Trump Wants Anyone Reporting on His Health Charged with Treason & 12 Former FDA Chiefs Have a Dire Warning
December 12, 2025
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Do people really want freedom, or just say they do?
Trump, 79, Insists It’s Treason to Talk About His Health Issues: News platforms that report on Trump’s health should be charged with treason? Yeah, that’s sane.
Trump calls Somali immigrants ‘garbage’ as U.S. reportedly targets Minnesota community: Trump removes all pretense of America as a melting pot to condemn an entire group of immigrants. Has he ever said anything like this about White immigrants?
12 former FDA chiefs unite to say agency memo on vaccines is deeply stupid: Every week we get another unscientific policy that puts American lives at risk. All to pander for votes from the most irrational segment of society.
Fox News Doctor Tries to Spin Trump’s Mid-Meeting Naps as Sign of Genius: This twisted reasoning should make you laugh.
Video Break: This simple challenge seems counter-intuitive.
Kareem’s Kvetching Korner: Why Some Real Mensans Enjoy “Real Housewives”: So-called geniuses are devoted to the Real Housewives. There’s a lesson for all of us. No, really.
What I’m Watching: Now You See Me: Now You Don’t is the third in this mildly enjoyable series. Family Plan 2 is a pleasant comedy-adventure for Christmas. Wild Bill is a solid British mystery starring Rob Lowe.
Magical Moments in Sports: This is a fun competition that I wouldn’t mind trying.
Nat King Cole Sings, “Fly Me To The Moon”: My favorite version of this song.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Danish theologian and philosopher
How much of your day is affected by anxiety? We get anxious when meeting new people, doing new tasks, anticipating doing something we don’t want to do, doing something we do want to do, playing a sport, going on a date, and so much more. So much of life involves anxiety. So many books, religions, and philosophies teach us how to cope with that anxiety. Breathe. Hold. Breathe.
What does anxiety have to do with freedom?
A friend of mine who taught philosophy told me that his students had trouble distinguishing between freedom and free will. They constantly confused the two, thinking they were interchangeable. They aren’t. And that’s were the trouble begins.
If a person is tied to a chair, they aren’t free. But they still have free will. They are free to make decisions, but they are not free to physically carry them out. Many people rightfully demand as much freedom as they can get. This country was founded on a war over freedom. The Civil War was also about freedom.
The more freedom we have, the more choices we have. The more choices we have, the more anxiety we have. Which is why so many people prefer to keep the illusion of freedom rather than experience the reality of freedom. These people prefer rules of behavior, teachings, commandments, a list or book of edicts to tell them what to do in situations so that they don’t have to anguish over the choice. They do as they are told, all while celebrating how free they are.
Kierkegaard wrote that free will is a terrible burden because we have to make moral choices without knowing the outcome of that choice. We feel a terrible guilt if our choice turns out badly, even though we made it for what we considered the right reason. But if we follow some sort of moral code embraced by society or sent to us by a Supreme Being, then we forfeit the responsibility for that decision and with it the anxiety.
Kierkegaard thought the problem with a set of strict moral guidelines is that no two circumstances are ever the same because the people involved are not the same as other people. Their backgrounds, their needs, their circumstances are never the same as someone else’s, therefore no moral code can by itself always be correct. That doesn’t mean that we can’t have principles we live by—don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t lie. It’s just that even those rules have to be questioned under certain conditions.
He thought we need to act as we would want others to act in the same situation, not because it’s a rule, but because it would best benefit the community. When you have the freedom to choose entirely on your own, it brings great anxiety about the worthiness of that choice. That is a heavy emotional price to pay, but worth it if you value freedom. I’ll take anxiety over fake freedom.
