Trump is President & Other Stories About America
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Descartes on the necessity of intellectual skepticism.
Firefighters were elated after a federal bill provided them support for cancer. Then came ‘a slap in the face’: Cancer is responsible for 72% of work-related death among federal firefighters. Yet, women firefighters are being excluded in a large way in health care.
Nearly half of Americans don't want a promotion: In a shocking poll, the traditional American obsession with professional success has hit the brakes.
Why So Many Successful Professionals Are Quitting Their Jobs and Applying to Harvard Divinity School: This is what happens when success doesn’t equal fulfillment.
Kareem’s Video Break: A baby deer will make your day brighter.
For some elite athletes, neurodivergence can be a super strength: ADHD might be beneficial for some to become exceptional athletes.
‘I’m walking here!’: jaywalking legalized in New York City: A law that was used to target minorities is finally abandoned.
North Texas hero saves two lives after spending 20 years in prison: An uplifting story about forgiveness and redemption.
Stanley Clarke Plays “Bass Folk Song”: One of the best bass players in the world plays the bass like you’ve never heard before.
Trump is President
America fooled me. Just when I was optimistic that we had turned a corner against irrationality, hate, and greed, and were marching forward toward a new age of enlightenment, we hurtle backward in time to a dark place where we dance around a pagan fire like the deranged children in Lord of the Flies.
I don’t want this to turn into a bitter diatribe about my disappointment in the American people who selected a rapist, racist, and cognitively challenged buffoon as their leader. Who put all marginalized people’s lives and rights at risk. Who put the security of the country at risk. Who put our children’s futures at risk.
The next four years will be challenging as we are led by a man in serious mental decline who has surrounded himself with political dimwits and moralless thugs. Most of the prominent people he hired last time turned against him during this election to warn us of his ineptitude, pettiness, and greed. His closest advisors said he was incompetent. But his supporters thought they knew him better. So, here we are.
The next four years will be about survival. If his economic plans are instituted, economists warn that we face dire times. If his health insurance plans are carried out, many will be without insurance. If his plans to protect women against their will (leave it to a sexual predator to phrase it that way) are realized, women will slip further into second-class citizenry. Christianity will be shoved down our throats by the most unChristian man in the country.
How do we live with our friends, families, and neighbors who voted for a rapist, racist, and fraudster? We give them grace. We assume that, though their minds were clouded by their lack of critical thinking, in their hearts they still want a compassionate America that embraces all of its people and protects their rights. They made a mistake, like a child sticking its finger in an electrical socket. Let it go as that and be the person that maybe influences them to think better next time.
Take a day or week to mourn, those of you who still believe in our Constitution and the country we could be. Then roll up your sleeves and prepare for four years of battle to save our country from becoming the tyrannic state that Trump and his supporters envision. They expect us to be humbled and docile. We won’t be. We are better than this election. Let’s prove it.
Special Note: Aside from this opening about Trump’s election, today’s newsletter is deliberately designed to avoid election-related stories. Yes, I will be back commenting on all things political, social, personal, and cultural. But today, let’s just take a breath and look out a different window.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
René Descartes (1596-1650), French scientist and philosopher
At birth, we are fitted with a metaphorical backpack that every year is loaded with another brick of someone else’s beliefs and we carry that weight around throughout our childhood until we are old enough to think for ourselves. At that point, some people start to empty their backpacks and deeply examine each brick to see if it is worth carrying for the rest of their lives. Other people never stop to unload those bricks or examine them, but continue to carry that weight until they can then burden their own children.
These bricks are expressed to others as opinions. Unless you’ve unpacked and examined them for yourself, those opinions aren’t really yours, but rather the echo of whoever dumped those bricks into your backpack. When that happens, the person speaking doesn’t really exist as a separate human being, but just as the shadow of those who came before.
The opening of the movie Trainspotting (1996) includes a famous rant against the status quo by Renton (Ewan McGregor):
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?
The rant isn’t against those things per se but against being shoved into that lifestyle without choice. Each time Renton says “choose,” he’s being sarcastic because he’s saying we don’t have a choice. We’re brainwashed into certain beliefs and values without ever choosing them for ourselves. We are placed on the conveyor belt of life as babies and whooshed along believing we’re making free choices, when in fact we’re just doing what we’ve been told we should. (FYI: This opening monologue became so famous that it was featured on a popular poster.) His form of escaping that pressure is heroin. Until he realizes he didn’t really choose that either and begins a new life that requires rejecting all influences and making hard choices. Many are afraid to make those hard choices—so they don’t.
God. Religion. Patriotism. Political parties. Notions of gender roles. Ideas about romantic love. Until we can field strip all these ideas down to their basic pros and cons arguments, complete with supporting evidence, before choosing our opinions, then we are myna birds dreaming we are originating words.
Doubt and curiosity are the foundations for strong minds, which are vastly different from merely stubborn minds.