What Have We Learned from the Texas Floods? & What Does Musk's America Party Stand For?
July 15, 2025
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Mark Twain examines the fears and worries that hold us back from enjoying life.
The Texas Flood Debacle: What makes this horrific event especially significant is that our policies about climate change make more such tragedies inevitable.
Musk Announces New ‘America Party Is Formed,’ Cementing Split From Trump and Republicans: An analysis of what this third party seems to stand for.
Kareem’s Video Break: This little girl wants to protect her mom’s feelings about her cooking.
Kareem’s Kvetching Korner: Trump Speaks Out After Using Term Widely Considered to be Antisemitic: ‘Never Heard That’: Is he that ignorant, a liar, or both? All possibilities are troubling.
Trump Congratulates Leader of English-Speaking Country for His Good English: Racist and embarrassing to America.
Most Canadians Now Say the U.S. Is the Biggest Threat to Their Country: The U.S. has replaced China as the country Canadians fear most. That’s how we treat our friends, which is why we’re losing them.
What I’m Reading in Hard-Boiled Noir Crime Drama: Audible’s The Big Fix: A Jack Bergin Mystery is set in 1957 L.A. and is filled with murder, mobsters, and mayhem. Sam and Twitch is a police procedural graphic novel with a compelling story and the best art I’ve seen in a long time.
Kareem’s Magical Moments in Sports: The hand speed and concentration is phenomenal.
Glen Campbell Sings “Wichita Lineman”: Bob Dylan called this the greatest song ever written. Hyperbole, sure, but still a damn good song.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
Often attributed to Mark Twain (1835-1910), American writer
Yes Man is a very funny 2008 Jim Carrey romantic comedy in which Carrey’s character withdraws from friends and socializing after a devastating divorce. He attends a motivational seminar in which the wildly popular speaker tells people to say yes to every opportunity that arises, no matter how odd. He does, and soon his life becomes richer and happier, including falling in love. Yes, it’s comic exaggeration, but the idea is pretty solid. Our fear of negative outcomes paralyzes us from experiencing many joys that come with taking even modest risks. Especially the risk of engaging with people.
I’m not talking about climbing Mount Everest or skydiving or swimming with sharks. I’m talking about attending a party that you were going to turn down because you were afraid you’d have nothing to say and embarrass yourself. Or going to an art exhibition for the first time, even though you know nothing about art. Reading a memoir by a person who looks nothing like you. Organizing an outing with acquaintances, not just close friends. Most of the time, we fail to do so many things because we imagine the downside and let that imprison us. We build that wall with bricks made of fear and insecurity.
There’s also a political element to this quote. Conservatives generally base their politics on imagining bad things they fear might happen: Brown and Black immigrants will take over the country and marginalize Whites; women will have equal power and marginalize men; people will not follow their personal brand of Christianity and they will be marginalized. In general, they live by the credo, “Get them before they get us,” but it’s not based on a real threat, only an imagined future where they are no longer head of the household.
Oddly, they can ignore real threats because their fear of imagined threats so overwhelms them. Experts in politics, science, medicine, education, and other fields warned what would befall America if Trump was elected. Conservatives ignored the blasting klaxon of their voices—and most of what they warned against has come true.
The process of aging doesn’t have to include a hardening of the joy of life. We don’t need to cower from life—which people do at all ages. We spend our lives making a comfortable nest and worrying that someone will knock us out of our tree. That fear makes one resentful of others and isolates us even more.
Life delivers enough real troubles: no need to weigh ourselves down with imagined ones.