Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

The boys are out of the cave, all safe and sound, and it was a heroic effort on  the part of all involved.  All the questions of shoulda done this and shoulda done that are washed away in view of the fact that it’s over and it had a happy ending.  One diver  did die, and that is tragic.  I hope  they name the cave after him.
My big question is ‘what is the press going to focus on now?’  France beat Belgium in  the world cup  semi-final, but that is only of interest to football fans, and mostly those who  are fans of France or Belgium.

A lot of people find it ironic (maybe this is the Alanis Morrissette definition of the word, but that is the common, if not necessarily the correct, meaning) that everybody has been so focused on the boys in the cave that it has taken attention off the thousand or so children in immigrant detention centers, away from their parents, some of them not  even old enough to talk.  That is a good point and the situation is certainly not resolved yet.
Of course, they could talk about the new Supreme Court nominee, but what is there to say?  We know he’s a horrible right winger, that he doesn’t think a sitting president can be indicted (now, wouldn’t that be convenient), that he fully intends to vote against abortion first chance he gets, that the left will oppose him, the Republicans will support him, and the Democrats will make a token show of resistance, and then fold.
They could talk about the ongoing problem of police who see the people as their enemy, the near inevitability of the next school shooting and how common sense gun legislation might prevent it, or the unethical business practices of Nestle, or Amazon, or others.  They could talk about the floods in Japan, or the unnatural heat wave which is hitting a lot of the world right now.  But, they probably won’t.  Not with the same breathless, non-stop coverage the boys in the cave got.
I understand.  That was really compelling television.  But, fortunately, it was a story with an ending.  The real pain of the world goes on and on and on.  No damned wonder nobody wants to talk about it.

I saw a comment on Facebook today that said “They should rename Facebook ‘Fight Club’ because all people do is argue about politics all the time,” and they thought that a brilliant enough comment to give it one of those handy-dandy colorful backgrounds which help to make Facebook more like Twitter and aren’t a good thing at all, but I can’t complain because I use them, too, being equally convinced that all my thoughts are brilliant ones and need to be brought to the attention of the world at large.

Likewise, I can understand the original posters lament about people arguing about politics all the time.  Lord knows, I spend probably 90% of my online time arguing about politics.

But, I know people who don’t.  I know people who post pictures of their children constantly, people who post very long photo albums after a trip, and are traveling almost all  the time, people who post pictures of cats, and dogs, people who love posting music videos, people who talk about the weather a lot but, at this juncture of history, that is a pretty important topic, and political, too.  I know people who post recipes, and they get a lot more comments than any of my political posts.  I know people who post poetry, and paintings, and people who plug their books, or their bands, or their knitted products.
It still is, no matter how they change the algorithms, pretty much what you make it.  And what your friends make it.  And what your family makes it. Sort of like real life.
So, when you say “People argue about politics all the time on Facebook,” what you’re saying is that many people argue about politics too much, period.
Which is probably true.

There are issues that some people care about a lot, and will vote based on that one issue alone, and everything they say will steer the conversation back to  their pet issue.  These include (but are not limited to) Israel, guns (usually from people who are extremely pro-Israel and pro-guns), abortion (usually from people vehemently opposed to abortion), immigration (usually from xenophobic anti-sophisticates who are deathly afraid of living into a world that’s a bit  different than the one they grew up  in), and gay rights (I’m all for gay rights, of course.  But it affects, directly, less than 10% of the population).  Legalization of marijuana is an issue very  important  to me, but I wouldn’t base my vote entirely  on that.
It would make sense if elections were  more about who  has to pay  how much in taxes, or why the U.S. can’t have decent health care and repair  its infrastructure and pay its teachers a living wage.  And staying out of wars.  Staying out of wars should  be a big issue.

But, even more than that, the number one issue, the one thing that everyone should be laser-focused on, is not to destroy the Earth.  Solar energy, wind energy, electric cars, high speed trains, public  transportation, recycling, saving the honey bee, planting about  a gazillion more trees, all of these should be things we’re working for, whatever other issues may pop up now  and again temporarily.
Because, if we destroy the Earth, we all die.  Game over.  That is not an acceptable outcome, no matter how much  money you have.

“I have broken more Elton John records. He seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No, we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because you know, look, I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. Really, we do it without, like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical – the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth, right? The brain. More important than the mouth is the brain. The brain is much more important.”

There was a lot wrong with Trump’s speech at his recent rally in Montana, but I don’t really care if he says rude things about John McCain or GHW Bush, both of  whom I consider war criminals, especially  Bush, and I don’t care too much if he wants to sling shit  at Maxine Waters.  Maxine Waters can hold her own in a shit slinging contest.  So, I’d like to focus on the above passage.  Remember,  these are the  actual words which came out  of  the mouth of the president of the United States.

First of all, what records is he talking about?  I’m pretty certain Trump has never won any music awards.  Second, yes, Elton has an organ.  More importantly, he knows how to play  it quite well.  He is  a brilliant and talented musician.  As to ‘lots of other people helping:’  Well, yeah, sure.  He’s got roadies.  He’s got a manager, I imagine.  Is Trump saying nobody on  his team did anything, that he is out there on his  own, unlike Elton John?  This makes no sense.  Then, the thing about ‘I only need this space.’  Yes.  You’re giving a speech.  You only need to be in one place.  You take up roughly the same amount of space on the planet as Elton John.  What the hell are you talking about?  Oh, wait.  Football, hockey, they take up a lot of space.  I don’t take up that much space.  I have other people who  take  up that space.  Very impressive, Donald.

Then came the whole ‘mouth  is a musical instrument’ which is not a horrible thing to say  if it is,  for instance, a fan talking about the voice of a person with  a beautiful  voice.  It is, however, a bizarrely vain  thing for a person to  say about themselves, and delusional if your voice is as irritating as Trump’s voice.  And then, as an afterthought, he reminds the crowd that  the mouth has to  be attached to the brain,  even though  his  clearly is not.

This  is not  normal.  If your weird uncle made this speech at Thanksgiving dinner,  everybody would look  at him and say ‘Damn, I knew Uncle Jeff was a little weird, but do we actually have to put him in an institution now?’  It reminds me of some of the dialogue in  ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.’ (the book)

I am not joking, and I don’t  think  I’m exaggerating.  We have to start asking the question:  is the president insane?

Apparently, the world is going through  a disastrous heat wave.  Deaths have been reported  in Canada, and the Northern Siberian Coast is having beach days, where the air temperature is well warm enough to hang out all day damned near naked on a towel,  even if  the Arctic waters are still a bit chilly.

Here in Prague, meanwhile, it has been  cool  and pleasant the last couple of  weeks.  Not even hot by  summertime standards.  Prague can  be like that.  It’s on planet Earth, but doesn’t always seem to be fully  participating.  Meteorologically, it is  mild even  by Czech standards, because it’s in a sheltered river valley, and the Czech climate  is moderate compared to a lot of  places  because we’ve got mountains  on every side.  Not huge ones, but enough that we don’t get tornadoes, much less hurricanes.  We don’t have  earthquakes and if there was  ever a volcano anywhere in the vicinity, it  has been  extinct for at least the length of human history.
So, I read about the  heat  wave, and I worry about the  fate of the world, catastrophic climate events, and what we’re going to do if we totally destroy the  atmosphere.  But not  too much.  It’s easy  to forget about that stuff here.