Topic Overload
I occasionally get recommendations from readers for topics for my blog stories. Yesterday, one of my regular readers, my friend Steven, sent me a list of ten such recommendations. I know he was flying back to New York yesterday, so I suspect he was killing time in between movies on the flight. I have another friend who is also a regular reader and also has the name Steve. He was recently on a cruise through the Panama Canal for two weeks and I noticed a considerable uptick in thoughts and emails from him, which told me that he had a bit more time on his hands than he normally does on any given day. I have no problem taking suggestions and every once in a while they come at a moment when I am staring out into space wondering what to write about next. I’m usually not that lucky. Of the 10 suggestions Steven sent me, seven were about politics (Steven is as appalled by Trump as I am), one was about business (writing with AI), one was about retirement (longevity, specifically) and the last one is what I would call humor since it involved the stories running around about the extreme flatulence of Donald Trump while he is in the courtroom.
I believe that I write a lot about politics, but my records indicate that only about 30% of my stories are political (I choose not to count random sideswipes to Trump in otherwise non-political stories). While there is some discretion in categorization, I think I’m pretty accurate about defining political stories as such. I’m actually pretty careful not to write too many stories sequentially in any single category, especially politics. Some of my readers, I am sure, do not agree with my political positions, but I suspect anyone who reads my blog regularly must have more rather than less agreement with my overall worldview, otherwise why would they read it other than to keep up with my ongoing shenanigans.
Another friend, Gary, keeps asking when I will run out of topics altogether. I have told him on several occasions that I am unlikely to ever run out of topics because the world keeps turning and my mind keeps spinning even faster. I have an over-stimulated imagination, which I will declare to be a good thing. There is truth to the notion that people who stay in their lane and have limited expectations of life may have an easier time achieving happiness, those of us who are not blessed with finite imaginations are doomed to keep asking the “what if” type questions that spur us on to the next topic or the “I wonder if” sort that causes us to contemplate the here and now in greater depth.
As I scan the list of topics recommended by Steven, I am going to try something very different. I am going to try to address all ten of the topics in brief. I will admit that some of his topics need interpretation, but here goes. First, Donald is gagging. Very true. We have been gagging about Donald for almost a decade now, but Donald himself seems to be getting more and more fraught by the judicial process, less because of the accusations and indictments, which he is very used to brushing off, and more by the process. It is stifling him and he is, indeed, getting gagged increasingly by gag orders to the point where even his victimization schtick no longer works that well.
The presidential race this year is, in some ways, not so different than any election. It is all about picking the lesser of two evils according to most people. I can’t remember an election that didn’t get labeled that way. It must be in our genetic makeup-up that we are so cynical about politicians that we cannot easily declare one as simply good. It is always about not letting the imperfect get in the way of the good. Let’s face it, both candidates, Trump at 78 and Biden at 81, are older than we like. There are few jobs more demanding than being president and while presidents surrounding themselves with lots of helpers, the rigors of the job are still challenging. What goes hand-in-hand with this is that the Veep chosen must be someone who we feel can comfortably step in, and yet, the nature of a Veep is that the person has to be subservient to some degree and is, by definition, a runner-up and thus presumably less sponsored than the president. Biden’s Veep, Kamala Harris, is a known quantity and like all Veeps, not really considered up to the task…for no particular reason. Trump has yet to choose his Veep but we know from the January 6th Pence episode, Trump will be sure to pick someone who is even more sycophantic than normal, which means it will be an even more unknown and questionable quantity. At their respective ages, that is more troubling than normal.
The pros and cons of the two candidates boil down to the fundamental differences in American politics. Biden is a bottom-up level-the-playing-field guy and Trump is a top-down paternalistic white supremacist. Biden is kind and decent where Trump is rude and self-serving. Biden is a career politician, Trump is a badly failed businessman with questionable ethics. Biden gets tagged as being hapless and Trump is most often venal. I feel those are objective descriptions and not biased commentary. It is said that some of Trump’s supporters just support him because they want a conservative policy agenda (or dislike Biden’s “progressive” agenda), but that belies the part of the electorate that knows who/what he is and simply like him for all the counter-cultural reasons. As for Biden, some of his supporters are rabidly never-Trump focused or simply do not like the elitist conservative agenda, but there are plenty of Biden’s supporters (like me) who genuinely like the man and respect both what he has done for America and what he has planned for America.
There is a strange phenomenon which speaks loudly to the dangerous nature of Donald Trump, and that is that people are equally worried about what will happen if he loses as they are about what will happen if he wins. There is a general sentiment that people hope that Trump loses convincingly so that we can put to rest the anticipated howls of another stolen election and the violence that could come with it. That makes the Congressional balance (winning the House and not losing the Senate) more important than ever, not to mention trying to balance the political situation in the state legislatures. This also makes people want to see the various court cases go forward in whatever way possible between now and the election. This assumes that SCOTUS does not grant Trump immunity, but may further delay the proceedings. There is a theory that Judge Chutkan can allow Special Prosecutor Jack Smith to share his evidence with the American public before the election and yet to do so without a formal trial. The theory is that there is value in that for the American electorate, but the hurdles to that are enormous. If Trump loses that would fuel his argument that he was unfairly hampered. Nonetheless, the consensus on the left is that Biden needs to put the pedal to the metal for the next six months.
That covers most of the political topics suggested and as for the remaining three I will say this. AI is a wonderful first-draft tool for writing of all sorts, but AI will never be a final product if we have any sense. Abrogating our responsibility for our thoughts to any machine is simply not a good decision. Longevity increases will slow since nature and society is not designed for immortality. The best thing any of us can do for living our best and longest lives is the same as always…be kind, be high integrity and work as hard as you can (mentally and physically). And finally, as for Trump’s relationship with flatulence, let’s be clear, all humans fart and the do so from 5 to 40 times a day with the average incidence being 15 times. But here’s the thing, most of us care enough about others to do this in private or with some degree of control in public places. Apparently, Donald missed that lesson in kindergarten. There you go, Steven.