Wednesday, June 17, 2026

Why Trump still smirks and sneers

Given President Trump’s current strikingly low approval rating - 35% - people may wonder why in his recent speeches and comments he continues his signature smirking and sneering, seemingly oblivious to most of the electorate’s dislike of his overt nastiness. The explanation, in my view, is that the president is aware that violence and upheaval of a sort highly threatening to most of humanity will soon distract attention from his policies of social dislocation and environmental ruin, disarming all opposition as people struggle to deal with anything beyond personal survival.

The goal of Trump and his cohorts in undermining our existence is to replace our world with a new one. The redrawn world will be AI-bioengineered and dominated by an immensely wealthy class. The rest of humanity will be either dead, incapacitated, or re-engineered as worker-bots.

What to do about this situation? For a while I’ve advocated some new form of political movement that will voice alternative views on the direction of our evolution. Will this happen, or will we just silently go down the tubes? Time will tell.
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Thursday, March 12, 2026

Trip to Egypt

Next Tuesday, 1/13/26, my wife and I are flying to Cairo for a two week tour of Egypt. I’m writing to report my difficulty in believing this trip will happen - it’s such a contrast to the quotidian routines of suburban LA. Here’s a further twist: My 80th birthday will be in Cairo next Saturday. Am I part of a trend where Boomers seek a last hurrah, a special upset directly from the 60’s, with Trump leading the way, making giant noises to prove he exists? Inside I ask, “Will anyone care that I’m in Cairo? Will it make a giant noise? Is there some meaning to it?” At the moment I’m not seeing much meaning to being anywhere, whether gazing at the Great Pyramids of Giza over a sea of waving cell phones, or buying low-fat yogurt at the Woodland Hills Ralphs. Sorry to be so glum, but...you know, traveling to Egypt just as Trump’s World War III is warming up? Timing is everything. Anyway, I don’t know what to expect. I’ll report again soon!

Sunday, 1/11/26

I scoured the LA Times this morning to make sure Egypt is not in the news, and gladly it is not, leaving the rage and ruin to its neighbors. How does Egypt achieve this relative calm, this seeming neutrality? Maybe we’ll find out.

Thursday, 1/15/26

As we flew low over the glittering spread of Cairo, the Lufthansa captain announced that if we looked out the windows on the left side of the plane we would see the Great Pyramids of Giza, lit up in the night by floodlights. I saw the pyramids and was moved by how gigantic and forceful they appear, even in ruined condition (their walls used to be covered with white reflective limestone, blindingly bright in the sun; the brown, stepping-stone limestone-granite pyramids we see today were the inner support structures). I was surprised, however, because I had always pictured the Giza pyramids surrounded by desert. The Sahara does loom to the west, but, on the east, Cairo’s urban sprawl encroaches.

I have been puzzled for years by the representation of the pyramids as early examples of the majesty of human endeavor. They are that, but they are also early examples of dictatorial subjugation of populations by con artists presenting themselves as demigods or gods who merit massive tombs - a real pyramid scheme - while regular people and slaves get cheap, cruddy tombs. This scam has appeared throughout human history, culminating in the current US president, though at present he seeks merely to be "great."

Tuesday, 1/27/26 We just got back from Egypt. I had intended to write from there, but I had recurring connectivity trouble, so instead I will work here to recreate the visit.

I’ll start with some historical notes, then on to current issues.

Historical notes:

The Great Pyramids of Giza were built at the beginning of Egyptian civilization, and were the last pyramids of their scale to be built for the next 3,000 years. Why the Egyptians stopped building giant pyramids is anyone’s guess.

We refer to the Greco-Roman period as ancient, but Egyptologist do not consider this period ancient, since it flourished a mere 2,000 years ago. When Egyptologists use the term “ancient,” they mean something like the reign of Pharaoh Cheops, 2551 BC to 2528 BC, although some of Cheops’ concepts don’t seem so ancient, like when -as noted- he decided he needed a tomb thousands of times bigger than the ordinary schmo’s because he was part-god.

Current issues:

As mentioned earlier, I had hoped to learn something about the apparent neutrality of the Egyptian people and government, especially striking now in the context of the wars of all-against-all in every country bordering or near Egypt. I did not make much progress on this question, but I did have a theory that the God of Neutrality has cast a spell so that, whatever hatred and mistrustfulness might brew within the Egyptian mind and soul, that mind and soul continually hear a song from a place of peace and love, unattainable perhaps, but at least they can see it and hope. I know that’s not much of a theory; I just can't think of anything better at the moment.

Egyptian society is stratified. A tiny group wears western business suits and says things like, “The President outlined a meticulously designed plan for the state’s exit from certain public investments to create space for the private sector” (Egyptian-Gazette, 1/25/26), while a multitude of struggling people focuses on what is before them, whether hunger, fear, insight, joy, or maybe some philosophical questions with no answer.

PS: 3/12/26 - During the current war pitting Iran against the US, Israel and surrounding Arab countries, Egypt’s ability to stay neutral is highlighted by the lack of missiles targeting it. Regarding Egypt and Israel’s current avoidance of attacks on each other, it cannot be attributed to acceptance of Jews in Egypt. After the the Suez Crises in 1956, Egypt began mass expulsions of its Jews (while keeping their property), leaving today a reputed population in Egypt of five Jews, while the two remaining synagogues (one in Cairo and one in Alexandria) are subsidized as tourist attractions. The strange tolerance now between Israel and Egypt might have something to do with ancient Egypt’s role in the origin of monotheism, suggested by the history of King Tut’s father, Akhenaten, who adopted an obscure sect that discarded all the rival animal-headed gods and replaced them with a “one true god” (Aten, the sun disk god). Akhenaten was overthrown as a dangerous heretic. Moses perhaps was inspired by stories of the suppressed monotheism, possibly shedding light on his fury towards his people’s attraction to a golden calf reminiscent of Egyptian animal gods.

Interestingly, the word “heretic" comes from the Greek, hairetikós, meaning "able to choose, due to choice."

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Thursday, February 26, 2026

Ka-boom!


I got a call from Harry the Human (http://harrythehuman.harrythehumanpoliticalthoughtsfrombeyondthepale.com/), strange if only because he doesn't have a phone.  Harry is a telepath, the real kind, retired from playing nightclubs and cruise ships, where he pretended to be fake.  He inhabits a one room shack in the Mojave desert north of L.A.

Harry gets his fill of human communication out of the air and has no need for additional verbiage via technology.  Nevertheless my phone rang and it was Harry.

"I need help, man."

"Harry?  Why aren't you telepathing me, if that's a verb?"

"I need you to help me think in human language. I'm at a pay phone."

"Why?"

Harry, in his communing with animals and people, has concluded that human language depicts an overly causal, performative world (except when diverted to poetry).

"For once, I want to control things."

"This must be serious!"

"We're all in the same boat," Harry sighed, "...the same sinking boat."

Harry is pessimistic by self-definition, whereas I continually strive to burnish my optimism (figuring my pessimism needs no burnishing).  Put differently, I view the glass as half full (of shit).

Harry believes that human consciousness is a construct, one of whose purposes is to individualize us, so that we believe we are independent actors, "people," if you will.  When Harry telepathically travels outside of human language he sees further possibilities. Once he experienced being a porpoise with half its brain asleep; another time he was Zephyr- the spirit of the West Wind.

But Harry is alarmed by what he's picking up lately from random media and real time humans and animals who pass his way.  He sees "us" - his loose term for atoms and molecules of all sorts, including his own- as increasingly unstable, fissionable material.

In other words: Ka-Boom!

The city of Los Angeles offers a phone app to alert users to imminent earthquake.  Harry wants to function as something similar.  He says we should be alert for psychic mindquakes.  Once the distinctive shaking starts it will gradually accelerate, until it either slows down or continues to a state of dissolution. Harry maintains that we have some say in this.  

Harry notes that the instability will appear localized in time but will have been eons in the making, the latest in a series of shake-ups that started hundreds of millions of years ago, when predation first appeared on the ocean floor. Over long ages, single-celled life had grazed and meditated, until one day God said, "For their sins, let them eat each other."

I don't think Harry would mind if I contrast his version of the impending Ka-boom with Christian apocalyptic thinking, as expressed in Revelation, the final book of the Bible. Revelation reveals, as it were, the final fission of the world's fissionable material.  Though widely popular with early Christians, Revelation at first met resistance from Church authorities, who were perhaps wary of its explicit message.  Revelation was rejected for inclusion in the canon by the Council of Laodicea in 363 AD.  The Synod of Hippo, in 393 AD, was poised to reject it again but had second thoughts when it realized that Christians were going to read Revelation whether it was canonical or not.  After all, it provided human life with a purpose: To die.  

Harry strives to offer solace here and now, rather than in an afterlife, the qualities of which he can't guarantee.

The duration of the coming Ka-boom, from start to finish, is unclear, but its outcome, according to Harry, is clear: The entire surface of the earth will be transformed. Harry wants to use human language to suggest to all who will listen that the Age of Fission will not be the all-destroying event it is portrayed as, that with the proper state of mind, one will be able to exist within it, with one's atoms intact, and one's consciousness functioning.

It's a worthy goal.

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Sunday, February 08, 2026

Only in the New Yorker

I'm going to write a book of quotes called, "Only in the New Yorker." Here's the first entry:

"Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t a writer, obviously: his voluminous e-mails and other files...are littered with misspellings and grammatical errors."

"Jeffrey Epstein’s Bonfire of the Élites," by John Cassidy, New Yorker Magazine, 2/9/26
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