Find a cliff, build an enormous bridge, and build a city on top of it. It boggles my mind.
I know you see pictures like this when you open your computer, but given my state of mind, this impressed me when I opened my computer today. I needed to see that humans can accomplish great things. On the other hand, I am so discouraged with the wrangling that is going on in our country, I don't know what to do with myself.
I had such faith in the American people—the moment I wrote that, the wind blew a gale outside my window causing the branches of the tree to sway wildly and the bush beside it to almost bend to the ground. Wow. Quite an exclamation point!
I could take that mad wind two ways, "to have faith," or "not to have faith." Where are you in this?
I never considered myself a political person. But here I am feeling sad that this isn't the America I thought it was: land of the free, home of the brave, all that. We welcomed outsiders, a melting pot they called us. Champion of equal rights for all. We loved our neighbors to the north. We wouldn't offend them for anything.
Now our Commander in Chief wanted to buy them. How insulting.
I've fallen into the trap with many others in this polarization of beliefs. I have people close to me who aren't worried—it will all even out, they say.
Will it?
Does someone have the answer?
"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one."
― Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
And then yesterday I ran into the word WOKE, again, and it felt like running into a brick wall.
I thought the word sounded stupid when I first heard it. Now I hate it.
Upon first hearing, though, I didn't know what it meant—just as well, for now, it means whatever the person using it determines it means.
Well, isn't that precious?
It's supposed to mean "Being aware." "Knowing what's going on in the community' "Being politically aware."
Right!
Amanda Hess describes it as "The inverse of politically correct."
Charles Pulliam-Moore, from Fusion earlier this year, wrote:
"Like most slang, the meaning of 'woke' changes depending on who's saying it." Among black people talking about Ferguson [Missouri], 'stay woke' might mean something like: 'stay conscious of the apparatus of white supremacy, don't automatically accept the official explanations for police violence, keep safe.'"
While it refers to awareness of social and political issues, the term has now been applied to everything from soft drinks to razors.
A British filmmaker suggests that the world is so woke you can't make a joke."
Jane Fonda: "What we, actors, create is empathy. Our job is to understand another human being so profoundly that we can touch their souls."
"And make no mistake," continued Fonda, empathy is not weak or woke. By the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people."
Really?
I wish you were right, Jane.
DOMENICO MONTANARO: Republicans on the campaign trail are using it as something of a catchall to criticize anything on the progressive side of the political spectrum they don't like, whether it's teaching about racism in schools or gender transition policies or even books and libraries they deem inappropriate.
See, we can even use the word without a fight.
For heavens sake, someone used it to provoke controversy for the remake of the once-popular TV series Little House on the Prairie. (Don't remake it. The first was great.)
"By the '90s, partisanship had become a blood sport. Republicans and Democrats alike began to accuse each other of acting in bad faith. Now, both sides of the aisle seize on just about anything — books, movies, films — as markers of which side you're on. And the rise of our present administration is purely a demonstration of that. It has helped to shred nearly every vestige of the remaining social niceties and governmental norms. Everything is the culture war — even the remake of a television show that held mutual respect as its watchword.
Jason Kyle Howard wrote:
"If even Little House no longer belongs to all of us, then who exactly have we become?"
In case you missed it or want to ignore it. And while I object to AI writing, here is something produced by Eleven Labs for The Atlantic:
Since taking office, our present administration has:
- Reduced his administration's effectiveness by appointing to essential agencies people who lack the skills and temperaments to do their jobs.
- His mass firings have emptied the civil service of many of its most capable employees.
- He has defied laws that he could just as quickly have followed (for instance, refusing to notify Congress 30 days before firing inspectors general).
- He has disregarded the plain language of statutes, court rulings, and the Constitution, setting up confrontations with the courts that he will likely lose. Few of his orders have gone through a policy-development process that helps ensure they won't fail or backfire—thus ensuring that many will.
He has antagonized Denmark, Canada, and Panama in foreign affairs, renamed the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America," and unveiled a Gaz-a-Lago plan.
And as if he didn't have enough to do:
- For good measure, he named himself chair of the Kennedy Center.
He told us what he was going to do and became elected anyway.
To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
But we didn't listen.