Highly Miscellaneous
1. Boosters keep telling us about the glorious, inevitable future in which we all will ride in driverless cars. We're really down to the last touches, they say -- for example dealing with unexpected construction zones, or with police-directed traffic, or when someone steps outside of a crosswalk, or when a bike comes up the wrong side of the street. Except the last touches are actually everything, are they not?
2. Responsible moderates tell us that though Trump is loathsome, they hope he succeeds for the good of the country. I understand that impulse, but can't go there, since succeeding would mean the normalizing of a president who has called the press the enemy of America, who tells us we can't trust our electoral system or our intelligence communities, who quite literally rode conspiracy theories to the White House and who now gives them a home there, who lies every time he opens his mouth, whose ability to conduct policy is severely compromised by his financial dependency on Russian money, whose friends and family use the White House as a personal cash register, who is a venal person of vile character, and on and on and on. In other words, celebrating Trump's kind of success means we become like Putin's Russia. Nope. I'm not ready to give up yet.*
3. We were invited to suggest a favorite song for the reception of a wedding we will attend this summer. We went with the Beach Boys' "Don't Worry Baby," the most spritually uplifting pop song ever, and that's mostly because of the music, not the words, which do the job. I need to listen to it several times a week to deal with point number two, above.
4. Have you seen the Mr. Rogers special on PBS? I was too old to have watched it as a kid, but it's so beautiful to see what he did with his show. I know people are cynical about the self esteem movement, but I defy you to watch Mr. Rogers and tell me he's doing something wrong.
* The proper attitude toward the press and the intelligence community is skepticism. This, of course, is not what Trump is up to. His "critique" is simply a way to label anything positive about him as truthful acts of integrity, and anything negative as corrupt falsehoods. Unfortunately, his supporters either don't get this or don't care, and Republicans, aside from someone like John McCain, just look the other way.
2. Responsible moderates tell us that though Trump is loathsome, they hope he succeeds for the good of the country. I understand that impulse, but can't go there, since succeeding would mean the normalizing of a president who has called the press the enemy of America, who tells us we can't trust our electoral system or our intelligence communities, who quite literally rode conspiracy theories to the White House and who now gives them a home there, who lies every time he opens his mouth, whose ability to conduct policy is severely compromised by his financial dependency on Russian money, whose friends and family use the White House as a personal cash register, who is a venal person of vile character, and on and on and on. In other words, celebrating Trump's kind of success means we become like Putin's Russia. Nope. I'm not ready to give up yet.*
3. We were invited to suggest a favorite song for the reception of a wedding we will attend this summer. We went with the Beach Boys' "Don't Worry Baby," the most spritually uplifting pop song ever, and that's mostly because of the music, not the words, which do the job. I need to listen to it several times a week to deal with point number two, above.
4. Have you seen the Mr. Rogers special on PBS? I was too old to have watched it as a kid, but it's so beautiful to see what he did with his show. I know people are cynical about the self esteem movement, but I defy you to watch Mr. Rogers and tell me he's doing something wrong.
* The proper attitude toward the press and the intelligence community is skepticism. This, of course, is not what Trump is up to. His "critique" is simply a way to label anything positive about him as truthful acts of integrity, and anything negative as corrupt falsehoods. Unfortunately, his supporters either don't get this or don't care, and Republicans, aside from someone like John McCain, just look the other way.
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