The Country Sleeps The last election now is in the past, And the right guy won to my great relief. The very last vote was legally cast. We have a worthy Commander-in-Chief. But the stench of the Big Lie lingers still; Truth hasn’t returned from its vacation. Although the results should produce a thrill, It’s much too soon to express elation. The cancer of MAGA waits, hidden deep In the heart of the body politic. Democracy is dulled and half asleep, Doped by electoral arithmetic. Will it awake soon? The jury’s still out. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of doubt.
Continue ReadingA Fish Rots from the Head
In the hundreds of thousands of words that have been written about the impeachment of Donald Trump, there is a singular omission: the word “corruption.” Maybe it does appear in places. I certainly have read only a minute fraction of everything that has been written, but the focus has been almost entirely on what is impeachable. Merriam-Webster defines corruption in several ways: 1a : dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people (such as government officials or police officers) : depravity 1b : inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (such as bribery) //the corruption of government officials 1c… Read More
Continue ReadingMore Technology Will Not Bring Us Flourishing
I am generally a fan of David Brooks. That doesn’t mean that I always agree with him, but I think he has a pretty good handle on what needs to be said at the right time. But his column today in the New York Times bothers me a lot. In a nutshell, he paints the possibility of technological breakthroughs as the bright light against all of today’s dark shadows. I think he is wrong, but worse, very wrong. I am not a Luddite, given my doctorate in Chemical Engineering from MIT, standing athwart the road to the artificially intelligent, autonomous,… Read More
Continue ReadingReality and Democracy
The craziness of life in the US has abated a little following the inauguration of President Biden, but its causes still lurk in the background, but not far below the surface. Faced with a serious attack on our democracy, we are told by the pundits that our institutions held and we were saved (at least for now). Perhaps, but the institutions that hold us together are really in trouble. Institutions are nothing more than linguistic creations. We tend to talk only about the very big ones, but we exist within many, many of them. In today’s highly technocratic society, we… Read More
Continue Reading