Dismissing Excellence in the Highest Court, The Brief Life of a MAGA Secretary, & Stagflation 2.0
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: We all see things differently…don’t we?
The Intelligence Trap: Why the "Low IQ" label is Trump's favorite weapon.
Video Break: Eddie Murphy does James Brown in front of James Brown.
The Fundraising General: When a million-dollar donation buys a Navy Secretary seat.
Trauma Before Education: Why we won't learn the recession lesson until it’s too late.
What I’m Watching: Michael
Jukebox Playlist: Europa (Earth’s Cry, Heaven’s Smile)
Kareem’s Daily Quote
"We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are."
— Attributed to Anaïs Nin
I’ve spent a lot of my life being stared at. When you’re 7-foot-2, you don’t have the luxury of blending into a crowd. But over the years, I realized that while thousands of people were looking at me, very few were actually seeing me. They were seeing a jersey, a stat sheet, or a set of expectations. They were seeing exactly what they wanted to see.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that none of us are actually living in the same world. We like to think we’re objective observers, walking around with high-definition cameras in our heads, capturing “the truth.” But the reality is a lot messier. We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.
Here, I should add a brief side note. That line attributed to Anaïs Nin most likely belongs, and is more reliably traced, to the Talmud—specifically a similar idea expressed in its teachings. Over time, the wording seems to have been modernized and misattributed to Nin, likely because it fits the introspective tone of her work. So while it sounds like something she might have written, it’s almost certainly a misattribution. I used it anyway, just to be ornery. But also to point out the obvious: misattributed quotations are a perfect example of seeing the same thing from different lenses.
Think about the last time you had a massive argument with someone you love about some “fact.” You both looked at the exact same data and came away with two completely different stories. That’s because we don’t just process information; we filter it through a lifetime of scars and merit badges, and the way one or both parents talked to us at the dinner table.
Our perspective is like a tinted lens we forgot we were wearing. If your lens is tinted with the fear of being replaced, you’ll see a newcomer as a threat. If your lens is tinted with the need for a hero, you’ll find a way to ignore the cracks in a person’s character. We aren’t just watching the movie of life: we are the editors, cutting out the scenes that don’t fit our narrative and color-grading the rest to match our mood.
This is why “nostalgia” is such a powerful drug. It’s not that the past was actually perfect; it’s that we were younger, or safer, or more hopeful back then. We defend the things we love not because they’re flawless, but because defending them feels like defending our own history.
But when we don’t realize that the colored lens exists, we start believing that our perspective is only “common sense,'“ we stop seeing the human beings across from us, with their own set of filters, and start seeing a problem to be solved or an enemy to be defeated.
It’s an uncomfortable thought, that we might be wrong about what we see. It’s much easier to claim the other person is blind than to admit that something might be awry with our vision.
But there’s also freedom in admitting it. Once you realize you’re looking through a lens, you can start to wonder what’s actually behind it. You start to ask, “Why does this specific headline make me so angry?” or “Why am I so desperate for this person to be a hero?”
The world “as it is” is probably far more complex and beautiful than the narrow version we allow ourselves to see. We might never be able to take in the whole picture, but we’d get a lot closer if we spent less time polishing our own lenses and more time trying to understand the tint in ours and everyone else’s.
