarian crisis, the opinion could be formed that Israel needs to back off, needs to reevaluate its strategy and pay more attention to a distinction between civilians and Hamas fighters. It is currently easy for the rest of the world to believe that Israel is making little effort to honor that distinction.

What muddies the water is that Hamas makes it their vile practice to use civilians as human shields, to scurry around and plot strategy in tunnels underneath hospitals and other structures where non-combatants are liable to be present.

What is Israel to do? Sometimes, the claim is made, they just say, “Oh well… not much we can do except take them all out.” Israel claims otherwise, but the world is growing more skeptical that such care is being taken to minimize harm to innocents (there must be innocents, right?) who are just trying to stay alive and get through the day in one piece.

The U.S. is walking a steadily fraying tightrope. Without knowing what percentage of Israel’s military hardware is domestically produced, and without our (currently) unwavering support both politically and militarily, maybe Israel would be singing a different tune. Then again, maybe not.

Things are heating up in the Red Sea, like most everyone with a pulse expected they would.

I truly believe people are rooting for war to break out. People love a good war from the comfort of their living room. They love to see the U.S. kicking ass and having no pity on the Houthis, in this case, even though the subtext—the fear—is that this will all lead to a larger confrontation with, who knows, Iran, Russia, or China? Or all of the above?

Why do we need to be good at warmaking? It’s the saddest of commentaries on humanity.

DeSantis and Haley had a debate last night, and it’s looking like the best they could do was engage in a 5^th grade fight. In other words, the same old mishmash of unenlightening blather.

Anything of substance was overshadowed by the usual pushing and shoving and sniping and digs and quest for the memorable one-liner. They ignored or skated over the moderator’s questions because they came loaded for bear with their own talking points.

They were afraid to really go after Donald Trump, because they dared not offend the almighty Base. Imagine candidates for POTUS measuring their words in deference to another (disgraced) candidate’s supporters.

What does the Base actually believe, what do they really want, and who are these people? Because they control the narrative, apparently. They wield the levers, have some power. And they still think Donald Trump is the cat’s meow, some sort of savior.

Maybe that’s all we need to know.