Family ties can be strong. Joe Biden’s decision to pardon Hunter is evidence of this.

He’s taking a hit politically, in part because he went back on his earlier word. But I think I understand the motivation. Partisan politics and the specter of Vengeful Trump were looming large, and Joe was being proactive, heading off the real possibility that his son might have been in for a rough road once Trump is in office.

You know—because Job 1A for Trump is exacting revenge on all the people who he thinks have done him wrong over the years (yup… instead of working on constructive legislation and acting like a grown up).

Biden’s “legacy” will be tarnished somehow. But does anyone really think he cares about that? We spend way too much time thinking about our legacy, anyway. We tend to take our insecurities and neediness to the grave.

Ambition. I’ve never really had any. I’m rudderless. I’ve always figured that if the world is just full of people all trying to “get theirs”, well, no thank you. I don’t want to be part of that rat race.

It’d be one thing if this led to some sort of altruistic outlook, but that’s not the case at all. I’ve just been wandering my entire life. Introspective, selfish, hesitant or unable to fully commit to anything, or engage the world, really.

When it comes to vocation or finding meaningful work that interests and satisfies me and maybe makes my little corner of the world a better place, I have always been lost at sea, floating aimlessly.

Those twenty-six years in the ministry? Wandering. A facade. Playing a role, getting paid for doing something my heart was hardly ever in, for preaching and teaching something that may or may not even be real. I was taking their money.

It feels kind of late in the game to be mulling over big changes. Sometimes it feels like a personality transplant is in order, which is unlikely to happen at this juncture.

I know we can derive our protein from plants and fish and such. And large scale cattle production is a proven environmental hazard. But…

I tire quickly of contrived grievance and outsized passion, i.e. certain animal rights folks who need to tone things down a bit. Species who can’t speak for themselves may need advocates, but let’s get serious.

The beef, pork, and poultry lobbies will argue that they’re just responding to demand for their products, perhaps as an attempt to redirect the blame and the conversation. But they’re not wrong, as far as the demand piece goes.

I guess what I’m getting at is that, personally speaking, I might be willing to evolve in my understanding of protein consumption if someone can present an argument that reconciles the myriad small-scale meat processors– i.e. hunters– who are basically engaged in the same endeavor of killing for food (ok… and sport) but don’t carry all the extra baggage of methane production and possibly inhumane living conditions and treatment.

Humans are at the top of the food chain. Maybe there is no other argument that needs to be made, except for a focus on the stewardship of resources. Meat has been a means of survival and part of our diet for a long time, albeit not as long as foraging for twigs and berries. Still, I see no reason for looking askance at someone simply because they enjoy a nice medium porterhouse.

What would become of the huge numbers of cattle and hogs and turkeys and chickens if they weren’t slaughtered? They’d still need to be fed and housed. Do they then become someone’s pets?

And what of local deer populations, or the numbers of other wild animals who aren’t on an endangered species list? It seems hunting seasons make sense for at least two reasons: population control and food on families’ tables.

Going meatless is a tough sell.

Depends on the season, though one of them is a standard across the board. I have to have comfortable footwear, to keep the plantar fasciitis at bay.

Right now, as winter approaches, the second item would have to be something that keeps my bony frame warm, for hanging out in a house we keep at 68 degrees no matter how cold it gets outside– which means it can get a bit chilly around the edges inside. This is usually a sherpa lined hoodie of some sort, from now until sometime in April, or at least a base layer over which I add other items.

Functional, hardly ever fashionable.

Seventy-five million people can’t be wrong? We’ll see. We’re gonna get the chance to test that theory.

The people who voted for Trump must see what he’s trying to do. His answer for taking away some of the pain at the pump or the checkout line? Tariffs. Brilliant!

He’s setting the tone for hard feelings and a digging in of heels, rather than laying any groundwork for give and take and a willingness to negotiate. He’s got an image to uphold, after all. He’s not a compromiser. He simply prefers smoke and mirrors, the image of Disrupter. So he leaves the heavy lifting to the likes of Kevin Roberts and the Heritage Foundation.

Who is anyone kidding? Trump loves America only when it’s working for him. He’s not there to do the peoples’ work. He’s in place to carry out someone else’s agenda. He’s there for the selfish satisfaction of prevailing, and avoiding jail time.

He’s clueless, and I can’t picture him having the energy to handle the demands of the job. He’s gonna have a mess on his hands, nominating the pre-approved C-List celebrities and allies and incompetents who will be thrust into roles and responsibilities they’re totally unqualified to assume. The new press secretary will have her hands full defending this insanity day after day. We’ll see how many of those he goes through this time around.

Chaos is the goal. There will be no streamlining, no efficiency, little competence, no responsiveness to the myriad needs that are, quite obviously, beside the point. This is what the MAGA millions voted for, whether they realize it or not. Seventeeth-century Christians, amateurs, and entitled brats controlling the levers of power.

And there is no mandate. How could there be a mandate when half the country refuses to embrace this act?

It affects everything—knowing that Trump will be POTUS again. When I’m driving to the grocery store or to see family, or sitting on the couch reading a book, that unsettling thought will be close at hand.

The reality that such a thoughtless, calculating, cold-hearted, hapless oaf will once again be the visible figurehead for America looms over every aspect of my life.

We can’t ignore the guy, despite what I said, mostly jokingly, in an earlier post. We can try to carry on as if his presence doesn’t matter, but that won’t work, because his presence exposes a whole ugly, forceful movement toward coarseness and paranoia and isolationism and rampant self-interest.

Even if we personally revile him, don’t respect him, his presence still makes one think differently about who we are collectively, and what we value. His presence makes it easier to give up on hope and optimism.

He is a black hole from which no light escapes. He is darkness personified.

WTFH, America?

Most any advancement in technology, apart from military armaments, I consider potentially useful. But for the sake of the prompt, I’d have to say social media outlets, which are considered technology– I checked with Chat GPT.

I can’t blame smartphones, because they have become indispensable in ways apart from being the carriers of social media content. But social media themselves have become omnipresent weapons in the wrong hands. They’re kryptonite to the emotionally unstable. They’ve perhaps inevitably become tools for those who want to disseminate empty-headed and hateful rhetoric. They’ve become a huge distraction and the means for people to simply boast and brag and waste peoples’ time with pictures of and stories about how great their lives and children are.

I guess this is a general criticism I have for a fair amount of what we see and use on our devices. It’s one thing to get an update on approaching weather or important events in the news, or to use GPS to find our way home. It’s something else entirely to wile away your hours in a chat room or on a text thread talking shit about someone or otherwise engaging in inane and empty conversations and activities.

I’ve been giving this one some thought, and it’s been difficult to come up with anything that fits the bill.

I guess, if I’m being honest, the hardest decision was one I used to make on a daily basis when I was on call as a substitute teacher. When one principal or another would call first thing in the morning, I would get a pit in my stomach and reluctantly get ready to go in and face kids who, like me when I was their age, would lick their chops at the sight of a substitute.

Getting married? Not difficult at all. Uprooting and moving to seminary with three small children? Made sense to us, with a manageable amount of trepidation but not overly difficult. Retirement? Yes, please!

Maybe the hardest decision I never made was to apply myself, find work that was more up my alley, and earn enough money in the course of my working years to enjoy retirement more than we are.

All the President’s men… and women. They’re the ones who end up taking the fall instead of Trump. I guess you can forgive him for thinking he leads a charmed life. The trail of jailed sycophants and hardliners and underlings is long.

And poor Rudy. He does Trump’s bidding like a lap dog, and now is being bled of all his earthly possessions. Seems excessive and grossly disproportionate to me. Besides bad-mouthing a couple of poll workers, what did he do that many others haven’t? They’ve all prostituted themselves and ended up diminished somehow.

But not Trump. Trump always emerges seemingly unscathed, lives to annoy another day. How does he do it?

And now we get to watch as he attempts to run roughshod over our system of governance. Nobody home in the White House for another four years.

Super job, America.

Tariffs… Trump 2.0’s attempt at mitigating the flow of immigrants and fentanyl. How convenient. Seems more like taking a stick to a hornet nest—not advisable, unnecessary, and producing predictably undesirable results.

Baby and bath water, throwing spaghetti at the wall. Dumb, unwinnable– and avoidable– battles. It’s probably the best they can come up with, though.