Sunday afternoon, the end of another long boring week in America. Keep on walking. Nothing to see here.
At least nine people dead in a mass shooting in Texas. Nothing new. Last year alone, Texas had 55 of ’em —better than 1 a week. Besides, there’s already that little episode a couple of weeks ago where the guy took an AR to his neighbors. They’d asked him to please stop firing it since it was making their baby cry. Only five dead bodies in that one, including a nine-year-old. Nothing new here. Just keep on walking.
Oh, yeah, I guess there was also that family up in Oklahoma, the highway shootings in Maine, the ongoing road-rage, the. . . Well, yeah, you get the idea. Just 17 mass shootings this past week. No big deal. This is America. Get used to it.
All of this is probably assuring my Swiss relatives that their country is moving in the right direction. Once (inaccurately) described by the National Rifle Association (NRA) as a nation with guns everywhere, Switzerland has now dropped to nineteenth in the world in gun ownership.
But maybe the NRA can have a new poster child for gun ownership—Serbia. It ranks third in gun ownership among countries with at least a million citizens. And in only 2 days, they’ve had 2 mass shooting. Who says American values can’t be spread abroad?
Ironically, just today, a letter in the Omaha World Heralddrew attention to the fact that 20% of Nebraskans will experience a mental health condition in any given year. That’s no different from the rest of the nation—at any given moment, 1 in 5 adults is experiencing significant depression. But should they be carrying guns around? Of course! Besides, that just gives us all an excuse whenever someone gets shot.
The NRA is right—people kill people. And the more drunk, high, depressed, angry, sad, bitter, disappointed, confused, belittled and hopeless people who have guns in their hands? The more Americans are going to wind up dead. But that’s OK. Because we can always T.A.P.-out.
Just abbreviate it like that. Thoughts and Prayers. We say it so often these days, we might as well just shorten it. Thoughts and Prayers. Thoughts and Prayers. Thoughts and Prayers. TAP, TAP, TAP. TAP, TAP, TAP. TAP, TAP, TAP.
Nothing new here. Just TAP-out and walk on by.
But this just gets us started for the week that was. In other news, the U.S. Congress is engaged in an ever-escalating pissing match over the debt ceiling that has the potential to devastate the economy of the world’s strongest, richest, and most important nation. Republicans, who care deeply about the deficit (but only when Democrats are in office), seem content to let the country default on it’s debt, turning us into a dead-beat nation. Never mind that every economic analysis has indicated that unemployment will skyrocket, our economic output will fall, and the country will profoundly suffer.
Do we need to cut our spending and increase our revenues? Of course. But any decent business manager can tell you, an organization that manages by crisis isn’t going to last long.
Ditto governments. Congress needs to dispense with all of the Jr. High drama (OK, it’s Middle School now), raise the debt ceiling so we can function as a nation, then do the hard work of fixing the budget. It’s way overdue. In the past, neither Democrats nor Republicans have shown any interest in it.
But the news keeps getting better and better. Traditionally, the American people have believed that regardless of who controlled Congress and/or the White House, at least the Supreme Court could be an impartial arbitrator of justice.
And despite numerous biased and purely partisan political decisions by the Court this past year, many Americans still believed they could count on the institution for justice. But any remaining hope for The Court went out the window this week with the mounting evidence that Court decisions were essentially bought and paid for by wealthy conservative donors. From what we know, Clarence Thomas (https://www.newsweek.com/clarence-thomas-tangled-web-gets-worse-worse-senator-durbin-1798894) and quite possibly John Roberts have been on the receiving end of big dollar influence.
I’ve already commented on Thomas, but Roberts really saddens me.
Most of us have seen a picture of the statue of Lady Justice. Blindfolded, she holds a sword in one hand and a set of scales in the other. She is supposed to represent absolute fairness in the Judicial System. But after this week, Thomas has turned her into an image of a stripper with a wad of dollar bills in her G-string.
Around the country, state legislatures are wrapping up their sessions. Most of them haven’t bothered to spend time on such mundane issues as health care, mental health services, public education, women’s health, poor nutrition, and inadequate infrastructure. Instead, it’s been a frenzy of anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-public education, anti-public health, and anti-public safety legislation. And in far too many states, there’s also been a far-right Governor salivating to sign them into law.
Of course, all of this just scratches the surface. At the border, thousands of desperate asylum seekers are waiting for COVID-era Title 42 restrictions to expire. They’ll be begging for a chance at a better life.
Can we take them all? Of course not. That’s why troops have been deployed. But we can legally take a lot more than we’ve been taking. Businesses are desperate for employees. Unemployment is at record lows. It only makes sense.
But one thing is certain. Whatever the number of legal immigrants, it will be too many for those who want to use immigration as a political club to bludgeon their opponents, regardless of the human suffering that occurs. Immigrants are usually poor and powerless. They make perfect scapegoats for demagogues.
But on the positive side, unemployment continues to fall, inflation is coming down, and the grass is starting to green-up.
So let’s ignore all of the other stuff. Just keep on walking and pretend it’s not happening. Nothing to see here. Nothing to get upset about.
Ho-hum. Just another week in America.
Don – I think your best post yet. Thank you!
Thank you Tracy. I’m hoping to have more pleasant things to talk about eventually.
Thank you, Tracy. But I wish I had a few more positive things to write about. Hopefully, some day. . .
Not to make you feel worse, but that grass that is greening up is adding a lot to climate change through the pesticides, herbicides and other cides added to it and the gas consumed by the riding lawnmowers. Leaving it mostly as prairie, which is what it was, would improve things a lot, but Scott’s products have a big lobby……Just another week.
Thank you John. We’d all be better off in a lot of ways if we’d just left the bluestem and tall grass alone.
Outstanding. Depressing.
Except for the dollar bills in Thomas’ G-string.
Make it Benjamins!
Good point. And in Thomas’ case, it would have to be a pretty big G-string, even to hold all of the Benjamins.
And, in today’s NYT, the story about Corporate Giants buying up Primary Care Practices around the country! OMG!
Absolutely true, Dave, and pretty depressing. Venture capital is buying up health care like crazy, and expecting a big payday by cutting expenses to the bone. Their entry into skilled nursing/nursing home care is frightening, too.
I turned this over to Matt Wynn, suggesting they ask you about running it in Flatwater Press or glean some ideas from it.
Your writing makes such good sense.
Thank you, Cella. That’s very kind. It’s tough to face the future if we don’t face the issues of today.
Thank you, Dr. Frey.
Thank you Beth.
Just for the sake of clarification. Say you go to a doctor. He’s been in the medical field for over 50 years and finally has his own business. Not as a specialist but as a GP. He is in charge, he is the boss. He hands you an omnibus diagnosis of all your ailments. He states they all must be treated now. It will cost $2million upfront. 20% for him and 20% for unknown costs at this time. It will probably cost more down the road but don’t worry about it. You want to live don’t you? You tell him you can’t afford $2 million dollars. He says don’t worry, he knows someone who can print the money, give it to him and you can take as long as you like to pay it back at a low interest rate. You ask if the list can be pared down to essentials that need to be done now and others to be done later. He states he has over 50 years experience and that this not a negotiation. It’s his way or leave. In which case you will die.
You leave anyway and decide to get a second opinion. This a younger doctor not set in the ways of the system. He is smart and takes a different look at the medical world. He states yes the omnibus bill can be broken down into smaller pieces. To do all the treatments with all the drugs involved at one time is dangerous and could kill you. No one knows the outcome of such a bad decision. It would al put the outcome in grave doubt. He also states they can probably work it out so need to borrow far less and worry less about going into debt.
Which doctor would you rather have? One who leads by making things easier to understand, follow and cost less. An obvious leader. Or the arrogant old one who still does things the old way?
A leader leads so that goals are accomplished. My way or the highway are not the tactics of a leader. When joe said he would unify the country, the slate was clean. Then came omnibus bills and his way or the highway, don’t worry about the cost. there were many smaller items that both sides could agree on in the beginning. But he was finally the leader and if the other side didn’t agree to his terms, he would just start writing Executive Orders. Some he admitted were probably illegal before he even issued them. All justified becasue he was saving the world .
If only he had been a leader. Instead of trying to build a sky scraper in one day, had he built the foundation first and accomplished more and more in small acceptable increments to add to the foundation, we would be much further ahead. If you can’t see it is the leader’s side who has the obligation and power to make it all work, then you don’t understand how effective leadership works. It isn’t how much you can get done in a short amount of time. It is how much you can get done together and then build on it to make it all better. As a wise manager once told me as a union rep, you get nothing we don’t give you. (Which, except for arbitration is true) If you keep crowing how you beat me every time we agree on something, how long do you think I’ll keep agreeing to anything?) If you keep using your equivalent of the N word for the other side, why would anyone want to do business with that type of “person”? Even 87 million votes doesn’t make you a leader.
Hmmm. Let’s take a closer look at what a better analogy would be. You go to this doctor only after you’ve been seeing another doctor (with orange hair) for the past four years. He’s told you everything is fine, you’re perfectly healthy, and don’t you dare question him (I think you used the term “arrogant” didn’t you?). He tells you to do what you want, eat what you want, drink as much as you want, as long as you have him for a doctor, you’re magically cured. Oh, yeah, and gorge yourself on some huge tax cuts, while you’re at it. But of course, he’s lying. Four years later, you see another doctor who tries to deal with everything the orange haired doctor ignored. Yes, it’s expensive. But it’s time to confront reality.
Biden didn’t come in with a “clean slate.” Instead, the slate was covered with chalk dust an inch thick that had to be cleaned up. And if you’d really like an example of “my way or the highway, no compromise, take no prisoners” you need to go back to 16-20. To use your analogy, even multiple bankruptcies, multiple sexual affairs, multiple rejections of our allies, and calling for the desecration of our Capitol doesn’t make you a leader, either.
Going to share! Thanks Don!
Thank you Allison. Feel free to share with whomever you’d like.