• Last week, I went to our local library and checked out the six-disc set of The Civil War by Ken Burns. The librarian told me the set was due back in seven days, and I thought, “Seven days? For a war that lasted four years and a film that was made 30 years ago?”
The librarian reassured me that I could renew it online, which led me to ask my spouse after the first two discs, “Do you want me to renew The Civil War?” That is when it hit me that Donald Trump no doubt wondered exactly the same thing.
• I want to share something I never told my children: TV sets once had knobs (!) that let viewers adjust vertical hold and horizontal hold to try to improve picture quality. Before you start getting nostalgic about exotic TV controls, I should point out that the knobs were always located in the back, where only The-Man-of-the-House was authorized to reach. My theory is that vertical/horizontal hold knobs didn’t do that much for picture quality but were a big selling point for the self-important men who bought the family’s television sets.
• The most mysteriously-gotten human trait is resiliency. Many who have experienced bad times (and who of any age hasn’t?) claim that their resilience is the product of those bad times, the “what-doesn’t-kill you” take on life. Nietzsche, 1888: “Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.”
I’m surprised that Nietzsche made such a logically weak claim — and in German, no less. Life’s challenges can’t selectively build resilience in some but not others without a second, random factor coming into play. So I call bullshit on those who glamorize struggle and self-reliance while denying vulnerability and hurt, all so that some self-honorees may feel proud of themselves.
Resilience is not a pass/fail test or some life badge of honor. It’s not something we should automatically expect of each other. And it’s not something we should celebrate, as if those who have less resilience are somehow lesser people. It’s a coping mechanism, period.
• Shifting gears, here’s some data on the response time of cops. In movies, the response time of the authorities is usually minus 10 seconds — that is, we are already hearing sirens when the bad guy raises his weapon and delivers his rant-against-humanity soliloquy. Whereas the average response time of real-life cops to active shooter situations is 14-15 minutes. The obvious TrumpWorld answer is to get shooters to deliver more soliloquies.
• In social settings involving atheists and believers, it typically (and ironically) falls on the atheist to make nice when the believer gets the urge to profess the tenets of his/her faith. For harmony’s sake, I make a point not to challenge believers when they make assertions that I don’t buy into — whatever lifts your spirits, is my attitude. However, when a believer tells me they are going to pray for me — while fully aware I don’t believe in it — what is this atheist supposed to say? (A) Thank you! (B) If you insist! or (C) Don’t waste your time, I’m well down the road to Perdition! I waver between (B) and (C).
Seriously, I don’t understand how I seem to care more about the sensibilities of believers than they care about mine, but that’s the perverse thing about American evangelists.
• I’ve pretty much given up on pointing out hypocrisies. Thanks to Donald Trump, being labeled a hypocrite is hardly more consequential than failing to cover your mouth when you yawn. Acting in a way that contradicts what you say is now viewed as a survival skill, not a sin. In recognition, I hereby declare 2025 to be the Free Pass for Hypocrites Year.
In the Free Pass for Hypocrites Year, all Amish people will be allowed to wire their homes for telephone and electricity, so that they no longer have to search for phone booths or ask neighbors if they can store food in their freezers.
In the Free Pass for Hypocrites Year, Republicans will be allowed to embrace Blacks while making it harder for them to vote, and Democrats will be allowed to embrace Hispanics while insisting that they should call themselves Latinx.
In the Free Pass for Hypocrites Year, Trump supporters who claimed they voted for lower prices and a better economy will be allowed to admit that what they really voted for was the brown-people-won’t-get-my-stuff stuff. And in that spirit, Vivek Ramaswamy will also get a free pass.
• We received several Christmas cards from old acquaintances expressing their sympathy about the effects of tropical storm Helene in our hometown of Asheville. Helene brought its destructive winds and rains to Asheville on September 26, 2024, a full three months before Christmas. We lost power and communications for 16 days. We lost water service of any kind for 19 days and potable water service for 52 days. But for the most part, our household has been “operational” since the week before Thanksgiving.
I’m trying to reconcile how some of our acquaintances could have serious concerns about our well-being, and even the existence of our address, but wait until it was time to send out their Christmas cards to reach out. Just saying.
• It feels like for the past ten years I’ve been wishing that the new year will be better than the one that just passed, simply because it has to. Just for the record, I think my score on this account is 0-10. So even though the captain has turned on the Happy New Year sign, we advise that you keep your seat belt fastened in case of unexpected turbulence.
