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In Entertainment, History, Medical, Social commentary on December 31, 2021 at 12:23 am
New Year’s Eve, 2021, will soon lie behind us.
And for most people, saying “Goodbye” to 2021 can’t happen soon enough.
New Year’s Eve is traditionally a time for people to reflect on the major events of the previous 12 months. Some of these are highly personal. Others have been shared by the entire country.
Some of these remembrances inevitably bring pleasure. Others bring pain.
And 2021 has been a year of pain for millions.
Starting on January 6, then-President Donald Trump incited thousands of his fanatical disciples to attack the United States Capitol Building.
The reason: To halt the counting of Electoral College votes to certify the legitimate Presidential victory of Joe Biden in 2020—thus leaving Trump in office as “President-for-Life.”
Donald Trump
Fortunately, democracy was saved—for the moment.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 continued to sweep across the globe. To date, it’s infected 285 million worldwide—and killed 5.42 million. In the United States, it’s infected 153.8 million and killed 822,000.
But by March, three new vaccines were being rolled out—and thus saving the lives of untold numbers of potential COVID victims.
COVID-19
At the heart of every New Year’s Eve celebration is the fantasy that you get to start fresh in a matter of hours. And with that fantasy comes hope—that, this time, you can put your sorrows and failures behind you.
And for millions in 2022, life will look brighter—because Donald Trump, whose Presidency was marked by unprecedented criminality and treason, no longer holds office.
True, Trump has refused to admit that he was defeated in a legitimate election. And his lust to become America’s Dictator-in-chief remains as lethal as ever.
But democracies are always threatened by would-be tyrants. And Americans can take heart in the knowledge that, in 1945, they helped defeat two of the worst—in Germany and Japan.
And, for 50 years during the Cold War, they stood firm against dictators in China and the Soviet Union.
The last New Year’s Eve to be marked by worldwide fears was that of 1999:
- Fear of Y2K—that our highly computerized, globally-interconnected world would crash when the “19″ at the start of every year was replaced with a “20″.
- Fear of Armageddon—that Jesus, after dying 2,000 years ago, would magically return to destroy mankind (except for those 144,000 righteous souls He deemed worthy of salvation).
- Fear of the Millennium itself—of ending not simply another decade and century but an entire thousand-year period of history, and thus losing our historical ties to the familiar highlights of our own (and America’s) past.
And, especially where Y2K was concerned, news commentators were quick to stoke our anxieties.
Long before New Year’s Eve, TV newscasters repeatedly warned that, when midnight struck on January 1, 2000, the three places you did not want to be were:
- In an airplane.
- In an elevator.
- In a hospital.
Countless numbers of people in America and around the world stocked up on food, water, batteries and other essentials for surviving an emergency.
Merchants and police feared widespread rioting and violence. If Y2K didn’t set it off, then fears of a heaven-sent Apocalypse might.
In San Francisco, along Powell Street—a major center of tourism and commerce—store owners boarded up their doors and windows as New Year’s Eve approached. Many closed earlier than usual that day.
Fortunately, when midnight struck on January 1, 2000, the predictors of the coming Apocalypse were proven wrong.
- Computers kept working—and civilization didn’t crash along with them.
- Jesus didn’t miraculously return from the dead—just as he hadn’t during any previous year.
- And those who feared that the Millennium would usher in a strange and frightening new world soon found that 2000 was not all that different from previous years.
New Year’s Eve 1999 is now 22 years distant. But some lessons may still be learned from it:
Each year is a journey unto itself—filled with countless joys and sorrows. Many of these joys can’t be predicted. And many of these tragedies can’t be prevented.
Learn to tell real dangers from imaginary ones. Computers are real—and sometimes they crash. Men who died 2,000 years ago do not leap out of graveyards, no matter what their disciples predict.
Don’t expect any particular year to usher in the Apocalypse. In any given year there will be wars, famines, earthquakes, riots, floods and a host of other disasters. These have always been with us—and always will be. As Abraham Lincoln once said: “The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”
BumFluff2009, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Don’t expect some Great Leader to lead you to success. As Gaius Cassius says in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”: “Men at some time are masters of their fate. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.”
Don’t expect any particular year or event to usher in your happiness. To again quote Lincoln: “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
If your life seems to make no sense to you, consider this: The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once noted: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on December 30, 2021 at 12:10 am
On August 24, 2020, Kimberly Guilfoyle delivered a speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC) that met the psychological meaning of “projection”: Unconsciously taking unwanted emotions or traits you don’t like about yourself and attributing them to someone else.
Guilfoyle, 53, is a former attorney, prosecutor and television news personality who currently works as an advisor for President Donald Trump.
In 2001, Guilfoyle married San Francisco supervisor Gavin Newsom. Two years later, Newsom was elected mayor of San Francisco. In January 2004, Guilfoyle moved to New York to host the program Both Sides on Court TV and work as a legal analyst on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360.
In 2006, citing the strain of a bi-coastal marriage, Guilfoyle and Newsom divorced.
She joined Fox News in February 2006, as host of the weekend show The Lineup. When this was canceled, she remained a regular contributor to the network.
But in 2018, she abruptly left Fox News. According to the Huffington Post:
“Six sources said Guilfoyle’s behavior included showing personal photographs of male genitalia to colleagues (and identifying whose genitals they were), regularly discussing sexual matters at work and engaging in emotionally abusive behavior toward hair and makeup artists and support staff.”
Kimberly Guilfoyle
Photographer: Jill Lotenberg, Jill PhotographyPublisher: Chase Backer, 25A Magazine / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
In May 2018, Guilfoyle and Donald Trump, Jr.—the son of the President—attended an event together. News subsequently leaked that the two were dating—while he was separated from but still married to his wife, Vanessa. Guilfoyle had been friends with the Trump family for years
The Trumps divorced at the end of 2018.
Since 2018, Trump Jr. has been openly dating Guilfoyle. According to The New York Times Magazine, they “have become fund-raising powerhouses,” helping the President amass a huge war chest.
Donald Trump Junior
Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)
Among the statements Guilfoyle made at the RNC:
“President Trump is the law and order President.”
[Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, attacked Federal judges who found his policies unconstitutional, and fired Inspectors General for investigating his corrupt officials. He is only the third President—after Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton—to be impeached.]
“Biden, Harris, and the rest of the Socialists will fundamentally change this nation.”
[Russian Communist dictator Vladimir Putin is the only major world leader whom Trump has never attacked nor even criticized. He has rejected the findings of the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency that Putin intervened in the 2016 Presidential campaign to ensure Trump’s election.]
“[Democrats] will selfishly send your jobs back to China while they get rich.”
[The President has more than 100 trademarks in China, including 35 granted pre-approval since he took office.]
Donald Trump
“They will defund, dismantle, and destroy America’s law enforcement.”
[Trump has urged his followers to disobey state laws requiring them to wear masks and maintain social distancing. Many of them have marched on state capitols brandishing automatic weapons.]
“My mother, Mercedes, was a special education teacher from Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. My father, also an immigrant, came to this nation in pursuit of the American Dream.”
[Trump has tried to stop both legal and illegal immigration. And since July, 2017, U.S. immigration authorities have separated more than 5,400 children from their parents at the Mexico border.]
“Human sex drug traffickers should not be allowed to cross our border.”
[Trump partied heartily with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. When Epstein’s widow, Ghislaine Maxwell, was charged with the enticing of minors and sex trafficking of underage girls, Trump wished her well.]
“In President Trump’s America, we light things up. We don’t dim them down.”
[Trump “lit up” Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Park with tear gas against peaceful protesters so he could pose for a photo op at St. John’s Church following the death of George Floyd.]
“This election is a battle for the soul of America. Your choice is clear. Do you support the cancel culture?”
[When protesters object to honoring treasonous Confederate generals with monuments, Trump calls that “cancel culture.” But when a tire-making company bans MAGA caps from its workplace, Trump calls for a boycott of Goodyear Tires.]
“[Democrats] want to control what you see and think and believe so that they can control how you live.”
[When Twitter dared to fact-check Trump’s false tweets about mail-in ballots, he signed an executive order targeting liability protection for social media companies.]
“…President Trump cut middle class taxes, putting tens of thousands of dollars back in the pockets of working class Americans….”.
[Forbes magazine, which calls itself “the capitalist tool,” stated that “Trump tax cuts helped billionaires pay less taxes than the working class in 2018.” Reported Forbes: “For the first time in American history, the 400 wealthiest people paid a lower tax rate than any other group.”]
“Don’t let the Democrats take you for granted. Don’t let them step on you. Don’t let them destroy your families, your lives, and your future.”
[Furious that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) mocked him during a session of the House Intelligence Committee, Trump tweeted: “I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason…..”]
* * * * *
Ernest Hemingway warned: “Fascism is a lie told by bullies.”
On the first night of the Republican National Convention, Kimberly Guilfoyle proved that Hemingway’s warning still holds true.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 29, 2021 at 12:10 am
On December 17, 2019, President Donald J. Trump sent a vicious, self-pitying letter to Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Seventy-four years separate Adolf Hitler’s “Last Political Testament” from Trump’s letter to Pelosi. But the similarities between the two are uncanny.
ADOLF HITLER: I have further never wished that after the first fatal world war a second against England, or even against America, should break out. Centuries will pass away, but out of the ruins of our towns and monuments the hatred against those finally responsible whom we have to thank for everything, international Jewry and its helpers, will grow.
DONALD TRUMP: Your first claim, “Abuse of Power,” is a completely disingenuous, meritless, and baseless invention of your imagination. You know that I had a totally innocent conversation with the President of Ukraine….
The second claim, so-called “Obstruction of Congress,” is preposterous and dangerous. House Democrats are trying to impeach the duly elected President of the United States for asserting Constitutionally based privileges that have been asserted on a bipartisan basis by administrations of both political parties throughout our Nation’s history.
ADOLF HITLER: Three days before the outbreak of the German-Polish war I again proposed to the British ambassador in Berlin a solution to the German-Polish problem — similar to that in the case of the Saar district, under international control. This offer also cannot be denied.
DONALD TRUMP: You are turning a policy disagreement between two branches of government into an impeachable offense — it is no more legitimate than the Executive Branch charging members of Congress with crimes for the lawful exercise of legislative power.
ADOLF HITLER: I die with a happy heart, aware of the immeasurable deeds and achievements of our soldiers at the front, our women at home, the achievements of our farmers and workers and the work, unique in history, of our youth who bear my name.
DONALD TRUMP: You and your party are desperate to distract from America’s extraordinary economy, incredible jobs boom, record stock market, soaring confidence, and flourishing citizens.
ADOLF HITLER: From the sacrifice of our soldiers and from my own unity with them unto death, will in any case spring up in the history of Germany, the seed of a radiant renaissance of the National-Socialist movement and thus of the realization of a true community of nations.
DONALD TRUMP: There is far too much that needs to be done to improve the lives of our citizens. It is time for you and the highly partisan Democrats in Congress to immediately cease this impeachment fantasy and get back to work for the American People. While I have no expectation that you will do so, I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.
One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it, and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another President again.
Adolf Hitler / Donald Trump
ADOLF HITLER: Before my death I expel the former Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring from the party and deprive him of all rights which he may enjoy by virtue of the decree of June 29th, 1941….
Before my death I expel the former Reichsfuhrer-SS and Minister of the Interior, Heinrich Himmler, from the party and from all offices of State….
Göring and Himmler, quite apart from their disloyalty to my person, have done immeasurable harm to the country and the whole nation by secret negotiations with the enemy, which they conducted without my knowledge and against my wishes, and by illegally attempting to seize power in the State for themselves.
DONALD TRUMP: Before the Impeachment Hoax, it was the Russian Witch Hunt. Against all evidence, and regardless of the truth, you and your deputies claimed that my campaign colluded with the Russians — a grave, malicious, and slanderous lie, a falsehood like no other.
You forced our Nation through turmoil and torment over a wholly fabricated story, illegally purchased from a foreign spy by Hillary Clinton and the DNC in order to assault our democracy.
Yet, when the monstrous lie was debunked and this Democrat conspiracy dissolved into dust, you did not apologize. You did not recant. You did not ask to be forgiven. You showed no remorse, no capacity for self-reflection. Instead, you pursued your next libelous and vicious crusade—you engineered an attempt to frame and defame an innocent person.
* * * * *
Adolf Hitler opened World War II with a lie—that Polish forces had attacked a German radio station. He ended it with another lie—that “Jewish interests” had forced war on an innocent Germany.
Donald Trump opened his administration with a lie—that his inaugural crowd had been far bigger than that of his predecessor, Barack Obama. On the eve of impeachment, he chose to lie again—that Pelosi “engineered an attempt to frame and defame an innocent person.”
Few tears were shed for Adolf Hitler when his “Last Political Testament” was unveiled after his suicide.
Nancy Pelosi’s reaction to Donald Trump’s letter was equally appropriate: “It’s really sick.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on December 28, 2021 at 12:54 am
On December 17, 2019, President Donald J. Trump channeled the spirit of Adolf Hitler, Fuhrer of the Third Reich.
He did so in a vicious, self-pitying letter to Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives.
The House was expected to vote on two articles of impeachment against him the next day. Specifically, these condemned him for:
Article 1: Abuse of Power: For pressuring Ukraine to assist him in his re-election campaign by damaging former Vice President Joe Biden, his possible Democratic rival.
Article 2: Obstruction of Congress: For obstructing Congress by blocking testimony of subpoenaed witnesses and refusing to provide documents in response to House subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry.
Trump was ensured an acquittal in the United States Senate, where Republicans held a 53 to 47 member advantage. Yet he knew that only three other Presidents had faced impeachment—Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.
Trump didn’t care about history, nor is he even knowledgeable about it. But he did care about labels—those he gives his enemies and those they give him. And he desperately wanted to avoid having “impeachment” attached to his name in American Presidential history.
Donald Trump
Trump had tried—and failed—to head this off by insults and intimidation. Just two days earlier, he had tweeted about the Speaker: “Nancy’s teeth were falling out of her mouth, and she didn’t have time to think!”
So, on December 17, he sought to do in a letter what he had failed to do on Twitter. He sent a ranting and insulting six-page letter to Nancy Pelosi.
Nancy Pelosi
The Washington Post estimates that from the day he took office—January 20, 2017—to October 9, 2019—Trump had made 13,435 false or misleading claims.
And in sending his letter to Pelosi, he remained true to form.
His letter had no precedent in American history. But there is such a precedent in German history—specifically, the infamous “Last Political Testament” of Adolf Hitler.
Hitler dictated this to a secretary at 4 a.m. on April 29, 1945, shortly after marrying his longtime mistress, Eva Braun. The marriage occurred in his bunker in Berlin under the bnmb-shattered Reich Chancellery.
Even 50 feet below ground, the structure shook as bombs continued to rain from American and British planes. And, at ground level, a more deadly threat was fast approaching: At least one million enraged Russian soldiers, seeking vengeance for the devastation wrought on their country from 1941 to 1945.
Hitler knew the end was closing in on him. He had many times spoken of suicide, and now he was determined to cheat his enemies of the pleasure of killing or capturing him. But before he ended his life, he was determined to have the last word.
Adolf Hitler
Which is where “My Political Testament” comes in.
Seventy-four years separate Adolf Hitler’s testament from Donald Trump’s letter to Nancy Pelosi. But the similarities between the two are uncanny.
ADOLF HITLER: More than thirty years have now passed since I in 1914 made my modest contribution as a volunteer in the first world war that was forced upon the Reich.
In these three decades I have been actuated solely by love and loyalty to my people in all my thoughts, acts and life. They gave me the strength to make the most difficult decisions which have ever confronted mortal man. I have spent my time, my working strength and my health in these three decades.
DONALD TRUMP: After three years of unfair and unwarranted investigations, 45 million dollars spent, 18 angry Democrat prosecutors, the entire force of the FBI, headed by leadership now proven to be totally incompetent and corrupt, you have found NOTHING!
Few people in high position could have endured or passed this test. You do not know, nor do you care, the great damage and hurt you have inflicted upon wonderful and loving members of my family. You conducted a fake investigation upon the democratically elected President of the United States, and you are doing it yet again.
ADOLF HITLER: It is untrue that I or anyone else in Germany wanted the war in 1939. It was desired and instigated exclusively by those international statesmen who were either of Jewish descent or worked for Jewish interests.
I have made too many offers for the control and limitation of armaments, which posterity will not for all time be able to disregard for the responsibility for the outbreak of this war to be laid on me.
DONALD TRUMP: The Articles of Impeachment introduced by the House Judiciary Committee are not recognizable under any standard of Constitutional theory, interpretation, or jurisprudence. They include no crimes, no misdemeanors, and no offenses whatsoever. You have cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!
By proceeding with your invalid impeachment, you are violating your oaths of office, you are breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and you are declaring open war on American Democracy.
You dare to invoke the Founding Fathers in pursuit of this election-nullification scheme — yet your spiteful actions display unfettered contempt for America’s founding and your egregious conduct threatens to destroy that which our Founders pledged their very lives to build.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on December 27, 2021 at 12:10 am
President Donald Trump frittered away two vital months—January and February, 2020—by refusing to take Coronavirus seriously. Even worse, he repeatedly downplayed the virus in a series of public appearances.
Consider:
- January 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China.”
- February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”
- February 26: “The 15 cases within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
- February 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
- February 28: “Now the Democrats are politicizing the Coronavirus….We did one of the great jobs….One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia’….They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax….It’s all turning, they lost….And this is their new hoax.”
- March 6: “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country of keeping it down. A tremendous job of keeping it down.”
By April 14, more than 23,000 Americans were dead—10,000 of them alone in New York—and Trump’s fanatical defenders were desperate to rewrite history.
The outbreak of Coronavirus, first detected in Wuhan, China, in late December, 2019, has taken more American lives in the 21st century than any other disaster—natural or man-made.
Consider:
- 9/11: 2,977 deaths
- Hurricane Katrina: 1,836 deaths
- Benghazi Embassy attack: 4
- Ebola: 2
- Hurricane Maria: 2,982,
- Coronavirus: 400,000 (by January 20, 2021)
One of these defenders was Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham.
On April 9, appearing on the Fox News network’s “Sean Hannity” show, Graham said: “The first thing I want to do is get the United States Senate on the record where we don’t blame Trump. We blame China.
“The Chinese government is responsible for 16,000 American deaths and 17 million Americans being unemployed. It’s the Chinese government and the way they behave that led to this pandemic. This is the third one to come out of China.
Lindsey Graham
“I want to make our response to this so overwhelming that China will change its behavior. I want to get the medical supply chain back into the United States, and I want to stop cancelling some debt that we owe to China because they should be paying us, not us paying China.”
Graham said that the “wet markets” in China should be shut down, because they have been the source of three pandemics that originated in China.
“So, I think you’re going to see a bipartisan push back against China to punish them so severely to deter them in the future.”
[As for “getting the medical supply chain back into the United States”: In 2018, China accounted for 95% of American imports of ibuprofen, 91% off hydrocortisone, 70% of acetaminophen, 40% to 45% of penicillin and 40% of heparin, according to Commerce Department data. Eighty percent of the American supply of antibiotics are made in China.]
* * * * *
Seventy-three years earlier, Chief United States Counsel Robert H. Jackson had been assigned to prosecute the major Nazi defendants for war crimes at Nuremberg.
On July 26, 1946, Jackson delivered his closing remarks to the court. He might as well have been speaking about Donald Trump and his cheerleading—and misleading—chorus on Coronavirus:
“Lying has always been a highly approved Nazi technique. [Adolf] Hitler, in Mein Kampf, advocated mendacity as a policy. {Foreign Minister Joachim] Von Ribbentrop admits the use of the ‘diplomatic lie.’
“….Nor is the lie direct the only means of falsehood. They all speak with a Nazi double talk with which to deceive the unwary….’Final solution’ of the Jewish problem was a phrase which meant extermination. ‘Special treatment’ of prisoners of war meant killing. ‘Protective custody’ meant concentration camp.
Robert H. Jackson
“Besides outright false statements and double talk, there are also other circumventions of truth in the nature of fantastic explanations and absurd professions.
“[Rabid anti-Semite Julius] Streicher has solemnly maintained that…his reason for destroying synagogues…was only because they were architecturally offensive….
“This was the philosophy of the National Socialists. When for years they have deceived the world, and masked falsehood with plausibilities, can anyone be surprised that they continue their habits of a lifetime in this dock?
“It is against such a background that these defendants now ask this Tribunal to say that they are not guilty of planning, executing, or conspiring to commit this long list of crimes and wrongs.”
Citing William Shakespeare’s play about the murderous Richard III, Jackson concluded:
“They stand before the record of this trial as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain king. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you: ‘Say I slew them not.’ And the Queen replied, ‘Then say they were not slain. But dead they are…’
“If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.”
If Americans find Donald Trump blameless for refusing to take decisive action against the Coronavirus threat, it will be as true to say:
- There has been no plague,
- There are no tens of thousands of dead Americans,
- There was no dereliction of Presidential responsibility.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on December 24, 2021 at 12:14 am
On April 17, 2020, more than 100 protesters converged on Huntington Beach, California, in a demonstration against the state’s Coronavirus stay-at-home order.
It was part of a series of national demonstrations organized by Right-wing groups.
Many of the protesters carried Donald Trump banners and American flags. Most were not wearing masks or practicing social distancing—keeping themselves at least six feet apart from others. And they defied scientific findings and medical experts’ warnings, as if daring the virus to “come and get me.”
“I don’t think there’s any reason for us to be on lockdown now,” said 62-year-old Paula Doyle. “We didn’t have any dangers; we have no danger in our hospitals now of overflowing.”
That’s because California’s quick closure of businesses and its order that residents stay home had temporarily prevented Coronavirus from reaching epic proportions in the state. Many hospitals had been left largely empty, waiting for a surge that had yet to come.
On April 18, when more than 31,000 Americans lay dead of the Coronavirus, and more than 90% of the country was under stay-at-home orders. demonstrations erupted across the United States.
Anti-lockdown demonstration at the Ohio Statehouse
Becker1999 from Grove City, OH, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
More than 250 people showed up at Austin, Texas. Other protests occurred at the capitols of Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia. An estimated 400 people gathered in Concord, New Hampshire. A rally outside Maryland’s statehouse in Annapolis drew about 200 protesters.
President Donald Trump had been the primary instigator of such protests. He said he favored a quick return to normal practices and the reopening of businesses across the country.
But what he favored most of all was a return to his Nuremberg-like political rallies, where he could bask in the worship of his fanatical base and hurl slanders at virtually everyone he hated. And he couldn’t do that so long as mass demonstrations were banned—and people must stand at least six feet apart.
There are two factors to these protests that are truly astounding.
First, many of the protesters attacked the governors who had issued stay-at-home orders as fascists. This is a hallmark of Right-wing politics—accusing their opponents of being what they are themselves.
One protester at the Huntington Beach demonstration carried a sign that read: “Defy Fascist Lockdown.”
COVID-19 virus
And Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who had defied the Republican legislature by extending her stay-at-home order, was denounced as a Nazi, with protesters displaying signs like “Heil Whitmer.”
Second, the protesters utterly rejected the rising death-toll caused by the virus. At that time, this stood at 80,574.
Medical experts universally warned that stopping the chain of transmission to avoid overwhelming medical systems was the only way to buy time while treatments and vaccines could be developed.
Yet for these protesters, it’s as if the rising body count wasn’t happening.
Some of the rallies were being pushed by Republican-allied groups in battleground states with Democratic governors.
The April 30 protest at the Michigan Capitol Building featured treasonous Confederate flags and hangman’s nooses. Some signs displayed swastikas. Many of the demonstrators were armed with AK-47s.
That protest was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, a group co-founded by a GOP state representative and his wife, who was on the advisory board for an official Trump campaign group called Women for Trump and was the co-founder of Michigan Trump Republicans.
Another of the event’s promoters, Greg McNeilly, was a longtime political adviser to the wealthy DeVos family, which included then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her brother, Erik Prince, founder of the notorious Blackwater mercenary group.
On May 1, 2020, Trump tweeted in support of the Michigan demonstrators. “These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk to them, make a deal.”
Republicans’ disdain for education in general—and science in particular—has led to the following: In March, 2020, an NBC News poll found that only 30% of Republicans said that they would actually listen to the advice of doctors to stay away from large, crowded areas to avoid Coronavirus.
These are the same people who get their version of reality from Right-wing sources like Fox News Network and Rush Limbaugh.
Rush Limbaugh
On his March 27 show, Limbaugh dismissed Coronavirus as “the common cold,” then added: “We didn’t elect a president to defer to a bunch of health experts that we don’t know.
“And how do we know they’re even health experts? Well, they wear white lab coats, and they’ve been in the job for a while, and they’re at the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and they’re at the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and they’re up, well—yeah, they’ve been there, and they are there.”
In 2015, Limbaugh said: “Firsthand smoke takes 50 years to kill people, if it does. Not everybody that smokes gets cancer. Now, it’s true that everybody who smokes dies, but so does everyone who eats carrots.”
Five years later, on February 17, 2021, Limbaugh—a longtime and heavy cigar smoker—died of Stage Four lung cancer.
And today, thanks to the legacy of Trump and his Republican allies, more than 800,000 Americans are dead of COVID.
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In History, Politics, RELIGION, Social commentary on December 23, 2021 at 12:10 am
According to Wikipedia: “Christianity is the most adhered to religion in the United States, with 65% of polled American adults identifying themselves as Christian in 2019.”
The United States has the largest Christian population in the world, with approximately 167 million Christian adults.
And Christianity continues to play a major role in American politics.
A study, conducted by the University of Kentucky, found that throughout the world, people distrust atheists. To them, those without faith are more capable of immorality than religious people. In fact, American voters are less willing to elect an atheist than any other category of candidate, including gay or Muslim.
And nearly every President has regularly attended the National Prayer Breakfast. This is a yearly event held in Washington, D.C., usually on the first Thursday in February. President Dwight D. Eisenhower began the tradition in 1953.
And yet for all the reverence Americans have for the Christian religion, few of them dare to examine these two fundamental truths about the Bible:
- Its stories cannot be independently proven, and
- Many of its stories violate the most fundamental notions of common sense.
Consider these examples:
- God creates Adam from dust. This absolutely contradicts everything we know about how men and women reproduce. Would-be parents don’t throw dust into the air and see it instantly turn into newborn babies.
God creates Adam–as painted by Michelangelo
- Adam and Eve meet a talking snake. Presumably it spoke Hebrew. When was the last time a zoologist had a serious discussion with a serpent?
- Noah saves the world’s wildlife by stuffing them into an ark. Sure—untrained wild animals are going to meekly walk, two-by-two, into a huge building. Then they’re going to let themselves be caged. And Noah and his family must store a huge variety of food for each type of animal for an indefinite period of time. And the sheer stench of all that animal urine and feces would have been horrific.
- Moses parts the Red Sea. Some scholars believe “Red” has been mistranslated from “Reed,” which is like upgrading “the White Quail” in Moby Dick to “the White Whale.”
Moses (played by Charlton Hestono) parts the Red Sea
- Lot’s wife becomes a pillar of salt. A human being can be turned into ashes, but not salt.
- Samson kills 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger at the height of his physical strength couldn’t kill so many men—except with a machinegun.
- Daniel is thrown into a pit of lions—but survives because an angel closes their jaws. This sounds inspiring—until you remember that didn’t happen when Christians were thrown to the lions by the Romans.
- The will of God violates physical laws. Jesus turns water into wine and raises Lazarus from the dead; Jonah lives inside a fish for three days; Noah dies at 950 years.
- Christmas dates to a Roman pagan festival. Many Christmas traditions stem from the pagan Roman festival, Saturnalia, which celebrated the “birthday” of the sun. These included feasting, gift-giving, lighting candles (to ward off evil spirits) and displaying wreaths (as a sign of coming spring).
- Jesus’ alleged birth on December 25. The Bible doesn’t give a day—or month—for Jesus’ birth. Early Christians tried to abolish Saturnalia. When this failed, the Roman Catholic Church, in 336 A.D., “Christianised” the festival by naming Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25, as Jesus’ birthday.
- Jesus rises from the dead. There have been near-death experiences, but there has never been a documented case of someone returning to life after being buried.
- Jesus will return more than 2,000 years after he died to wipe all evil from the earth and usher in a paradise for his faithful followers. There has never been a case in recorded history of anyone returning from the dead decades or hundreds of years later—let alone more than 2,000 years later.
“The Transfiguration of Jesus” as painted by Carl Bloch
So why do millions of people unquestioningly accept so many stories that totally contradict the most basic truths of common sense?
Like Muzak, these stories—and other Biblical tales—have been absorbed over time through several mediums:
- Countless parents have told them to their children.
- So have countless pastors and priests.
- From the 1940s to the 1960s, audiences reveled in such spectaculars as “Samson and Delilah,” “The Ten Commandments” and “King of Kings.” When people watch Biblical movies, they believe they’re seeing The Truth as it’s laid out in the Bible.
- The gospel music scene has produced mega-hits like: “Shall We Gather at the River?” “Take Me to the King,” “Down By the Riverside.”
Above all, it is the fear of death—not just our own personal extinction, but our ignorance of what, if anything, comes after—that is the driving force behind religious belief.
Science cannot reassure us, one way or the other. Only religion claims to hold the answer to this mystery. And only religion claims to offer us a sure path to not simply survival but paradise.
As a result, the permanence of religious belief is absolutely guaranteed.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on December 22, 2021 at 12:10 am
On April 27, 2020, Joe Scarborough offered an important insight about why most Americans ignored President Donald Trump’s crimes and outrages for so long:
“Back in January Joe Biden wrote an Op-Ed that the President was not prepared for this coming pandemic, and things were going to get worse. And he said ‘Let your doctors talk. Let your scientists talk. Follow their lead.’
“…And it’s been one scam idea after another, that people then promoted on other networks, scam doctors promoting these scam solutions, claiming that everybody who had taken this malaria drug had been cured in certain hospitals. This is just the sort of thing that catches up to Donald Trump.
“I’ve said from the very beginning: You can lie about independent counsels, people won’t listen. You can lie about former FBI directors—“
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: “It doesn’t impact their lives.”
JOE SCARBOROUGH: “They’re still going to work, the kids are doing fine, they’ve got enough money to pay their rent, to pay their mortgage, You can even lie about the Ukraine call—they don’t really care.
“But all of these lies, all of these [COVID-19] scams that he’s been pushing…have been revealed as lies—not by the people on cable news, but by their doctors. By nurses they know. If you’ve got a doctor who’s been treating your family for 20-25 years, you’re going to believe that person more than a scam artist that’s pushing propaganda for Donald Trump on talk radio.”
On August 23, 2018, Trump appearing on “Fox and Friends,” said: “I tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor.”
Donald Trump
Thus, he appealed to the greed and fear of his voting base—and no doubt hoped to reach beyond it: “Keep me in power or you’ll all suffer for it.”
Then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders bragged, on June 4, 2018:
“Since taking office, the President has strengthened American leadership, security, prosperity, and accountability. And as we saw from Friday’s jobs report, our economy is stronger, Americans are optimistic, and business is booming.”
Many Congressional Republicans echoed this: The American people care only about the economy—and how well-off they are.
For eight years, Nazi Germany underwent such an epoch. Germans called it “The Happy Time.”
It began on January 30, 1933, when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor—and lasted until June 22, 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.
Germans knew about the Nazis’ cruelty to the Jews, the conquests of Austria and Czechoslovakia, the mass arrests and concentration camps.
They didn’t care.
Frenzied Germans greet Adolf Hitler
The Gestapo didn’t have to watch everyone: German “patriots” gladly reported their fellow citizens—especially Jews—to the secret police.
As far as everyday Germans were concerned:
- The streets were clean and peaceful.
- Employment was high.
- The trouble-making unions were gone.
- Germany was once again “taking its rightful place” among ruling nations, after its catastrophic defeat in World War 1.
The height of “The Happy Time” came in June, 1940. In just six weeks, the Wehrmacht accomplished what the German army hadn’t in four years during World War 1: The total defeat of its longtime enemy, France.
Suddenly, French clothes, perfumes, delicacies, paintings and other “fortunes of war” came pouring into the Fatherland.
Most Germans believed der Krieg—“the war”—was over, and only good times lay ahead.
Then, on June 22, 1941, three million Wehrmacht soldiers slashed their way into the Soviet Union. The Third Reich was now locked in a death-struggle with a nation even more powerful than itself.
German soldiers in the Soviet Union
And then, on December 11, 1941—four days after Germany’s ally, Japan, attacked Pearl Harbor—Hitler declared war on the United States.
“The Happy Time” for Germans was over. Only prolonged disaster lay ahead.
Donald Trump has spent his life appealing to the greed or fear of those around him. For example:
- Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi personally solicited a political contribution from Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates.
- After Bondi dropped the Trump University case against Trump, he wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign.
- According to an April 14, 2019 story by ABC News, a nationwide review uncovered at least 36 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence or allegations of assault.
- In nine cases, attackers hailed Trump in the midst or immediate aftermath of physically assaulting victims. In 10 more cases, perpetrators cheered or defended Trump while taunting or threatening others. And in another 10 cases, Trump and his rhetoric were cited in court to explain a defendant’s violent or threatening behavior.
But starting in January, 2020, Trump faced an enemy—to his re-election—that he couldn’t bribe or intimidate.
A deadly virus like COVID-19 doesn’t accept bribe-monies or grovel before a raging tyrant.
The Germans made a devil’s-bargain with Adolf Hitler—and paid dearly for it.
Millions of greedy Americans have embraced Donald Trump—another would-be tyrant—as America’s economic savior.
By supporting Trump—or at least not opposing him—they also made a devil’s-bargain. And such bargains always end with the devil winning.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on December 21, 2021 at 12:11 am
The gap between rich and poor in the United States has never been greater.
A May 1, 2018 article in Forbes—which bills itself as “The Capitalist Tool”—vividly documents this truth.
“In the 1950s, a typical CEO made 20 times the salary of his or her average worker. Last year, [2017] CEO pay at an S&P 500 Index firm soared to an average of 361 times more than the average rank-and-file worker, or pay of $13,940,000 a year, according to an AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch news release today.”
The average CEO pay climbed six percent in 2017—while the average production worker earned just $38,613, according to Executive Paywatch.
The average wage—adjusted for inflation—has stagnated for more than 50 years. Meanwhile, CEOs’ average pay since the 1950s has risen by 1000%.
This would not have been news to Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern political science. In his masterwork, The Discourses, he observed the human condition as that of constant struggle:
Niccolo Machiavelli
“It was a saying of ancient writers, that men afflict themselves in evil, and become weary of the good, and that both these dispositions produce the same effects.
“For when men are no longer obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition, which passion is so powerful in the hearts of men that it never leaves them, no matter to what height they may rise.
“The reason for this is that nature has created men so that they desire everything, but are unable to attain it. Desire being thus always greater than the faculty of acquiring, discontent with what they have and dissatisfaction with themselves result from it.
“This causes the changes in their fortunes—for as some men desire to have more, while others fear to lose what they have, enmities and war are the consequences. And this brings about the ruin of one province and the elevation of another.”
Author Walter Scheidel, Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History at Stanford University, has also given this subject a great deal of thought. And, like Machiavelli, he has reached some highly disturbing conclusions.
Walter Scheidel
World Economic Forum [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D
Scheidel gave voice to these in his 2017 book, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century. His thesis: Only violence and catastrophes have consistently reduced inequality throughout history.
According to the book’s jacket blurb: “Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes.
“Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return.
“The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world.
“Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality.
“The ‘Four Horsemen’ of leveling—mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues—have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich….
“Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future.”
Revolutionaries have known the truth of Scheidel’s findings from the gladiators’ revolt of Spartacus (73 – 71 B.C.) to the French Revolution (1789 – 1799) to the overthrow of the Czarist Romanov dynasty (1917).
But American politicians serenely ignore that truth. They depend on the mega-rich for millions of dollars in “campaign contributions”—which pay for self-glorifying ads on TV.
Thus, in 2016, American voters had a “choice” between two “love-the-rich” Presidential candidates: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The result was that millions stayed home or voted in protest for third-party candidates who had no chance of winning.
In his 1975 book, The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Modern-day America, British historian Robert Payne warned that the predatory rich would not change their behavior: “Nor is there any likelihood that the rich will plow back their money into services to ensure the general good.
“They have rarely demonstrated social responsibility, and they are much more likely to hold on to their wealth at all costs than to renounce any part of it.
“Like the tyrant who lives in a world wholly remote from the world of the people, shielded and protected from all possible influences, the rich are usually the last to observe the social pressures rising from below, and when these social pressures reach flashpoint, it is too late to call in the police or the army.
“The tyrant dies; the police and the army go over to the revolutionaries; and the new government dispossesses the rich by decree. A single authoritative sentence suffices to expunge all private wealth and restore it to the service of the nation.”
For millions of struggling, impoverished Americans, that day cannot come soon enough.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on December 20, 2021 at 12:19 am
Americans are used to Presidential candidates telling lies (euphemistically known as “campaign promises”) to get elected.
But when a candidate actually (and usually accidentally) tells the truth, the results can be electrifying.
On June 18, 2019, Democratic Presidential candidate (and momentary front-runner) Joseph Biden addressed a roomful of donors in New York.
The former Vice President believed that his message would comfort his well-heeled audience of billionaires: Don’t worry, if I’m elected, your standard of living won’t change.
Addressing the 100 or so guests at a fundraiser at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City, Biden said that he had taken heat from “some of the people on my team, on the Democratic side” because he had said that rich people were “just as patriotic as poor people.
Joe Biden
“The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done. We can disagree in the margins but the truth of the matter is it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change,” he said.
And he added: “I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money.
“When we have income inequality as large as we have in the United States today, it brews and ferments political discord and basic revolution. Not a joke. Not a joke … It allows demagogues to step in and say the reason where we are is because of the ‘other’….
“You’re not the other. I need you very badly. I hope if I win this nomination, I won’t let you down. I promise you. I have a bad reputation, I always say what I mean. The problem is I sometimes say all that I mean.”
Biden has talked about decreasing income inequality and promoting workers’ rights. But he’s taken a moderate stance when it comes to taxation.
United States Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT), on the other hand, has attacked the ultra-rich as responsible for the ever-widening gap between themselves and the poor.
“I love Bernie, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble,” Biden said in March, 2019.
Instead, he proposes expanding tax credits for the poor and middle class, and making the tax code less friendly to rich investors.
Robert Payne, the distinguished British historian, took a different—and darker—view of the rich.
Payne authored more than 110 books. Among his subjects were Adolf Hitler, Ivan the Terrible, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, William Shakespeare and Leon Trotsky.
In 1975, he published The Corrupt Society: From Ancient Greece to Present-Day America. It proved a summary of many of his previous works.
Among the epochs it covered: The civilizations of ancient Greece, Rome and China; Nazi Germany; the Soviet Union; and Watergate-era America. And the massive corruption each of those epochs had spawned.
Robert Payne
In his chapter, “A View of the Uncorrupted Society,” Payne warned: Power and wealth are the main sources of corruption.
“The rich, simply by being rich, are infected with corruption. Their overwhelming desire is to grow richer, but they can do this only at the expense of those who are poorer than themselves.
”Their interests conflict with those of the overall society. They live sheltered from the constant anxieties of the poor, and thus cannot understand them. Nor do they try to.
They see the poor as alien from themselves, and thus come to fear and despise them. And their wealth and influence enables them to buy politicians—who, in turn, write legislation that protects the rich from the poor.
But Payne foresaw an even greater danger from the rich and powerful than their mere isolation from the rest of society: “The mere presence of the rich is corrupting. Their habits, their moral codes, their delight in conspicuous consumption are permanent affronts to the rest of humanity. Vast inequalities of wealth are intolerable in any decent society.”
Writing in 1975, Payne noted that a third of the private wealth was possessed by less than five percent of the population—while about a fifth of the populace lived at the poverty level. By 2000, he predicted, about five percent of the population would possess two-thirds of America’s wealth. And more than half the population would be near or below the starvation level.
The result could only be catastrophe. The only way to halt this this increasing concentration of wealth by fewer people would be through law or violent revolution.
Payne has proven to be an uncanny prophet.
On December 8, 2017, the Seattle Times noted that the wealthiest one percent of Americans owned 40% of the country’s wealth. They owned more wealth than the bottom 90% combined.
From 2013, the share of wealth owned by the one percent increased by nearly three percentage points. Wealth owned by the bottom 90%, meanwhile, fell over the same period.
But this situation need not remain permanent.
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BRING ON THE NEW YEAR–THE SAME AS THE LAST YEAR
In Entertainment, History, Medical, Social commentary on December 31, 2021 at 12:23 amNew Year’s Eve, 2021, will soon lie behind us.
And for most people, saying “Goodbye” to 2021 can’t happen soon enough.
New Year’s Eve is traditionally a time for people to reflect on the major events of the previous 12 months. Some of these are highly personal. Others have been shared by the entire country.
Some of these remembrances inevitably bring pleasure. Others bring pain.
And 2021 has been a year of pain for millions.
Starting on January 6, then-President Donald Trump incited thousands of his fanatical disciples to attack the United States Capitol Building.
The reason: To halt the counting of Electoral College votes to certify the legitimate Presidential victory of Joe Biden in 2020—thus leaving Trump in office as “President-for-Life.”
Donald Trump
Fortunately, democracy was saved—for the moment.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 continued to sweep across the globe. To date, it’s infected 285 million worldwide—and killed 5.42 million. In the United States, it’s infected 153.8 million and killed 822,000.
But by March, three new vaccines were being rolled out—and thus saving the lives of untold numbers of potential COVID victims.
COVID-19
At the heart of every New Year’s Eve celebration is the fantasy that you get to start fresh in a matter of hours. And with that fantasy comes hope—that, this time, you can put your sorrows and failures behind you.
And for millions in 2022, life will look brighter—because Donald Trump, whose Presidency was marked by unprecedented criminality and treason, no longer holds office.
True, Trump has refused to admit that he was defeated in a legitimate election. And his lust to become America’s Dictator-in-chief remains as lethal as ever.
But democracies are always threatened by would-be tyrants. And Americans can take heart in the knowledge that, in 1945, they helped defeat two of the worst—in Germany and Japan.
And, for 50 years during the Cold War, they stood firm against dictators in China and the Soviet Union.
The last New Year’s Eve to be marked by worldwide fears was that of 1999:
And, especially where Y2K was concerned, news commentators were quick to stoke our anxieties.
Long before New Year’s Eve, TV newscasters repeatedly warned that, when midnight struck on January 1, 2000, the three places you did not want to be were:
Countless numbers of people in America and around the world stocked up on food, water, batteries and other essentials for surviving an emergency.
Merchants and police feared widespread rioting and violence. If Y2K didn’t set it off, then fears of a heaven-sent Apocalypse might.
In San Francisco, along Powell Street—a major center of tourism and commerce—store owners boarded up their doors and windows as New Year’s Eve approached. Many closed earlier than usual that day.
Fortunately, when midnight struck on January 1, 2000, the predictors of the coming Apocalypse were proven wrong.
New Year’s Eve 1999 is now 22 years distant. But some lessons may still be learned from it:
Each year is a journey unto itself—filled with countless joys and sorrows. Many of these joys can’t be predicted. And many of these tragedies can’t be prevented.
Learn to tell real dangers from imaginary ones. Computers are real—and sometimes they crash. Men who died 2,000 years ago do not leap out of graveyards, no matter what their disciples predict.
Don’t expect any particular year to usher in the Apocalypse. In any given year there will be wars, famines, earthquakes, riots, floods and a host of other disasters. These have always been with us—and always will be. As Abraham Lincoln once said: “The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”
BumFluff2009, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Don’t expect some Great Leader to lead you to success. As Gaius Cassius says in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”: “Men at some time are masters of their fate. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.”
Don’t expect any particular year or event to usher in your happiness. To again quote Lincoln: “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
If your life seems to make no sense to you, consider this: The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once noted: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
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