Honesty Really Is the Best Policy

Benjamin Franklin is often given credit for the saying, “Honesty is the best policy,” but the saying is actually older than Ben. The original language was, “Our grosse conceipts, who think honestie the best policie,” and the originator of that phrase was an English politician named Sir Edwin Sandys. I suspect, however, that the actual origins are even older than that, as the desire and need for honesty in relationships are as old as humanity. It has long been believed that the Devil (Satan) is the Father of lies, and it’s easy to see why that’s so. No one likes . . . → Read More: Honesty Really Is the Best Policy

Ignorance and Bliss

Ignorance is bliss is a common saying for good reason: We have to think about things to worry about them, and most of the time we are preoccupied with our day-to-day activities while we remain ignorant about major problems that may be just around the corner. A related saying, The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t, suggests that we can adjust to an uncomfortable familiar, whereas a new situation might cause worse problems.

One of the things about democracies is that people get to elect those in charge of governance with regularity. With every election, the . . . → Read More: Ignorance and Bliss

Two Serious Problems

The two principal problems in the US today are Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats tend to be inept. The Republicans tend to be evil. Neither considers the needs of the nation as a whole but instead concentrate on the narrow vested interests of its affiliated group. As a result, the country is not only polarized, but also paralyzed. It is easy to blame President Trump for our problems, but Trump’s presidency is a result of—not the cause of—our problems. Our problems won’t disappear if we remove Trump from office; they would simply coalesce around whomever replaced Trump as president. The . . . → Read More: Two Serious Problems

Winter of Our Discontent

I borrow my title from Shakespeare’s Richard III, a play about what happens when a corrupt and power-hungry individual becomes king. Richard III is one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, ending in multiple deaths. As I write this, it is winter in the States, and it is increasingly looking as though we are heading into a national tragedy.

The book, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump, provides important background details about the last election for President in the States. The details are indeed scary, not only because it shows the connections between . . . → Read More: Winter of Our Discontent

Down the Rabbit Hole (Redux)

This is Reality? I am old enough to remember when the U.S. government was being run by adults. That was also true for most of the governments in the so-called civilized world—we had International differences of opinion about forms of government and territorial concerns. Most of us agreed with some of them and disagreed with others, but we were fairly certain that most countries were making decisions about government by relatively rational means, with military conflict being a last resort.

Lewis Carroll’s classic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, describes an alternative universe in which nothing is what it seems. Alice had . . . → Read More: Down the Rabbit Hole (Redux)

Winter of Our Discontent

I take my title from Shakespear’s play, Richard III. The main character, Richard, who is about to become king of England. is not a nice person. It is no surprise that he becomes a terrible king. The play is a tragedy (everybody dies). Although the time the play was written (1593) and the time depicted in the play were very different from our political situation today, the politics of power were similar. A few centuries later, another English writer, Lord Acton, said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Although the current political situation in the States is . . . → Read More: Winter of Our Discontent

Cheating to Win

Have you noticed how often the GOP cheats to win? In the “old days,” cheating to win was often ascribed to the Democrats. That changed with Richard M. Nixon, who lied about a secret plan to end the Vietnam War. It wasn’t really a plan, of course, and the US exit from Vietnam was anything but glorious. And then came the Watergate scandal.” That was followed by the racism of the Southern Strategy, which focused on denying blacks access to the polls and encouraging whites to vote for racist policies. And that has basically been the GOP strategy since, as . . . → Read More: Cheating to Win

Stormy Weather

If you’ve been paying attention to the news, you already know about the conflict between Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump. While the Trump administration seems to be setting a new record for corruption and other “dishonesties” in the White House, this isn’t the first time in U.S. history politicians have yielded to temptation and the abuse of power. As Lord Acton pointed out, power corrupts, and that has certainly been true for U.S. Presidents.

As is true today, our Founding Fathers tended to be the rich and powerful. One of the ways they used their wealth and power was . . . → Read More: Stormy Weather

Politics as Usual?

Will Rogers famously said, “I’m not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.” The sense that Republicans are “lock-step” in pursuit of their objectives, while Democrats are no better organized than a herd of cats, has been around since the days of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the frantic search for Communists thought to have infiltrated the US government. Republicans learned how to stick together during the “Cold War,” and it was not long until they had developed what came to be known as the Southern Strategy, which was essentially race-based politics, designed to take advantage of White . . . → Read More: Politics as Usual?

Paying Attention

My last blog post was about the so-called ancient Chinese curse of “living in interesting times.” All the problems I cited in that post are not only still with us, but also have been amplified. Donald Trump is now the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the US. Although the nominee for the Democrats has not been finally decided yet, Hilary Clinton is the likely candidate. Although I am still paying attention to US politics, I am doing so with an increasingly heavy heart. Even so, some other things have caught my attention, including website advertising, LGBT concerns and legislation, . . . → Read More: Paying Attention