Many people are worried about the looming TikTok ban, following yesterday’s Supreme Court decision.
Just for the record, I was never a fan of TikTok. I much prefer the long-form video format of YouTube. Also, as a 50-something adult, I never really “got” the Gen Z vibe of the platform.
Nevertheless, it has become all too easy for a single tech CEO to decide what opinions may be expressed on the Internet, and which may not. That’s why I want TikTok to continue to operate in the USA.
Since the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War, YouTube has removed numerous channels that are based in Russia, or talk about Russia. Not just state media outlets like Russia Today, but also individual Russian bloggers.
I grew up during the Cold War. We wanted to hear information and viewpoints from the other side of the ramparts, even when we knew we would disagree. A willingness to listen to what an adversary is saying is not the same thing as taking the adversary’s side.
But Americans were, on the whole, more sophisticated in the 1980s, and grasped such distinctions. We were willing to let people hear all sides of an argument, and make up their minds for themselves. That troublesome concept of free speech.
I have no doubt that TikTok is influenced by the Chinese government, just as I know that Google (the owner of YouTube) was influenced by the corruptions of the Biden administration these past four years.
That said, I am rooting for TikTok in this particular instance. Why? Because I don’t fully trust any government (including, for that matter, the one that will take power in Washington on Monday).
And I tend to think that something will be worked out in the end. TikTok has a lot of investors and stakeholders who aren’t based in China. To be blunt about it: there is a lot of money on the line. And while freedom of speech doesn’t always triumph, moneyed interests almost always do.
This morning I got one of life’s unpleasant wake-up calls. I was backing out of my driveway when I collided with another driver. Or rather, my Toyota did.
I never saw the other car coming, even though (I am quite sure) I looked behind me multiple times.
As it turns out, the other driver came barreling around the bend beside my house. (My house is on a corner.) If I had looked one more time in that direction, I might have avoided the accident.
So might have he, if he’d been paying attention. The other driver was an Amazon delivery man, driving his personal vehicle. He was no doubt rushing between deliveries.
Another element was the snow-clogged roads, we were both pulling into a roadway that was narrower than usual. If not for the snow, we might have passed by each other.
The aftermath of the collision
But the blame for traffic accidents is decided on legal technicalities, not extenuating circumstances. (Life, after all, is full of extenuating circumstances.) The other fellow managed to beat me into the right-of-way, and so I was cited as at-fault. (Yes, the police came and filed an official accident report. I was fined $115.)
My car sustained some minor damage, as did his.
Neither of us was hurt, and we both drove away.
Both of us were civil enough about the whole affair. But we probably won’t become Facebook friends. A stranger met in a traffic collision is a stranger best forgotten.
I’ve been driving since 1984: more than 40 years. In that time, I’ve had twomisdemeanor speeding tickets. I’ve been responsible for three minor accidents, including today’s mishap.
Five “incidents” (a ticket or a fender bender) in forty years. That means, on average, a ticket or a low-speed collision every eight years. Not a spotless driving record, by any means, but not exactly the record of a reckless madman, either.
Nevertheless, I always rebuke myself for days after these rare occurrences. This habit of self-rebuke, post-blunder, seems to be one of my engrained self-preservation mechanisms.
I received the first of my two speeding tickets in September 1986. Like this morning’s errant driver, I never saw the cop coming. Law enforcement technology was more primitive all those years ago, but the powers-that-be were not without their tricks. When stopped by a patrolman, I was told that the Ohio State Highway Patrol had caught me via aerial surveillance. A plane flying up above the highway. I hadn’t stood a chance.
And as I departed, with my ticket in hand, I told myself what an idiot I had been. If I had only driven below the speed limit, the drive home would have been completely uneventful.
Likewise, some days will pass before I put this morning’s fender bender completely out of my mind. I am grateful that it wasn’t worse, of course. But I can’t turn off that nagging voice inside my head: If only I’d added just a little more caution to caution.
At the end of 2024 I read Stephen King’s The Dead Zone for the second time.
I had read this book for the first time back in 1984, when I was fifteen going on sixteen. In the intervening years, I had never revisitedthe book. (I did see the 1983 film adaptation starring Christopher Walken. While this was a valiant effort on Hollywood’s part, the movie simply didn’t capture the essence of the complex, multilayered source material of the novel.)
‘The Dead Zone’: an experiment in rereading
I decided in December 2024 that forty years was enough time to wait between readings of The Dead Zone. I therefore gave the book another reading. While I remembered most of the major plot points, I had forgotten enough that the book was “fresh” in my rereading.
I also did this as an experiment of sorts. I have been disappointed by Stephen King’s recent novels. Last year I plodded my way through the meandering Fairy Tale (2022), and I struggled to finish it. I was glad when Fairy Tale was over. I nearly gave up on The Outsider (2018) and Doctor Sleep (2013). I did give up on Cell (2006), Under the Dome (2009), and Lisey’s Story (2006), abandoning all three books midway through.
And yet, I recalled loving Stephen King’s early novels so much. Seemingly everything published under his name between 1974 and 1983 was pure gold. Carrie, The Shining, Cujo, The Stand…I had gone through all of those books like a hot knife through butter. And that was back when I had the distracted mind of a teenager.
I wondered if my tastes had changed, or maybe matured. For example, I still enjoy the music of the Canadian rock group Rush. But I have backed off from my teenage assertions that Neil Peart’s lyrics are absolutely brilliant, a complete system of philosophy set to music.
The fifty-something eye can simply not see the world through the teenage lens. Therefore, a rereading of The Dead Zone would be a worthwhile test. Had Stephen King changed? Or had I changed?
‘The Dead Zone’: not quite a horror novel
The Dead Zone is the story of Johnny Smith, a Maine English teacher who emerges from a car accident and a four-year coma with psychic powers. Not long after his awakening, Smith discovers that he has an important mission to perform, one involving an act of political violence. But in committing this one act, Smith will literally save the world.
Although there is a serial murderer subplot, The Dead Zone is not a horror novel in the conventional sense. If Stephen King hadn’t written it, The Dead Zone would have been shelved in the science fiction section. The Dead Zone reminds me of something the late Michael Crichton would have written.
So what did I think? Forty years later, I will tell you the same thing I would have told you in 1984: The Dead Zone is an absolutely brilliant novel. I enjoyed The Dead Zone just as much as a 56-year-old as I did at the age of not-quite-sixteen. In fact, I enjoyed it more, because there were some layers and references that went over my head forty years ago, that I appreciated this time around.
The power of narrative drive
Why is The Dead Zone such a good novel? The premise? Well, yes, the premise is an intriguing one. But Stephen King, in the early years, made magic with vampires in ’Salem’s Lot, his second novel. Vampires were hardly original by the time ’Salem’s Lot was published in 1975. Bram Stoker had already done them seventy-eight years earlier.
The Dead Zone has a compelling premise and strong central characters. More than that, though, The Dead Zone has a strong narrative drive. Although by no means a short book, there is not a single wasted scene in The Dead Zone. There are no meandering subplots.
The problem of the Frankenstory
Fairy Tale, by contrast, is what I would call a Frankenstory. It lacks a coherent wholeness. If you read the book, you’ll find that it is actually two novels in one. There is the “in-this-world” story that comes in the first half of the book. And then there is the portal fantasy.
Or, no…that isn’t exactly right. It would be more accurate to say that Stephen King devotes a full novel’s worth of space setting up the main story premise in Fairy Tale.
I first noticed that Stephen King’s style had changed back in 1986, when I read It. Whereas before his novels and stories had moved along a straight narrative throughline, now they meandered to and fro.
What else makes a novel a Frankenstory? A story with too many characters, especially point-of-view characters. (This is a particularly pernicious trap for many fantasy authors.)
***
Anyway, I very much enjoyed my reread of The Dead Zone. The book really is that good. I recommend it for those who would like to read Stephen King at the top of his game.
What exists on the Internet has often existed before the Internet, but usually on a smaller, less hyped scale. The Internet always amplifies the trivial, and makes mountains out of molehills.
Case-in-point: back in January 1995, a porn star named Annabel Chong starred in an adult film event called, The World’s Biggest Gangbang. Chong supposedly had sex with 300 men on camera.
That was back in 1995. Chong, then in her 20s, is now in her 50s. (Chong has left the porn industry and now works as a web developer. Good for her.)
In 1995, this was regarded as a fringe news story. I remember reading a very brief article about it in an edgy “arts and entertainment” magazine published in the Cincinnati area. (And no, I have never bothered to see the movie.)
Fast-forward thirty years, to the age of the Internet, social media, and the accursed OnlyFans. An OnlyFans entertainer named Bonnie Blue (we may assume that is a nom de guerre) reportedly set a new record by having sex with over 1,000 men in 12 hours.
The New York Post, to cite just one source, reacted as if Miss Blue invented the very concept of the stunt gangbang. (What is Annabel Chong, chopped liver?)
Also, of course, there is the inevitable pearl-clutching:
“OnlyFans star slammed as ‘revolting’ for bedding 1,057 men in 12 hours: ‘This is so sad’”
Sad? Perhaps. “Sore” was the first word that came to mind for me.
Our attitudes about sex veer to some odd extremes. Since 2020, the mainstream media can’t get enough of OnlyFans, and the women who autoporn on the site.
And yet, our government officials have some very different ideas about other forms of commercial sex. Earlier this month, I posted a piece about overly zealous prostitution stings here in Ohio. Ohio’s attorney general, Dave Yost, has declared war on sex-for-money in Ohio. You would think Yost was fighting al-Qaeda. A retired police lieutenant, no less, was caught up in one of AG Yost’s recent stings.
All fine and good, I suppose. (Though it seems like a waste of taxpayer resources.) But what is OnlyFans, if not sex for hire? And yet, OnlyFans is completely legal.
If our desire is to minimize the societal harm brought about by commercialized sex, OnlyFans would seem to be the biggest, and most logical, target. If one man pays one woman for one in-person sex act here in Ohio, that act is limited to them, two people. But Bonnie Blue’s Internet romps have reached thousands, perhaps millions.
The difference, of course, is money. OnlyFans now generates $1.3 billion annually, and most of that money is taxable. Moreover, OnlyFans has been sold by the mainstream media as a vehicle of female empowerment. In-person prostitution, not so much.
Just for the record: I’m not a fan, advocate, or consumer of either form of carnal commerce. I also sympathize with those who are dismayed by the existence of either one. But I don’t like obvious contradictions in the law, particularly contradictions that are so extreme.
During World War I, a wave of anti-German fervor swept the USA. German-language newspapers were shut down. The Kaiser was burned in effigy in American streets.
Things were renamed, too. Dachshunds were dubbed “liberty dogs”. Sauerkraut was called “liberty cabbage”.
Such actions, no doubt, really struck a blow against the detested Huns.
“Oh, but that was back in 1917!” you say. “More than a hundred years ago! People nowadays are so much more sophisticated!”
Really? In 2003, some Republican politicians and conservative commentators began calling French fries “freedom fries”, after the French government objected to the impending US invasion of Iraq.
And even more recently: between 2020 and 2023 we saw a wave of hysteria over Confederate names and statues. Americans who would struggle to name four major Civil War battles (or generals) suddenly claimed great offense at a previously unnoticed stone figure or place name.
The Biden administration was particularly amenable to such revisionism. Between 2022 and 2023, nine US military bases that were previously named after Confederate leaders were given new names.
Pete Hesgeth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, has announced that he wants to undo the name changes. This would require congressional approval, and perhaps a protracted political fight, as well.
BREAKING: Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth is pushing to restore the original names of military bases that were changed in response to recent “WOKE” initiatives.
He believes that honoring history is crucial and calls for a return to the legacies these names represent.… pic.twitter.com/vOYOVn9qY7
As suggested above, renaming things as a display of political outrage is, in my view,one of the best ways to display one’s idiocy. A Confederate statue, covered with pigeon droppings in a forgotten park in Somewhere, Alabama, oppresses no one. Nor do places bearing the names of Confederate generals, especially when so few Americans lack even basic historical knowledge.
But once the name has been changed, does it make sense to reopen the can of worms and change it back again? Or would Pete Hesgeth, assuming he’s confirmed, be better off spending his time on actual matters of national defense?
One of the bases that got a name change was Fort Bragg, named after Confederate General Braxton Bragg. Fort Bragg is now Fort Liberty.
Would it have been better to leave the name alone in the first place? Sure. But Fort Liberty, to me, seems like a perfectly serviceable name. It isn’t as if they renamed Fort Bragg “Fort Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” or “Fort LGBTQ Pride Month”.
Fort Benning, previously named after Confederate General Henry L. Benning, was renamed Fort Moore. The new name honors the late General Harold “Hal” Moore, who served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.
Once again, I don’t find anything objectionable about the new name. And I’m practically allergic to political correctness.
Names of places and institutions do, moreover, change all the time. Such changes do not always occur for reasons of political correctness. Nor are they always met with unanimous applause.
In 1985, city officials here in Cincinnati decided to rename Second Street “Pete Rose Way”.
This was decades before Rose’s death. Rose was only in his early forties and in good health. Then, as now, Pete Rose was known to have a checkered past, and was not universally admired. But there were some ardent Reds fans on city council at the time.
“Name an entire street for a living baseball player?” a lot of people said, scratching their heads. “I don’t even like baseball.”
But the name change went through, nonetheless. And it was never overturned—not even after a 1989 gambling scandal that left Rose ineligible for the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
***
Starting in 1967, Cincinnati had its Convention-Exposition Center. In 1985, the building was renamed the Albert B. Sabin Convention and Exposition Center, to honor the scientist who developed the polio vaccine. Most folks were happy enough with that—or at least they didn’t complain.
Then in 2020, the convention center got yet another name: the Duke Energy Convention Center. This honored not a scientist or a statesman (or even a baseball player), but the massive, unfeeling corporation that purchased our local electric company, Cinergy, in a 2006 merger.
Since then, our energy supplies have been controlled not locally, but from Duke Energy’s corporate headquarters in North Carolina. I actually would prefer to see our convention center named after AOC or Pride Month, rather than Duke Energy.
***
What is most annoying about political correctness? Not so much the underlying political beliefs, but the insistence on making a big deal over the trivial. The contrived urgency and the sham outrage. Like all the silliness over Confederate names and statues.
I don’t want to see the Trump administration spend the next four years arguing about place names that are perfectly serviceable, even if they’re names that were assigned for the wrong reasons, and with flawed motivations.
After all, I never saw the point of renaming Cincinnati’s Second Street “Pete Rose Way”. But I’ve been driving on Pete Rose Way, without protest, for going on forty years now.
Zoe.languages is one of the language YouTubers whom I like. Below she speaks about her language learning goals for 2025.
What about me, you ask? I love learning foreign languages, and could easily spend all my time doing so. But for me, learning languages (especially new ones) is now a sideline.
My goals for 2025, therefore, will be somewhat limited:
Maintain my Japanese and Spanish
Become more articulate in Mandarin
Become fully proficient in Russian and German
I.e., I’ll be focusing on five languages this year, four of which I already speak and understand to a significant degree.
I am sorely tempted to take on Polish, Korean, and Arabic, too. But these are three difficult languages that would require more time than I can justify at present.
In the past I have studied French, Italian, and Portuguese. I may pick French back up near the end of this year. We’ll see. As for Italian and Portuguese: they are so similar to Spanish that I tend to mix them up, when I’m not spending a lot of time in a Spanish-speaking environment (as I’m not doing now).
This will hopefully be the last installment in what has become an extended series on snow in Ohio.
This week I shoveled two suburban driveways, entirely by hand. I’ve spent a total of six hours shoveling snow this past week, broken into three sessions. (It snowed twice this week.)
One of two shoveled driveways
I am in good shape. I regularly run and lift weights. But even I find two hours of snow removal difficult. I feel like I’ve completed a triathlon or two this week.
Why not a snowblower, you ask? Snowblowers really don’t make sense in Southern Ohio, where we might have a bad winter only one year out of four or five. And here’s the thing about snowblowers: you have to store them year-round.
(I may relent on my snowblower policy, however: I was looking at several electric snowblowers on Amazon earlier this morning.)
Here’s the main takeaway, though: If you’re over a certain age and you aren’t in good shape, you should definitely avoid manual snow removal unaided by technology.
Like I said, I’m in good shape. And I’m worn out from this past week.
Last night the Cincinnati area received another four inches of snow. This was in addition to the foot of snow that was already on the ground.
I am not one of those people who frets endlessly about the weather. I am generally sanguine, weather-wise, in the face of temperatures between 20 and 95 Fahrenheit.I don’t stay in during the cold months, nor do I kvetch about the dog days of summer.
Although fall is universally regarded as the best season in Southern Ohio, there is no time of the year that causes me distress simply by existing. To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never been affected by seasonal affective disorder, aka SAD.
The view from my front door, Saturday morning
I must say, however, that I am ready for some relief from the winter of 2025. Since January 5, the cold and snow have been more or less constant. And I’m not talking about typical winter weather: Winter Storm Blair and its aftermath have had a wide-ranging impact. There are kids in the Cincinnati area who still haven’t been to school this year.
Some relief may be on the way tomorrow. The temperature will climb marginally above freezing for the first time in a week. That will hopefully give me time to shovel the two driveways that are under my care.
According to the long-term forecast, the temperature will climb to 38 degrees next Saturday, before dipping back down below freezing again. That one semi-warm day should result in some partial melting. But not a full melting. Not with more than a foot of snow on the ground.
John Lennon’s “Imagine” was played at Jimmy Carter’s funeral this week. There are videos all over the Internet of Garth Brooks and Tricia Yearwood performing the song. We can assume the Carter family was aware in advance and fully approved.
WHAT? Why would ANY Christian have that sung at their funeral? Imagining there is no heaven and no Christianity at a Christian funeral is dark, indeed. https://t.co/64IaRvlOmzpic.twitter.com/cr9kOP892p
“Why would any Christian have that sung at their funeral? Imagining there is no heaven and no Christianity at a Christian funeral is dark, indeed,” opined Mollie Z. Hemingway on social media.
Bishop Robert Barron, a conservative Catholic, wrote on X:
“I was watching highlights from President Carter’s funeral service at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. I found some of the speeches very moving. But I was appalled when two country singers launched into a rendition of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine.’…Vested ministers sat patiently while a hymn to atheistic humanism was sung. This was not only an insult to the memory of a devoutly believing Christian but also an indicator of the spinelessness of too much of established religion in our country.”
I was watching highlights from President Carter’s funeral service at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. I found some of the speeches very moving. But I was appalled when two country singers launched into a rendition of John Lennon’s "Imagine." Under the soaring vault of…
I was too young to remember the Beatles (1960 – 1970) as a going concern, but I remember the final years of John Lennon’s solo career. I recall his tragic death by assassination in 1980, and how the 40-year-old Lennon, forever frozen in time, became something of a cultural martyr afterward. (This is not something that Lennon, who had a remarkably practical mind underneath all the hippie flimflam, would have wanted.)
“Imagine,” is a 1971 Lennon ballad that posits a humanistic utopia, where there are “no countries”, “no possessions” “no greed or hunger”, and “nothing to kill or die for”. A hyper-idealistic wish list, in other words.
Even Lennon didn’t take the song’s concept completely seriously. Consider the “no possessions” part. At the time of his death, John Lennon had a net worth of $200 million. That’s $760 million in today’s money. John Lennon with no possessions? Give me a break.
But where Carter’s funeral performance is concerned, the lines that caused ire were:
“Imagine there’s no heaven; it’s easy if you try…Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.”
John Lennon was never an ideological atheist of the Sam Harris/Richard Dawkins variety. He never embraced the reductive materialism of that crowd. (This is not my extrapolation. Lennon said as much in interviews during his lifetime.)
Lennon did, however, actively question the monopoly of organized religion on faith and belief. While “Imagine” is not an ode to atheism, it is not a church hymn, either. (I could also note that since 1971, “Imagine” has become the most overplayed song on the planet, relative to its musical merits, but I’ll leave that one alone.)
In other words, what would be appropriate at a mostly secular outdoor public memorial (say, in a park), would not be appropriate at a religious funeral inside a church. So I take the points of Ms. Hemingway and Bishop Barron in the context they were intended.
But please, don’t blame John Lennon for all of this. The guy just wrote a song more than 50 years ago. Lennon always said that his songs came from his personal experience, and might not have too much meaning beyond that.
Lennon didn’t ask the world to make far more of “Imagine” than its author ever intended it to be…as happened yet again this week at Jimmy Carter’s funeral.
Anita Bryant (1940 – 2025) started out as a pop singer, beauty pageant winner, and brand ambassador for the Florida Citrus Commission. What she will be most remembered for, however, is her involvement in the Save Our Children campaign, beginning in 1977.
During the late 1970s, Save Our Children was a political movement that sought to repeal recently enacted Florida laws protecting (gay) sexual orientation. (This narrow definition is not a coded message on my part. In the 1970s, “gay” was the only portion of the currently defined LGBTQ spectrum that got much awareness, at least at the public policy level.)
I was just a kid in the late 1970s, and completely oblivious to the specific controversy in Florida. I do recall, however, that this was a period in which Americans were rethinking the changes and excesses of the recently concluded 1960s, both for good and for bad.
Conservatism was making a comeback, and gay rights were far from the only topic of debate. Abortion, pornography, the ERA, laissez-faire capitalism, the death penalty, gun control, the war on drugs…both sides of all of these issues were constantly being shouted in the public space.
Sounds a lot like the 2020s, doesn’t it? And yet that was almost 50 years ago. Americans will constantly debate what individual freedom means, and what the right to privacy means. Where does the individual right to pursue happiness (as defined by an individual) end, and where do the greater needs of society begin?
As at least one recent post should tell you, I personally come down on the side of maximum freedom for consenting adults, where matters of the bedroom are concerned. I don’t care who sleeps with whom, or if they exchange money beforehand, so long as only consenting adults are involved. The way I see it, such matters are none of the government’s business.
But then, I am left of center on some issues, and right of center on others. I was never in favor of the maximum legalization of weed, to the point where legal marijuana has now become an industry. I also favor more gun control than most of my fellow conservatives would agree with.
As for LGBTQ issues? In the 1970s, I probably would have been regarded as a relative liberal on such matters. In 2025, my views (while mixed) would land in the Venn diagram sphere of “somewhat conservative”. But what the LBGTQ lobby is asking for today is not what the gay lobby was asking for in 1977. The context is different.
Today I’ve seen a lot of mean-spirited progressive virtue-signaling on social media about the death of Anita Bryant, a woman who hasn’t been active in the public sphere since Jimmy Carter was POTUS. Most of the people decrying Bryant as the Second Coming of Hitler weren’t even born in 1977. (In fact: I poked around on some of the X and Bluesky profiles that weren’t pure sock puppets. Many of those folks wouldn’t be born for decades.)
Could Anita Bryant have used her considerable talents and influence in a better way? Could she have championed a conservative culture without zeroing in on the issue of sexual orientation? Did she do more harm than good?
We could certainly have a spirited debate about all of that. But given the revisionist political environment of post-1960s America, Bryant was articulating positions that millions of American adults (most of whom are deceased at the time of this writing!) were already taking. 1977 was not 2025. Beware the pitfalls of presentism.
When struck with a pie by a leftwing activist at a 1977 press conference, Bryant asked those around her to forgive the man, then—her face still covered in pie—said a prayer for his redemption. That is the Anita Bryant I will choose to remember, to the extent that I remember her at all.
In the spring of 1980, I was eleven years old going on twelve. I was a huge Star Wars fan, part of the original generation that discovered the movies as kids.
Like many kids of that era, I couldn’t get enough of the Star Wars story. Seeing the movies in the cinema wasn’t enough.
And for that we had Star Wars comics. Marvel put out a big Star Wars edition for the first film in 1977: more or less a retelling of the movie in graphic form, and simplified a little for young readers.
My parents bought me the comic version of the first film in 1977, and I read it from cover-to-cover, many times over. When the comic for The Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, my parents gave me that, too. I also read this one many times, even though I’d seen the movie!
Thinking about all the hours of pleasure I (and so many other Gen X kids) derived from a single comic book makes me long for simpler times, of course. We did not have as many entertainment options in those days. The Internet was still almost 20 years in the future. Video games, still crude, were only beginning to become a thing.
But there is also something to be said for the unprecedented creative impact and economic power of the Star Wars story in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The glory had faded a little by the time Return of the Jedi, the third movie, came out in 1983. But between the release of the first and second movies, 1977 – 1980, Star Wars was a cultural colossus. To put it in contemporary terms: combine Taylor Swift with the Super Bowl, and then multiply that by a factor of five.
Looking at that comic, I feel something else, too; and this one is personal. I feel fortunate that I had two parents who loved me, and provided me with more than the basics of food and shelter. As I’ve noted before, I was very blessed in my formative years. I have little to complain about.
For better or worse, President-elect Trump is not above trolling his opponents, cautious observers, and even his allies.
This is less a product of any real dictatorial tendencies, than his history as a showman. I remember Trump as a headline generator back in the 1980s. The outlandish public statement has long been one of his standard methods. Again, for better or worse.
Trump recently trolled the government of Panama about the terms by which American shippers utilize the Panama Canal. Now he’s talking about inviting Canada and Greenland to join the United States. (He apparently wants to buy Greenland outright.)
First of all, crazier things have been placed on the table in recent years. From a cultural and economic perspective, a union between the USA and Canada/Greenland makes a lot more sense than Puerto Rico as our 51st state. (Puerto Rican independence, once a cause for Puerto Rican patriots, is long overdue. But I digress.)
That said, neither one is likely to happen. I’ve been to Canada many times. Canadians are a wonderful people, but they have a strong sense of nationhood.
As Americans hoping for the best for Canada, our earnest desire should be that a sensible Conservative Party leader will replace the outgoing Justin Trudeau as prime minister of the Great White North. But Canada as the 51st state? Not going to happen. And besides, Canada has a great national anthem. We would all hate to see that go away.
Greenland is a slightly different situation. Greenland is an overseas North American territory of Denmark, with a population of only 56,000 people.
Greenland gained self-rule in 2009 for most internal matters, while its foreign policy and defense are still managed from Copenhagen. Greenland, through its affiliation with its mother country, has long been within the NATO umbrella.
This was true during the Cold War, too. I can recall meeting at least one American during the 1980s who had been stationed in Greenland as a member of the US military.
Greenland, with its Northern European culture, is still more assimilable to the USA than Puerto Rico. That doesn’t mean it would be a seamless match, or that the Greenlanders would necessarily want that. Greenlandic Prime Minister Múte Egede, who favors full independence from Denmark, has rebuffed Trump’s offers to buy the island nation.
The Prime Minister of Denmark, meanwhile, has issued a carefully worded objection to the US president-elect’s statement. Danish PM Mette Frederiksen wants to avoid antagonizing either Trump or Egede too much, as this could drive them into each other’s arms. But nor does she want to come across as a pushover.
Amid all of this, Donald Trump Jr. made an unofficial visit to Greenland yesterday. No government officials met with him.
The elder Trump wrote on Truth Social:
“Don Jr. and my Reps landing in Greenland. The reception has been great. They, and the Free World, need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!”
As I did with the incoming Biden administration four years ago, I will maintain an open mind in the early days of Trump’s second term. I am not going to declare that the sky is falling before Trump even takes office. But I will articulate certain expectations.
What Americans are most eager for is a return to “normal”. Most of us aren’t asking for utopia. But we would like to believe that we can ignore the news for a few days, and be confident that the world hasn’t gone to hell in the meantime. That hasn’t really been possible since 2020.
The Biden administration promised us normalcy. Instead they brought us open borders, and third grade teachers telling kids they could change their gender. That wasn’t normal, for most of us.
But the idea of America somehow annexing Canada and Greenland? Well, that isn’t exactly normal, either.
If Trump ends the disastrous Russo-Ukrainian War, halts the most egregious examples of “wokeness” in public policy, secures our southern border, and restores our energy independence, he will be a successful president in most Americans’ eyes. He doesn’t need to give us Canada and Greenland, too. And besides, Canada and Greenland aren’t his for the giving.
I study multiple languages, and I worked for many years as a professional translator. I love foreign languages, and I love learning them.
Nevertheless, I don’t have much interest in the online “polyglot” community, as it has come to exist on social media platforms like YouTube.
Nor will I ever create one of those cringeworthy YouTube videos in which a language learner displays his or her various languages for the virtual claps of fellow language learners.
I am far more impressed with people who combine multilingualism with a full slate of personal and professional interests. Foreign language study should be a part of every well-rounded, well-educated life. But not the sole focus of it…and certainly not an excuse to engage in constant public preening.
This is why I’m genuinely impressed by the linguistic achievements of the late Audrey Hepburn (1929 – 1993). Her first language was Dutch. She also spoke fluent French, English, and Italian. She was proficient in Spanish and German.
Watch the above video, and you’ll see what a natural multilingual she was. You’ll also note that, unlike so many of today’s YouTube polyglots, she did not make a big deal of her attainments. She did not say, “Hey, watch me speak X language now!” Rather, she used the languages she had learned in a situationally appropriate and unpretentious manner.
I had dared to hope that Winter Storm Blair would not live up to the forecasts. I had dared to hope, despite seeing the weather maps showing a 1,300-mile long mass of perilous winter weather.
The snow began yesterday morning around 10 a.m. It’s continued ever since, mixed in with some sleet and ice pellets. At the time of this writing, we have about 6 to 8 inches on the ground in the Cincinnati area. The winter precipitation is expected to continue until mid-afternoon. After that, we have high winds and arctic, bone-chilling cold.
The entire Cincinnati area is more or less shut down. There is a handful of traffic on the interstates, matched by an equal number of accidents. All the schools are closed, as are many retail businesses.
This storm is going to disrupt normal life and daily routines for the next 24 to 36 hours. There is simply no getting around that.
I can’t say I’m happy about it. But my electric is on, and I won’t starve. I shall survive.
Here in southern Ohio, we often complain about ordinary winter weather, which is usually on the mild side by national standards. After a few days of this, a high of 36 F with no snow is going to seem pretty sweet.
The US Surgeon General has called for the placing of warning labels on alcoholic beverages. If the great minds of government have their way, drinkers will soon be reminded that the consumption of alcohol poses a number of health risks, including increased odds for various kinds of cancer. Alcohol is now our third leading preventable cause of cancer, after tobacco and obesity.
As I have noted in this space in the past, I am a near teetotaler. I’ve had perhaps three alcoholic beverages since the beginning of this century. I haven’t been drunk since New Year’s Eve 1986.
My reasons are neither religious nor moral. I don’t like alcohol, and it doesn’t like me. Two drinks make me mildly nauseous. More than three, and I’m upchucking. My last hangover, thirty-eight years ago, plunged me into absolute misery. And that was when I still had the resilience of a late teen.
There have also been instances of alcoholism in my family. The curse of the Irish. My great grandfather made my maternal grandmother’s childhood an ordeal with his drinking.
And yet…I know plenty of people who responsibly enjoy the occasional glass of bourbon, pizza and beer while watching football, a glass of wine with a fine steak. Just because alcohol has been a negative experience for me, and a scourge for some members of my family, doesn’t give me the right to make your decisions for you.
And yet, I have no doubt that all things being equal, no one’s life would be made worse if everyone were a teetotaler. Teetotaling has worked for me for almost 40 years, after all.
But if the government is going to put warnings on bottles of wine and beer, why not put them on boxes of frozen pizzas and Little Debbies, too?
Obesity rates by state (Source: CDC)
I live in Ohio, one of the nation’s statistically fatter states. When I visit my local Walmart, I see a lot of people carrying fifty pounds of extra weight. Considerably more, anyway, than are stumbling around drunk. I would furthermore bet that my local Walmart sells a lot more junk food than alcohol.
Politicians seek easy targets and low-hanging fruit. And no target hangs as low and as easy as any form of vice: alcohol, gambling, cigarettes, and sex. No politician will ever argue for a warning label on sugar-laden snack cakes, because the overreaching hand of government would be out in the open. But argue for a warning label on Coors Light, and, well, now you’re onto something.
Tasty, but arguably as bad for you as a Coors Light
I have no desire to drink alcohol, ever again. But I know plenty of drinkers. They will not be dissuaded by a government-imposed label on alcoholic beverages. Everyone already knows that alcoholic beverages are bad for you. But the resolve to stop drinking (or to never start in the first place) is a decision that must be made at the individual level.
Similarly, everyone knows that obesity is unhealthy, the warblings of the body-positivity crowd notwithstanding. But obesity, like alcohol, is unlikely to be defeated by yet another gesture from the nanny state.
