Samples From The Essays

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 ... "Something," as Shakespeare had his character Marcellus opine to Horatio, "is rotten in the state of Denmark." Well, actually, Denmark is doing pretty fine right now and its people among the happiest in the world, but in the nation of the United States, something is wrong and the Danes know it; as does most of Europe and Scandinavia. 

     It is not too difficult to see that American politics is going through some hard times, to say the least. Right, Left, Democrat, Republican, Centrists, Extremists, nouveau Socialists or born again Fascists, Trumpsters, anti-Trumpsters, everyone is pointing a finger or raising the middle one at the other. A media circus it is with the media itself in the center ring pooped on by elephantine Republicans. ..."

     "Pravda, the dominant newspaper of the old Soviet Union, was well known for propaganda slanted news. The tweeting and quacking Donald The Duck usually loves the contemporary American imitation of Pravda, that is, of course, Fox News. 

     The all day and night CNN while certainly far more factual than The Fox — not really a trick at all given the poor relationship of the latter to anything resembling truth — endlessly beats the dead horse of the Trump's pseudo-imperial presidency and stokes every kind of scandal imaginable as well as factual. Over and over they broadcast all that sound and fury of Trumpish malevolent meanness, madness and moral emptiness. They have the perfect subject in dumb Donald, but they crave sensational semi-scandal everywhere from Biden's hugs and kisses to Bernie's heart attack to even what Elizabeth Warren proposes or that she is proposing anything that is not the same old same old. What did or did not Bloomberg say? Sick of it all, we are!..."

     "Now, governments of nation-states — themselves a recent invention, starting in about the 1600s — pretty much cover the Earth, about 195 of them, and more or less govern every human being. So, one way or another we must deal with them, their underlying raison d'etre as well as what we would like of them. There are some among us, extreme Libertarians, Anarchists and true blue fundamentalist Marxists who would still like to see the state wither away. I have some sympathy for their positions as who likes being told what to do and be required to send off money, called taxes, to pay for it all. That said, I think government does have a legitimate place in human affairs with, to my mind, some very firm limits."

    "In America, both the Trump Right and the Progressive Left think that whoever wants to work should be employed. (Except Mr. Yang who wants to hand out a guaranteed income to the unemployed because the machines are so productive and automated and workers so unnecessary.) Pretty much everyone in between those poles thinks the same. So do I. It is not even close to a disagreement. Everyone disagrees, however, about how to go about it. 

     If you have the right to: “Life, Liberty and Property” then you need a job to secure at least life and property. You may be free and pursue some kind of happiness without making a living by working, but not all or even a near majority of us have a sugar daddy, earth mommy, an exquisitely generous charity or huge inheritance to fund our adulthood without some kind of work on our part. ..."

    "Shocking disasters whether Vesuvius interring the population of Pompeii, the infamous Bubonic Plague sickening and decimating goodly portions of Medieval Europeans, the Spanish Flu of 1918 at the end of World War I killing more people that the war itself or the current Covid-19 pandemic, flying, boating or driving around the world sickening hundreds of thousands, maybe millions and doing in hundreds of thousands — all of these are very natural and, you might say, virtually inevitable. It is part and parcel to our earthly home. 

    One question to pose for ourselves is: what can we do about this? Can we eliminate these problems; can we better prepare and maybe the damage and death will not be so bad; or perhaps we must gasp and bear it? What could our distant relatives the dinosaurs do when big rocky asteroid fell to earth? What they could not do is now archeological history. Are we ready for Yellowstone Super Volcano and plumes of rocky soot making for such very harsh winters that it will be the end of all of us?"

  "In the long run but not too distant future, the Trump administration’s evisceration of environmental law and regulation will hurt many people worldwide as well as in the United States. Climate change and environmental degradation was happening already, and not only is this version of the government not doing enough just as many past iterations of the government did not do enough, but we are actually factually going backwards at a rapid pace. 

     One of the many results may be more and more refugees desperately seeking entrance at different borders, both within and around the United States as well as worldwide. There will be many other dire consequences. What happens when the Middle East is so hot that it is unlivable? Where will everyone go?  What happens when East Africa goes so dry that 100 million are starving? Who is going to feed them? What happens when Mexico cannot grow food? Think the Trump border wall will hold them back then? What happens when the Western states of the United States go so hot and dry, too, that everyone heads for the East and West coasts that are totally flooded? What happens when the ice in the Himalayas melts and first floods the Yangtze and The Ganges but then later they dry up and 1 billion Chinese and 1 billion Indians cannot eat because they cannot grow their crops? 

Make America Polluted Again?! Is that what we want? "