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If you find yourself in a room with one of these dudes, ignoring him may not be the best option. (Photo by meldoraley46/pixabay)
It’s getting harder and harder to talk to you about how great the stock market is doing and how unemployment is a thing of the past (especially among black people), and how America is almost energy independent — because I can’t see you around all these damn gorillas in the room. Each one weighs 800 pounds, and every time I think of another way America is doing great, another gorilla comes in and sits down. And we don’t talk about them. We certainly don’t Tweet about them. You’d almost think they weren’t really there.
Here’s a recent arrival — from Iran. We’ve all been talking about Iran lately, since people there started taking to the streets in protest last month. We’ve been talking about how they’re tired of their government and their religion and their leaders, and how they love democracy, and want to be more like us. Which is awkward, because our Twitterer-in-Chief seems to want to go to war with them. Continue reading
America is in the depths of the greatest depression in its history. You might assume I’m speaking of economics but I’m not — I am speaking of the mental health of our people and our society. We like to think and talk about ourselves as the richest country in the world — we are not — the smartest people in the room — we’re demonstrably not — with the best health care system in the world — far from it — and the highest standard of living ever — wrong again. Objectively, the word that best describes the condition that most of us are in most of the time is despair.
Like all the new updates offered constantly for all the machinery of life, it seemed at first like such a good idea: using the technology of “smart” phones to provide an instant, universal warning of impending nuclear attack. What a great idea! A lifesaver, as long as you make several unwarranted assumptions about the size and target of the nuclear strike, and ignore all the questions that arise, such as what do people actually do when they’re been warned, and if you save their lives just so they can crawl out of a shelter onto a radioactive rubble heap, what have you accomplished? Never mind. Great idea.
