I don't do this every year, and usually when I have, it's been tongue in cheek.
This will try to be, partially, but this one is more serious than most. Indeed, for the most part, there's no jest in this at all, and I'm going to do it in a different format, partially for that reason.
Donald Trump need to retire and go away.
Based on something I read the other day, in his personal life he nearly has. As the limelight fades away, he's spending a lot of his time at a nearby golf course he owns, rather than at Mar-a-Lago.
Even Theodore Roosevelt, the Old Lion, reached a point where he really didn't care about politics anymore, and that included his very last run for office. The fire had gone out. It'd dangerous to compare Roosevelt, who was a highly admirable man, to Trump, who isn't, but that seems to be happening.
Reportedly Trump's favorite film is Sunset Boulevard, which I've never seen, but which is reportedly a masterpiece about a fading silent film movie star. Trump, according to the article I read, will rarely pay any attention to anything, including films, but he loves Sunset Boulevard and will sit through it even after having seen it a zillion times.
That tells us something.
Gracefully fading away is hard to do. Truman did it, I'd note. Jimmy Carter seems to have done it. Douglas MacArthur did it, and the odds were against it.
Of course, Trump's problem is that he's disgraced himself and soiled his legacy.
Anyhow, he really ought to simply keep making that golf course trip and leave everyone alone, for the good of the country, and for the good of what little dignity he has left.
I noticed this morning that Elsie Stefanik is taking all sorts of flak due to a Washington Post expose. There's a lesson to be learned here, but it's probably too late for her to benefit from it. She could still learn from it.
Elon Musk needs to go back to South Africa, and whatever immigration loophole that was exploited to allow him to come in to the country and take up U.S. citizenship needs to be examined.
I can't think of a single qualification that Musk may have legally met to enter this country permanently. Somebody ought to look into that, and if he really didn't meet it, his citizenship should be revoked as a fraud and whatever person assisted this process looked into. And I feel the same way for all of the entertainment figures that hang around in this country as well. Go back.
Whatever weird, weird, loophole in our immigration system let Musk come in needs to be fixed. South Africa can use him. Go home, Elon.
Harriet Hageman and Chuck Gray won their elections, fair and square, but based upon the lie that something was wrong with the last election.
Now that they're in office, they have a lot to make up for, given that.
One thing they both can do is stop feeding the bogus rage machine. The other thing they ought to do is to admit that times are changing and the concept of hanging on to the 1970s economy, which we've only had in this state for the last 50 years, not forever, is dying.
Hageman, also, who is no dummy, ought to do some serious introspection before raising her right hand, once again, and swearing to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. She's done that at least once, and yet she was willing, although not at first, to boost a lie in favor of somebody who was willing to, and is stilling willing to, usurp that same Constitution. Gray probably has taken a similar oath upon becoming a legislature, but I don't know him, and I frankly hold him to a lesser standard.
Hageman when a large number of her fellow bar members reminded her of her duty to tell the truth advanced a really wild fantasy regarding that. If she believed that, she needs to spend about a week in the hills, perhaps with Thoreau, or perhaps with the Book of Tobit. It'd do her good.
The Grand Old Party in Wyoming needs a serious shake up, I'd note, but it's not going to happen. The Democratic Party of Wyoming needs one as well. At this point, that's only going to come through Independents, I'm afraid. My Resolution, therefore, is for them. I hope, and hope they resolve, to take over the state's politics. The Democrats have become so mired in left wing goofiness, there's nearly no saving them.
Interestingly, the Libertarian Party, nationally, recently seems to have taken a step to the middle. Maybe there's hope for them yet.
There's a huge percentage of the country that need to resolve that science is not its enemy, and Newsmax is not the place to get the news. If the news just fuels your preformed beliefs and, simultaneously, makes you mad, you need to get your news somewhere else. Actually, what you need to do, is get the news.
Vladimir Putin needs to go to confession, and then go to a monastery. I'm not joking. Russia needs to join the modern, democratic, world. The Russian Orthodox Church needs to end its schism with the rest of the Orthodox, and the Eastern Orthodox need to end their schism with Rome. This has gone on too long. The German Catholic Bishops, for their part, need to end their drift into wherever they are going.
Something needs to be done regarding the condition giving rise to an epic level of attempted migration into the United States. If conditions in Central America are that bad, we need to figure out why, and do something about it immediately.
In large part, in many ways, we all need to look forward, by looking back. Being perpetually angry doesn't serve any interest at all. Pretending it's 1973 won't either. Turning to grifters, caudillos, snake oil salesmen, and those selling anger won't work.
We all know that. It's doing something about it that seemingly is difficult. But once we get moving, momentum is a force until itself.
Speaking of 1973, left wing American economists like Robert Reich need to realize that they continually espouse another economic option, and then pull back to the current one. They're basically in the position of being a concerned stranger walking up to a desperate drunk in a bar, giving him a temperance lecture, and then suggesting he switch to beer. That's not going to cut it in an economy that truly needs adjusting.
On a minor notes, would people on Twitter stop using this stupid cartoon for points they're trying to make:
There are all sorts of version of this, and they're all hideous and bad. Whatever you think you are trying to prove this way, you are not.
An addendum.
Let's start 2023 with some basic consensus on proved things. If we do, we'll have a productive year.
If we don't, it suggests that we really prefer blinding ourselves to truth and arguing for sport/self-satisfaction.
And that would certainly merit a sense of pessimism.
Okay, first of all, some lingering political things.
Donald Trump lost the election. Believe whatever you want about who should have one, whether the electoral college makes any sense, whether we're a republic or democracy (as if the two are mutually exclusive), but he lost.
There's no point in arguing otherwise, unless you just like arguing, much like the fellow I know who insists the Women's NBA "isn't a sport". Why, well because a 50-year-old overweight guy who couldn't play basketball against a junior high team can safely take that position for self-satisfaction. Same here. Trump lost, and arguing that he won at this point is really just insisting the opposite isn't true.
Vaccinations are safe. We really don't need to argue about this anymore, but we really don't need to be arguing about vaccinations in general.
Note that I didn't limit this to the COVID-19 vaccination. People out there who don't vaccinate their kids for things we haven't seen for years, only to have the kids get ill, are acting criminally. If there's one thing we have COVID-19 to thank for, and I don't believe it is, it's that it shut people up like Jenny McCarthy on this topic.
Let's resolve to follow the science on stuff, no matter how scary that may be, or how much that impacts our self interests, or our narcissistic desires. If that leads to "you know, what I want isn't okay", or "my own impulses aren't ordered", well, so be it.
Let's also resolve that the end point of being a human isn't to be a consumer.
Let's completely skip altering our natures this year. Whether that's dying our hair some color it isn't, or inflating our boobs, or changing our gender, or whatever.
Feel that you really want to be in touch with who you really are? Well, be who you really are, and that starts with the body nature gave you and all that means.
Face the basic fact that you are going to die. Hopefully not soon, but you will. And that's okay, as long as you are in the right place when you die. Eating the All Kale Diet won't stop it. Don't accelerate it, please, we need you around, but we need you who you are, and as part of us, as we really are.
Don't be mean. I've come to realize that there are certain people who revel in being mean. Don't be one of them. Don't take joy in other's suffering, or inflict it in them. Meanness, I'd note, is often masked in arrogance, or self-righteousness, or even ignorance.
Don't follow the mean, either. If somebody seems perpetually pissed off, there's something wrong in that.
Cheerfulness strengthens the heart and makes us persevere in a good life; wherefore the servant of God ought always to be in good spirits.
St. Philip Neri.
Mehr mensch sein.
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