3.24.2024 – our institutions’

our institutions’
slumping public confidence
yet to recover

Reading the article, How a Pandemic Malaise Is Shaping American Politics, (Sub headed … Four years later, the shadow of the pandemic continues to play a profound role in voters’ pessimism and distrust amid a presidential rematch) By Lisa Lerer, Jennifer Medina and Reid J. Epstein, the in the New York Times on Sunday, March 24th, I was struck by the paragraph:

Public confidence in institutions — the presidency, public schools, the criminal justice system, the news media, Congress — slumped in surveys in the aftermath of the pandemic and has yet to recover. The pandemic hardened voter distrust in government, a sentiment Mr. Trump and his allies are using to their advantage. Fears of political violence, even civil war, are at record highs, and rankings of the nation’s happiness at record lows. And views of the nation’s economy and confidence in the future remain bleak, even as the country has defied expectations of a recession.

I had just read

We think loneliness is in our heads, but its source lies in the ruin of civil society by
Kenan Malik in the Guardian and Mr. Malik writes:

There is a deeper issue, too: the tendency to individualise social issues, whether poverty or unemployment, to view them as psychological dispositions or even as moral failure.

As I understand it, we don’t trust anything or anyone and we blame ourselves.

12.28.2023 – as if woke from nap

as if woke from nap
didn’t mean to take, into world
don’t quite recognize

I grew up with comic books.

A lot of comic books.

Not the Marvel – Super Hero genre, but the Gold Key / Walt Disney comic books of Uncle Scrooge the Billionaire and Moby Duck the Whaler.

Comic books were community property in our house.

There was a built in cabinet along one wall of our family room and in the cabinet were three drawers and all the comic books got tossed in there to be read and re-read by all of us.

With their drawings and balloons of text or bubbles of text to show the text was just a thought, me and my brothers and sisters had no problems reading through the pages of dialogue.

With this in mind, I had no problems navigating the work of Mira Jacob’s OP-ART piece in the New York Times titled, Things I Thought Made Sense Just Don’t Anymore.

Her first panel has the text:

I thought time would come back after the pandemic. I thought I would come back after the pandemic. I thought there would be an AFTER THE PANDMEIC. None of these things have happened yet.

Most days I feel as if I woke from a nap I didn’t mean to take into a world I don’t quite recognize.

Boy howdy but BOY HOWDY do I get it.

Most days I feel as if I woke from a nap I didn’t mean to take into a world I don’t quite recognize.

I thought about that line.

Most days I feel as if I woke from a nap I didn’t mean to take into a world I don’t quite recognize.

I am a champion napper.

I like to say I want napping to be in the Olympics and I am in training to win the gold medal.

I used to be able to take a 15 minute nap.

No matter where and no matter when, I could close my eyes and be asleep and wake up, without fail, in 15 minutes.

Wake up and be ready to go.

Of late, those naps are lasting about 20 to 25 to 30 minutes.

I wake up feeling muzzy (is there a better example of onomatopoeia than muzzy?).

I wake up sometimes in a world I don’t quite recognize.

Then I come back around.

But …

I am reminded of the story of Rip Van Winkle who feel asleep and woke up 20 years later.

Washington Irving wrote that back in 1819.

Not sure but pretty sure there wasn’t a pandemic back in 1819 but something had to motivate Mr. Irving.

Looking for an answer I dove into Wikipedia to learn that the storyline of napping and waking up in a world the hero doesn’t quite recognize goes way back in history.

Along with Mr. Van Winkle there is Honi HaMe’agel, the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, Uzair Epimenides of Knossos, Peter Klaus, Ranka and a feller named Urashima Tarō.

According to Wikipedia, “Multiple sources have identified the story of Epimenides as the earliest known variant of the “Rip Van Winkle” fairy tale.”

That was back in the 3rd Century AD.

All through the sad and sorry history of this world, there are writers who feel displaced and give voice to their feelings in fables and stories about people who feel as if they woke from a nap they didn’t mean to take into a world they don’t quite recognize.

I sure feel that way today.

Much like Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes who at age 92, feel asleep during an argument in the United States Supreme Court.

When nudged by the Justice next to him, Justice Holmes is reported to opened his eyes and yelled, “Jesus Christ! Where the hell am I?”

Lucky for me I still pick up my tablet in the morning to read my Bible.

This morning I read, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:18 NIV)

Our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.

In his Hornblower series of novels, CS Forester describes how our hero, Horatio Hornblower, is taking his oral examination for promotion to Lieutenant and is about to fail when the proceedings are broken up by an enemy attack.

When things settle down, young Hornblower askes one of his Officers who made up the examining board about his possible promotion.

The Officer askes Hornblower if he remembers that he was about to be failed when the attack ended the exam.

The Officer looks at Hornblower and says, “Then be thankful for small mercies. And even more thankful for big ones.”

I will remember that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.

And I will be thankful for small mercies.

And even more thankful for big ones.

1.17.2023 – these illusory

these illusory
and ridiculous promises
never understood

My feeling that writers who write about economics get to use the best multisyllable words was reinforced by the NY Times opinion piece, The Crypto Collapse and the End of the Magical Thinking That Infected Capitalism, by Mihir A. Desai, a professor at Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School.

Mr. Desai gets to use wonderful $5 words when he writes:

Pervasive consumer-facing technology allowed individuals to believe that the latest platform company or arrogant tech entrepreneur could change everything. Anger after the 2008 global financial crisis created a receptivity to radical economic solutions, and disappointment with traditional politics displaced social ambitions onto the world of commerce. The hothouse of Covid’s peaks turbocharged all these impulses as we sat bored in front of screens, fueled by seemingly free money.

For me, this opinion piece was summed up in two sentences.

The first, These illusory and ridiculous promises share a common anti-establishment sentiment fueled by a technology that most of us never understood. Who needs governments, banks, the traditional internet or homespun wisdom when we can operate above and beyond?

Not only does it explain, for me the bitcoin fixation but most of the aspects of the covid era.

What I found fascinating was that Mr. Desai linked two worlds together for me.

There is this group, right, that for the most part, boiled down to its essence DOES NOT TRUST GOVERNMENT.

Vaccines, elections, gun rights and border control.

This group does not trust the government and wants the government out of their lives.

Who are these people?

As Mr. Desai pointed out, they are ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT.

They are the 1960’s HIPPIES come to life as 2020’s conservatives.

And at their core, just like the hippies, they are against everything.

As Brando said when asked, “ Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?“, replied, “Whadda you got?“

Who needs governments, banks, the traditional internet or homespun wisdom when we can operate above and beyond?

And really what do these people want to accomplish?

Don’t ask me.

these illusory
and ridiculous promises
never understood

Not only did Mr. Desai explain identify this New Hippie Era to me, he also explained the mystery of cyber currency for me.

Mr. Desai writes, “Speculative assets without any economic function should be worth nothing.”

I feel that way and I am not a professor at Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School.

May I paraphrase and say, something without value is should be worth nothing!

BOY HOWDY!

What to do?

Of late James Garner’s tag line from that goofy old western, Support Your Local Sherriff, keeps coming to mind.

Me?

I am just passing through on my way to Australia.

these illusory
and ridiculous promises
never understood

1.14.2023 – people want to think

people want to think
everything’s back to normal but
going take longer

There is always something lately seems to be the new way to look at things.

Orange is the new black was the thing to say for a while.

Not following fashion too much, I have a 5 pairs of pants, khaki khaki’s, black khaki’s and 3 pairs of blue jeans, I am not much sure about what the old black was.

Black, maybe?

And trying to nail down the origin of the phrase, the closest I could find on the Google (after .6 seconds of searching) was that it showed up in the late-’70s, when the New York Times stated: “Colors are the new neutrals.”

Back in the day, when I lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan and the hoi-polloi said they lived in EAST Grand Rapids, folks who couldn’t get property in EGR started saying Rockford was the new EGR.

(For fun just say hoi-polloi of Grand Rapids, Michigan out loud.)

I went around saying, that Sparta, it’s the new Rockford, just to watch Rockfordians get upset.

Its a Grand Rapids thing so don’t worry if you don’t get it.

In an article about New York Theater, ‘It’s a hard time’: why are so many Broadway shows closing early?, Mr. David Smith writes:

“People just got used to staying home and getting people back out and remembering how amazing live theatre is is taking time. Also people are still suffering and dealing with the trauma of the last few years. People want to think everything’s back to normal but it’s going to take longer for all people to feel normal after two and a half years of tragedy.”

I have to agree.

People want to think everything’s back to normal!

And I agree that it’s going to take longer for all people to feel normal after two and a half years of tragedy.

Normal.

It’s the new normal.

Tempora mutantur.

Times change and we change with the times.

And as Mr. Churchill said, or was reported as saying, “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

If Mr. Churchill was correct, and in saying that it is important to keep in mind that FDR said ‘Winston has 100 ideas everyday but only one is good. That’s okay as he will have another 100 ideas tomorrow, but as I was saying, if Mr. Churchill was correct, with all the change we have experienced in the last 2 and half years, we must be coming close to perfection.

There is that definition of perfection to worry about though.

7.24.2022 – inflation rising

inflation rising
everything, pizza, rent, nightlife
is taking a hit

From the line “Inflation has been rising at the fastest rate in nearly four decades, affecting the prices of almost everything, from pizza to rent. Amid the surge, nightlife is taking a hit.” as it appears in the story, Nightlife Inflation: The Cost of Going Out Is Going Up, by Anna P. Kambhampaty, in the Feb. 28, 2022 NYT.