Michael Hopcroft

I won't be there, but I have two nieces and a nephew that will. And I fear for them. It reminds me in that scene in the TNG episode "The Inner Light" when the scientist whose life Captain Picard is experiencing knows his planet is doomed and is grieved to see his grandchildren because he knows they will suffer for his society's inaction. I believe he says something like "It breaks my heart to see them".

From the Sports Pages. A tale of perseverance. 
 
Meet Texas Tech's "Seventh year Senior."
 
This young man missed his first 4 seasons due to injuries. Arrived at school at the age of 17 and expected to start as a freshman. 
He's finally been healthy, is pursuing his PhD and might apply for one more year. 

"The sole purpose of society is to raise up Great Men." -- Friedrich Nietzsche (paraphrased, as I don't have the book in front of me).
 
The very existence of the poor is a burden on the rich, at least according to the rich.

Hey, they said they would drain the swamp. They didn't say they wouldn't replace it with a toxic waste dump.

We should be so lucky. Because in reality there is nobody in a position to alleviate the madness.

My days of not believing anyone in this Administration has anyone's best interest at heart have come to a very early part of a middle.

Hey, they said they would drain the swamp. They didn't say they wouldn't replace it with a toxic waste dump.

I have a feeling public vs. private e-mail is a grayer area than people believe it is. But this is another example of how, in politics, the morality of your conduct seems to depend entirely on which side of the aisle you stand on. Donald Trump has already gotten away with much, much worse because the conservative media loves him so.

Donald Trump, Donald Trump, talking up a storm
Donald Trump, Donald Trump, blowing his own horn
He robs from the poor, and gives to the rich!
Donald Trump, Donald Trump -- stupid git!

Donald Trump, Donald Trump, talking up a storm
Donald Trump, Donald Trump, blowing his own horn
He robs from the poor, and gives to the rich!
Donald Trump, Donald Trump -- stupid git!

I saw the news today, oh boy -- A guy collapsed after too much Netflix.

"Doctor, his kidney's failing!"
 
"Ru-roh!"

"Doctor, his kidney's failing!"
 
"Ru-roh!"

I'm Popeye the sailor man. I'm Popeye the sailor man.
I'm strong to the finich, cause I eats me spinach.
I'm Popeye the sailor man.
 
I'm one tough gazookus, which hates all palookas.
Wot ain't on the up and square.
I biffs 'em and buffs 'em and always out roughs 'em
But none of 'em gets nowhere.
 
If anyone dares to risk my "fisk", it's "boff" an' it's "wham" un'erstan'?
So keep "good be-hav-or", that's your one life saver
With popeye the sailor man.
 
I'm Popeye the sailor man, I'm Popeye the sailor man.
I'm strong to the finich, cause I eats me spinach.
I'm Popeye the sailor man.

Instead of a concert at halftime of the football game, have a football game at halftime of the concert.

The headquarters of the CIA, so I can finally learn to cook.
 
What? 

Another novel joining 1984 on the bestseller list is a novel from the '30s called It Can't Happen Here. Written by Upton Sinclair, a well-known "muckraker" (his novel The Jungle, about the meatpacking industry, had a profound influence on American agricultural policy when it game out), It Can't Happen Here was written in response to the rises of Mussolini and Hitler. It details the rise and fall of an American fascist regime. It seems eerily prescient now, with the difference that Sinclair's character did not have ready access to nuclear weapons.
 
It actually came closer to reality in its day than is comfortable to remember. In the 1920s and 1930s, everybody in the West was terrified of Communism. A lot of people took the view that the Bolsheviks posed such an existential threat to the world they knew that any means -- even the extinguishing of democracy -- were worth it to prevent its rise. The Great Depression and the seeming failure of democratic institutions to deal with it did not help. Neither did good old-fashioned American racism and Anti-Semitism. FDR had to walk (or, in his case, wheel) a dangerous line of trying to revive a moribund economy facing determined opposition to every action he took, without falling into the extreme of authoritarianism. It was a credit to him that he continued to wheel that line up until the war. Even he was tempted to rig the game in his favor (trying to manipulate the membership of the obstructionist Supreme Court was a significant overreach that ended badly) but he was able to avoid most of the excesses of other world leaders of the day.

Another novel joining 1984 on the bestseller list is a novel from the '30s called It Can't Happen Here. Written by Upton Sinclair, a well-known "muckraker" (his novel The Jungle, about the meatpacking industry, had a profound influence on American agricultural policy when it game out), It Can't Happen Here was written in response to the rises of Mussolini and Hitler. It details the rise and fall of an American fascist regime. It seems eerily prescient now, with the difference that Sinclair's character did not have ready access to nuclear weapons.
 
It actually came closer to reality in its day than is comfortable to remember. In the 1920s and 1930s, everybody in the West was terrified of Communism. A lot of people took the view that the Bolsheviks posed such an existential threat to the world they knew that any means -- even the extinguishing of democracy -- were worth it to prevent its rise. The Great Depression and the seeming failure of democratic institutions to deal with it did not help. Neither did good old-fashioned American racism and Anti-Semitism. FDR had to walk (or, in his case, wheel) a dangerous line of trying to revive a moribund economy facing determined opposition to every action he took, without falling into the extreme of authoritarianism. It was a credit to him that he continued to wheel that line up until the war. Even he was tempted to rig the game in his favor (trying to manipulate the membership of the obstructionist Supreme Court was a significant overreach that ended badly) but he was able to avoid most of the excesses of other world leaders of the day.

I work for a company that buys Idaho barley to make malt. The malt is all exported (all of it) to Mexico, where it makes Corona and other Mexican beers. Many of those beers are imported back into the United States.
 
What I'm saying is, these tariff rumors are terrifying.  You see, every beer has slightly different specifications for its beer (pale beers have lightly toasted malt, dark beers have nearly burnt malt. Some beers want low protein count for clarity) The point is, we can't just shrug and start making Budweiser malt.  We have plans to do that, but it is not easy, cheap, or fast.
 
Right now Mexico imports our barley because Idaho makes some of the highest-quality barley in the world.  But even now, they look at Mexican barley. It wouldn't take much of a trade war to convince them to change. I don't do well if my company can't sell malt.

I suspect that Donald Trump has never really had to deal with the personal consequences of his failures. He's been shielded from them by his family's wealth and status, and his lawyers' cleverness in shifting the consequences to someone else. This may have led him to believe escaping failure without consequence is the same as success. Unfortunately the people who'll be hurt by his failures as President are hundreds of millions of Americans, to whom he's accountable as an elected official. On the whole Americans love winners, but are notoriously rough on losers.

I sometimes think Donald Trump lives in a comic-book world. Not that he's a Lex Luthor type, but rather that he believes the world is a lot simpler and more direct than it actually is. That seems to be the premise of his entire election campaign -- people make things too complicated, so let's boil them down into decisions you can make in ten to fifteen minutes based on solid, immutable guidelines that never change regardless of circumstances. Which is how a comic-book universe seems to work in a lot of ways.
 
Ideally one would think he would grow out of that with experience, but so far he's giving the impression that he just doesn't care about any details beyond the broad strokes and clear, unbreakable lines of judgment,

Putting your country first is not in itself evil. After all, you have the most control of what goes on in your own country. What is evil, in this day and age, is to put your country first,  last, and only. Which Americans are seemingly trained to do since birth.
 
Americans ever since the Cold War have had the alarming tendency to want other countries to act against their own interests if it benefits us. Which is why we spend so much time propping up dictatorships and kleptocracies in much of the rest of the world. When America's "strategic interests" are at stake, the opinion of those who actually live in those countries becomes irrelevant to us.
 
Which is why we continually find ourselves in disasters like Vietnam and Iraq. Despite them, Americans cling to the illusion that we are both right in enforcing our wishes and capable of doing so. As it turns out, neither is especially true.

Putting your country first is not in itself evil. After all, you have the most control of what goes on in your own country. What is evil, in this day and age, is to put your country first,  last, and only. Which Americans are seemingly trained to do since birth.
 
Americans ever since the Cold War have had the alarming tendency to want other countries to act against their own interests if it benefits us. Which is why we spend so much time propping up dictatorships and kleptocracies in much of the rest of the world. When America's "strategic interests" are at stake, the opinion of those who actually live in those countries becomes irrelevant to us.
 
Which is why we continually find ourselves in disasters like Vietnam and Iraq. Despite them, Americans cling to the illusion that we are both right in enforcing our wishes and capable of doing so. As it turns out, neither is especially true.

My sister Mary is a Lutheran pastor with three teenage children. I actually asked about this very thing a year ago when the campaign started and before Trumpism was a thing. I expressed my fear of what my generation was leaving my nieces and nephew. Part of her response was a quote by mystery writer and Anglican apologist Dorothy Sayer, written during World War II (a pretty dark time to be British:):
 
:  "A man told me the other day:  'I have a little boy of a year old.  When the war broke out, I was very much distressed about him because I found I was taking it for granted that life ought to be better and easier for him than it had been for my generation.  Then I realized that I had no right to take this for granted at all--that the fight between good and evil must be the same for him as it had always been, and then I ceased to feel so much distressed.'"