What I Think About the Anthony Davis/Luka Dončić Trade & Trump Blames Plane Crash on DEI
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: Shirley Chisholm encourages us to do more than complain about injustice.
What I Think about the Anthony Davis/Luka Dončić Trade: A long-term strategy that will pay off for the Lakers.
Trump’s Cult of Vengeance: The president’s flurry of executive orders doesn’t actually improve the country. They just seek vengeance on his perceived enemies.
Trump’s Plane Crash Press Conference Was Unbelievably Vile, Even for Him: His response to this tragedy reveals his lack of humanity and leadership as he uses their deaths for political gain.
Trump Hits Colombia With Tariffs in Feud Over Military Deportation Flights: Bullying our allies and trade partners is bad for business, bad for our economy, and bad for our national security.
Inside the Chaos, Confusion, and Heartbreak of Trump’s Foreign-Aid Freeze: Trump decided to freeze aid money that saves lives—for an unfathomably illogical reason.
Kareem’s Video Break: This camel made some goat friends, and their relationship is adorable.
Einstein’s 7 rules for a better life: #5: I’ve returned to Einstein’s list for another interesting lesson on how to improve our lives.
Kareem’s Sports Moments: I see it, but I still find it hard to believe.
Marianne Faithfull Sings “As Tears Go By”: A tribute to pop culture icon Marianne Faithfull who died last week.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
Of course laws will not eliminate prejudice from the hearts of human beings. But that is no reason to allow prejudice to continue to be enshrined in our laws—to perpetuate injustice through inaction.
Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005), in 1968, became the first Black woman to be elected to the United States Congress
We all are burdened with prejudices and preconceptions. Each one is a weight shoved into our backpacks by someone else, usually when we are young, and we carry it our whole lives, bending our spines with each year. I listened to two friends argue about which was sweeter, Coke or Pepsi, for fifteen minutes until I pulled out my phone and searched for an answer (Pepsi is sweeter). To them, defending their bias was more important than finding out the truth. A friend of mine recently vacationed on the Amazon River. He was shocked to see how wide the river was because his vision of it as a narrow winding river came from movies like African Queen. However, five seconds of research would have told him that the river is two to six miles wide during the dry season and 30 miles or more wider during the wet season.
Our prejudices about other people and important social issues are just as tainted by inadequate information from childhood—often from trusted sources like parents, teachers, and pop culture—and our reluctance to LOOK STUFF UP!
The challenge is to acknowledge and overcome those prejudices. The lazy person tries to find ways to justify their bad opinions with clichés—it’s how I was raised, etc.—while the mentally robust person recognizes that those notions are obstacles to the truth.
In William Golding’s 1954 novel Lord of the Flies, a group of schoolboys crash-land on a deserted island. The boys quickly form two groups: One group is led by Ralph, who wants to improve their circumstances while maintaining a signal fire so they might be rescued. His more venal rival, Jack, promises to hunt down and kill an imaginary beast the boys have created from their paranoia. Jack also builds a fire, a tribal fire that symbolizes his followers’ becoming more vicious and savage as they abandon the morals of civilization. They aren’t content in their ignorance, they also want to snuff out Ralph’s signal fire, the symbol of reason and civilization.
As I watch the worst people in our country being confirmed to run it, as I watch our president sign executive orders to dismantle our core moral values, as I watch him issue lie after lie from his throne in the White House, I realize two fires are burning now. One is of light and illumination for a path ahead, the other threatens to burn down our country’s values while the greedy and uninformed dance in endless circles.
Both fires can only burn as long as they are fed. The “inaction” that Shirley Chisholm talks about is letting our signal fire go out while the venal tribe tosses our books and beliefs into their roaring flames.