The electorate are taken for idiots. Between the tenor of political advertising, and the way certain candidates behave and speak, it’s apparent that more than a few running for office lack a certain faith in humanity. They appeal to fear and ignorance. In fact, they bank on fear and ignorance, since an informed and reasoning electorate would be more likely to steer clear of these people.

I cannot remember an election cycle, besides the last two, where there were such stark contrasts between candidates and platforms. After wading through the invective and dark, grainy advertising coming from both sides, the real substance of arguments and platforms clearly resides with blue. They are the ones addressing real needs, or at least trying to.

Red are fear-mongering, narrow-minded, Christian conservatives who have never understood or simply chosen to ignore the separation of church and state, who cannot shake the outsized reverence for free market capitalism, low taxes, small government, and the 2nd Amendment. Red, ironically, is too enthralled with the ideal of freedom. Freedom is paramount, even as they seem to not understand that there is much more to that concept than whether or not we can own a home arsenal or say “Merry Christmas.”

The DJIA has its best week since June while the rest of the world is going up, or down, in flames. A telling juxtaposition of fortunes and priorities. A jarring disconnect that momentarily distracts from the horrific nature of what’s happening in Ukraine, or a hospital in Dallas, or wherever. Probably won’t be long before all those gains disappear again.

All the while, the people of Ukraine continue to struggle to survive. That glimmer of hope, of a turning tide, is fast fading with news that power is out over wide swaths of the country. Russia is doubling down, attacking the power grid, the internet, making life even more of a slog than it already was. And this as the cold weather soon arrives. Ruthless, heartless monsters.

But hey, the Dow gained over 700 points on Friday! What’s not to like about that?

I had a check-up the other day and asked the doctor about the latest Covid booster—whether I should get it or not. In a matter-of-fact manner, he said “You can’t have too many antibodies,” or something like that. So, yes on getting the booster.

But it was what else he said that made me a bit angry with the coverage the latest variants are getting in the media. It’s the 5-alarm fire again, warning of a fall and winter spike with several variants on the attack. I forget exactly how he phrased it, but the doc said that Covid has been weakened and most of us have a decent level of immunity, either from the vaccines and boosters, or from contracting the illness. Let’s just say he wasn’t joining the media in sounding the alarm.

I know news outlets play a role in keeping us informed, but it seems like they’re making more out of this than they need to, as they have a tendency to do. It’s not that we don’t need to know what’s going on with Covid. It’s more that we’re getting beaten down with unnecessary drama and hype.

I suppose there are still alot of vulnerable people who are unvaccinated or insufficiently boosted, but there’s a good chance they’re not watching the networks who are sounding the alarm.

America really is a remarkable experiment. Immigrants, or descendants of immigrants living in a place where they dared conceive of a life marked, to some extent, by self-determination and having choices.

Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Washington, Madison and the rest created this simultaneously robust and fragile entity in which people, at least on paper, were granted those inalienable rights, along with certain responsibilities. What we’ve learned since is that those rights were enjoyed largely by white northern European immigrants who gave no quarter to indigenous people and to others who didn’t look like them or worship like them or talk like them. Most of us know this by now. It’s still the case, though things are changing rapidly.

Maybe we’re disappointed by the reality, by the hypocrisy and biased history taught as truth when we were growing up. Yet the ideal still motivates.

I mention all this because we’re living, once again, in a time when this grand experiment is under assault. Once again, people seem to be forgetting how hard it is to maintain this fragile space, not fully understanding or appreciative of what they have. They’re slipping into default mode, where the only seemingly viable form of governance finds expression in the loudest talkers– the self-serving autocrat, the promise-spewing, power-hungry despot for whom government of the people, by the people, and for the people presents too much of a challenge, is too cumbersome, too hard. Maybe even a quaint, ridiculous notion.

It might get one thinking that representative governance, with its attendant messiness, give and take, winning AND losing, and the need for a cosmic, color-blind perspective and sense of unity, is somehow always going to be beyond too many of us, destined to remain an ideal and not much more.

Maybe the best we can hope for is that enough of us are on the same page, working toward that more perfect union.

Ghastly violence perpetrated on innocent citizens of a sovereign nation. Live and let live are just words on a page, a laughably empty cliche for someone like Vladimir Putin and whoever else is calling the shots in Moscow.

No one, except maybe Putin himself and the hardliners around him, deserves to die a victim of a suicide drone or other means of indiscriminate, cold-hearted aggression.

I’m not saying this the way I’m feeling this, which is really frustrating. It’s been difficult to verbalize the vehemence and anger that have been stirred up since word of a troop buildup on the Ukraine border hit the news cycle in, when, December of last year?

No one has a say in being here. No one has knowingly signed up for living a life destined to be cut short because an out-of-touch oligarch deems it so. It seems unfathomable to me that people are born into the world merely to suffer, born to die without ever getting a taste of self-determination. This in itself is absurd to me, and as good a reason as any for not wanting to become a mere statistic in a senseless battle of wills.

History is littered with vanquished “leaders” who have surrendered to the siren song of power. People who are convinced, wrongly, of their own importance and the propriety of whatever misguided vision drives them. The tragic reality is that their insistence on getting their own way leads to incomprehensible suffering and death. And the most disgusting thing is that they don’t care about tearing so many lives apart.

These are crimes against humanity that, one might think, deserve eternal damnation and permanent residence in a hellish place. Or at least a tribunal at The Hague. The only trouble is, Vladimir Putin and others like him don’t buy into the whole consequences thing. They’re somehow above all that, yet still blind, faithless, and getting desperate, oblivious to anything other than preserving their offensively garish lifestyles and saving their own hides.

The previous entry was not exactly brimming with optimisim. Apologies must somehow be in order, but I just can’t bring myself to do that.

I want so much to believe that humans are capable of virtuous behavior on a corporate scale, able to unify and steer the ship away from the rocks before disaster ensues. There’s always a flicker of hope that we can learn from previous egregious mistakes. But it’s not looking that way, currently. After all, there are a lot of people on the planet, and there’s liable to be a few bad players who somehow manage to end up in positions of power.

We possess some fatal flaw, some unevolved, lingering weakness that overrules and undermines our better angels, that keeps us mired in tribalism, motivated by pride and distrust, and a need to prevail.

It is difficult to find the words to adequately plum the depths of the depravity currently on display in Ukraine. The stakes are high for everybody, outcomes seemingly in the hands of people who would love nothing more than to continue preying on peoples’ fears, creating chaos and instability and some new world order.

They of course have to be stopped, which leaves us having to contemplate—yet again!—committing to ridding the world of the latest Hitler wannabes.

Sorry. Just can’t shake this lack of faith in humanity.

Things are growing eerily familiar—from an historical perspective, at least. A bad man with a grudge and an inner circle of hardliners is perpetrating evil in Eastern Europe, while various economies around the world are struggling with woes like a lingering pandemic, inflation, ferocious weather, various shortages, political unrest, etc. It seems like a perfect recipe for the war in Ukraine to become a wider conflict. A perverse unifier.

Ok, a world war.

Nothing like a war to snap someone out of an economic funk or a political haze, right? Except this time around, our placement between two oceans isn’t gonna protect us. They almost didn’t last time. This time they won’t. Happy Fall, Happy Thanksgiving, and Merry bleeping Christmas, everybody.

Rachel Maddow shows up on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show, Nicole Wallace shows up on Rachel’s show—all in the name of plugging new podcasts with a veneer of substance and poignant dialogue.

Oh well, they get to do these things because they are the stars of the network, and it actually makes good business sense. It’s just blatantly self-serving and somehow cheesy.

A whole slate of variants, including one off and running in Singapore and elsewhere that apparently laughs in the face of the latest boosters. How does this happen? Is it nature taking its course? Just evidence of the legacy born of ignorance and denial and not taking precautions? Or are there people in labs actually working on new strains, hastening the spread, intent on perpetuating instability?

A truly paranoic take on things, I know, but how can this thing mutate so quickly? Is this natural? And can we– should we– keep getting injected with boosters on such a regular basis?  

Nothing is going to happen to Trump. He’s going to survive even this all-out assault. A subpoena will be served, the January 6^th Committee will be hailed for doing a stellar job of gathering information and presenting a seemingly ironclad case, but the fucker is more than likely going to walk away from even this.

If by some miracle he doesn’t escape unscathed, this country is probably in for some serious unrest. Violence that’s been hinted at and threatened off and on for several years now. The foil hatters will find ways to create chaos. No end game, no vision, no plan for if they happen to prevail. Just chaos.

America First? Helluva catch phrase. What kind of America are they talking about?