Hegseth Boat Strikes a War Crime? & Trump Pardons Major Drug Dealer
December 8, 2025
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: There’s a difference between loving humanity and loving people. Unfortunately.
Was Pete Hegseth’s Boat Strike Order a War Crime?: First, the lies. Then the finger-pointing. Followed by illogical rationalization. Somehow, they’ll blame Biden.
Boat Destroyed in ‘Double-Tap’ Strike Was Not Heading to U.S., Admiral Reportedly Tells Lawmakers: So, not only do we murder helpless survivors, we hit a boat not even coming to America. We’re not just immoral, we’re incompetent.
Trump’s pardon of Honduras’s ex-president shows counter-drug effort is ‘based on lies and hypocrisy’: Trump is murdering people to defend the U.S. from drugs while also pardoning drug lords.
Trump commutes prison sentence for former private equity executive David Gentile: Try to explain how billionaire fraudsters are freed while college kids get deported. Trump justice.
Trump Administration Will No Longer Commemorate World AIDS Day: What rational reason could there be for this, except to insult the LGBTQ+ community? And to tell countries with a serious AIDS problem that they’re too poor and too non-white to matter?
Video Break: When kids reunite with friends, it’s a moment of pure joy.
What I’m Reading: Exit Strategy: A Reacher Novel is more of the same, and that’s good enough. The new Absolute Universe from DC features new graphic novels about Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman that are the most exciting stories in years.
Magical Moments in Sports: Athletes have one motto: We fall, we rise.
Roy Orbison Sings “It’s Over”: Orbison’s voice brought a vulnerability in love songs that made him a standard on all break-up mix-tapes.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.
King Lear in Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Lear (1605)
Shakespeare’s quote is only matched, perhaps even surpassed, by my favorite quote from Charles Schultz’s Peanuts character Linus: “I love Mankind…it’s PEOPLE I can’t stand.” That distills the great daily struggle many of us face as we long to embrace all of humanity (okay, most of) as fellow travelers on this grief-laden path toward oblivion. Given the hardships of life, we should be living lives dedicated to comforting and helping each other, not exploiting and punishing.
And yet…
Sometimes when I’m overwhelmed by the irrationality or cruelty of human behavior, I say aloud, even if I’m alone, “What is wrong with people?” Sometimes the frustration is so overpowering, all I can mutter is, “People!” And sometimes all I can do is shake my head and sigh. Words seem too weak to express my sorrow.
My hopeful relationship with humanity is like having an all-consuming crush on a person from afar—their Bohemian style, their classically gorgeous features, the lightness of their laugh. Then you finally sit down to have a conversation with them, anticipating true love, and they go on about how the world is flat, lizard people rule the country, and vaccines contain Satan’s blood. Your body cringes, maybe even withers a little, as it recoils in dark disappointment.
Lear observes that we are born crying because we inherently know how hard life will be on us when we realize the world is populated by fools, knaves, and villains. Part of my dismay is that I recognize my own personal failures in maintaining the kind of world we aspire toward. Sometimes, I also am a fool, a knave, a villain. I act on impulse, I lash out, I say foolish things.
The difference is that I am constantly vigilant of my behavior so that when I do or say something that is irrational or hurtful, I acknowledge it as not who I want to be and try to change. The people I shake my head and sigh at are the ones who continually do the same villainous behavior but, instead of adjusting, they justify it and turn the knob to eleven. My goal, like that of Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu, is to walk the fragile rice paper of life without leaving a tear.
We get the world we deserve. Our goal must be to live among fools and villains without becoming fools and villains. And that happens when we help each other recognize who the enemy is, even when it’s us? I like to start the day believing that today I will be a better person than I was yesterday. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t. But it works more days than it doesn’t. And that’s good enough.
