Our Make-Believe World

 We live in a Make-Believe World now, but it's only make-believe if you're MAGA.

“Starting the day I take the oath of office, I will rapidly drive prices down, and we will make America affordable again,” Donald Trump told rallygoers in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in August 2024. “We’re going to make it affordable again.” He said it over and over and over. “Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again. We’ll do that. We’ve got to bring it down,” he told a Wisconsin crowd that October.

Well. Guess what? Prices are up. And they’re not just up, at least in some cases, because of random, impersonal market forces. They’re up because Trump raised them, through his tariffs. But mostly, they’re up because politicians, even presidents, don’t have the power to lower prices quickly and unilaterally.


I thought everyone knew this. I thought everyone was at least sophisticated enough to understand that inflation is kind of complicated and has to do with a number of factors that can’t be easily erased or reversed. I mean, that’s not a particularly advanced political or economic concept. A president can’t just say, “Beef prices, I command thee down!” and beef prices go down. We live in the real world, not some fairy-tale land; there’s no legal limit to the snow here, as there was in Camelot.

-Michael Tomaska

What Can You Live Without?

 Part of growing up is learning what you can safely live without. Know what you need to know, of course, but just as important especially in today's overly stimulating and annoying world is knowing what you can live without.

I learned yrs ago that I can live without television, and by television I mean TV shows. The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Rockford Files are long gone, and after TV entertainment like that nothing ever came along to fill the void.

Another thing that I can avoid is trying to keep up with everything that is going on in the world. I have discovered that I don't need to know "everything." What a relief!

My interest are more refined, so if something is not in my intellectual bandwidth, I've learned to let it go. At the same time, I like to think I am as intellectually curious as I've always been.

Quiet times to think and reflect, read books, interesting conversations, contemplation of every short, yes, there things I could never live without.

 Early on at least by the time I was 14, I was dubious about Santa getting down that chimney. I was a quick learner you see.

 Reminder: This is not a good time of yr to be your usual self-righteous self. Give it a rest. There are at least 7.5 billion people on this Earth, and at least 2/3 of them are not Christians who don't give a flip about Christmas. So keep it all in perspective.

 I have often thought that being a book reviewer with people sending me books for free in hope that I would publicly review them favorably would have been the perfect calling for me, like being called to preach. Well, I may have been called, but I was never chosen.

 I suppose I have a digital footprint, but I have no digital self, and have no desire to have one. The digital world is killing us.

 There is a difference between inheritance and action. I cannot help who my ancestors are, but I can make my own choices. That so many Americans chose to place in power a man who holds people in contempt on the basis of race, religion, and national origin; that so much of the mainstream media conveys this bigotry through tired, obfuscating euphemisms; that there is so low a political price for the president’s racism that he and those around him see little risk in its expression—well, that does say something about America, and Americans. Immigration isn’t breaking our society. That’s a job Americans can do on their own.

-Adam Serwer in The Atlantic