• 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.
Craig H. Collins, founder and CEO of The 100 Billionth Person, issued the following statement from his Silicon Mountain headquarters late today:
“In light of Mark Zuckerberg’s recent announcement that his social-media platform Meta will no longer perform fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram posts, the editorial team of The 100 Billionth Person has decided to follow suit. We also will no longer fact-check any of the content published on our site, effective fifteen years ago.”
Craig H. Collins making today’s announcement
“This decision was made after careful deliberation and an elegant dinner for our staff at Club Mar-a-Lago, where we dined with the President-elect, Donald J. Trump, the Vice-President-in-effect, Elon Musk, and 2028 Republican Presidential nominee J. D. Vance. We drank Trump Wine and ate Trump Steaks and discovered which side our bread was buttered on, at least for the next four years. And that’s the fact that matters most to us.”
“But I must emphatically emphasize, the action we are undertaking today does not imply that we don’t believe in facts or the truth or a reasonable facsimile that is just close enough to reality to keep us out of legal and/or political jeopardy. Far from it. To restate, our goal is to let our users wander as far from reality as they wish, because that is what freedom of speech is about. In fact, we like to call it freedom from mind.”
“And I also want to assure everyone that freedom also applies to advertising. Although we no longer run ads on The 100 Billionth Person, we could always reconsider, especially if some America First group that commands plenty of eyeballs (say, Tesla?) approaches us with the right — and I mean right — kind of message. There is no message that speaks like money, as real Americans say, and who are we to question their patriotic wisdom.”
“As CEO and Founder of The 100 Billionth Person, I assure you that we all sincerely get it, from the top to our bottom line. While some readers might have concerns that our action will advance lies and falsehoods, we earnestly believe that the opposite is true: offering our readers a free and open forum is the best way to assure that every voice is heard, that every crackpot has an equal opportunity to attract a following of fellow discontents and either go down in flames or achieve critical mass. That has always been the American way, and we are not about to get in the way of America. Or its money.”
“So we encourage all readers of The 100 Billionth Person to join together on our march to freedom where, in the immortal words of the late Bobby McGee, truth is just another word for nothing left to sell. And now we leave the fact-checking to you, whether it’s about the thousands of people that bears kill every year, or the health benefits of colon cleansing, or the army of robot dogs that are protecting our borders from illegal immigrants. When it comes to the truth, we think you deserve whatever keeps you reading. Thank you for your continued engagement. Sorry, but I am not taking questions.”