Category Archives: Politics

March 28, 2024

Remember When?

Remember when politics was just frustrating but not completely insane? Remember when it was possible to have hope and belief? Remember when there was still an iota of intelligence in politics? No? I don’t blame you, but maybe this video will remind you:

It came across my YouTube feed and brought tears to my eyes. A highly intelligent, well educated, youthful, self-deprecating, sometimes humorous, balanced leader of and for the free world. A leader for everyone.

This year it’s critical to go vote. Vote for sanity and intelligence. Vote for decency and honesty. Vote against bigotry, hate, exclusion, and fear.

Stay sane, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

∇

1 Comment | tags: honesty, President Obama, sanity | posted in Politics

June 19, 2023

Juneteenth 2023

By Wyrd Smythe

A badly slanted worldview.

There is a disease of the mind, an awful meme, usually passed from parent to child, that sees a person’s paint job as an all-defining aspect of their personality. This disease blinds the mind’s eye, disabling it from seeing past the color of someone’s skin.

Historically this disease has been one of the great sources of human evil. It’s bestial, a hearkening back to the primitive animal reactions of the perceived other. Tragically, the same minds that rise us so far up give us tremendous power to conceive hate, evil, and destruction.

At its worst, this disease — racism — leads to casual murder of human beings.

5 Comments | tags: Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, Juneteenth, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin | posted in Opinion, Politics, Society

February 19, 2023

Disbelief

By Wyrd Smythe

When I was in college (multiple lifetimes ago) I took a class where we studied the nature of belief and disbelief. It was actually a class about logic and situational analysis, but (despite being raised Lutheran) I attended a Jesuit college, so the emphasis on belief versus disbelief was well aligned with their gestalt.

I loved the class (for many reasons, not all of them scholastic). The topic of what we believe — or disbelieve — has fascinated me ever since. It’s a key branch of philosophy under the umbrella of epistemology, the theory of knowledge.

Because our beliefs affect everything from science to politics to personal relations.

5 Comments | tags: belief, epistemology, ideas and beliefs | posted in Philosophy, Politics, Society

February 9, 2023

Grandpa Came to Play!

By Wyrd Smythe

Somewhen in 2020 I decided, for my own peace of mind, to eliminate news and especially politics from my life. The former has become utterly vapid and useless (extra especially any form of TV news), and the latter has become disgustingly polarized and pointless. I genuinely haven’t missed either, not one iota.

But two things combined to make me seek out a stream of President Biden’s State of the Union address this past Tuesday. Firstly, this post of mine from 2016, about President Obama’s last SOTU address, got a bunch of hits. Secondly, there were accounts that it was pretty awesome.

And, in more ways than one, indeed it was.

6 Comments | tags: Joe Biden, President Biden, State of the Union | posted in Politics, Rant

February 12, 2021

Knowing Left from Right

By Wyrd Smythe

I’m feeling outraged and depressed (because politics), plus it’s up to -2 outside (from -10 this morning), so I’m feeling very lazy about writing a post. (And I’m going to have to go out into the chill and shovel the light snowfall off my sidewalk and driveway. Brr!)

Therefore I’m offering up a lightly edited political piece I’ve had sitting in my folder of potential posts… since 2012. Which makes it both outdated and yet oddly still relevant. It’s a short piece, originally intended to be a Brain Bubble, but I’m just going to throw it out there as a regular post.

It’s a rumination on the differences between Left and Right in politics.

10 Comments | tags: conservative, Democrat, progressive, Republican | posted in Politics

February 11, 2021

Huxley Revisited

By Wyrd Smythe

British author and philosopher Aldous Huxley blew my mind with what seemed like his incredible prescience in Brave New World (1932). In my post last December, thinking about our recent politics and social tone, I commented: “For a novel written 88 years ago, it’s surprisingly prescient and relevant.”

The novel impressed me so much I bought the series of essays Huxley published almost 30 years later, Brave New World Revisited (1959). So far, I’ve only read the first five (so many distractions these days), but the apparent prescience continues to astound and astonish me.

I qualify that with “apparent” because it’s actually as old as humanity.

7 Comments | tags: Aldous Huxley, Brave New World | posted in Politics, Society

February 3, 2021

Infection Wow

By Wyrd Smythe

The Wednesday Wow posts have been a bit off the beam recently. Four weeks ago, we were wowed (but not in a good way) by an incited insurrection by an incompetent imbecile. Two weeks ago, we were wowed (in a great way) by the inclusive Inauguration of the incoming Individual.

With all that more or less behind us, I have time to be wowed by interesting (and depressing) information about the insidious infection infesting the country and the world. I mention both because I became intrigued by difference between them.

It all started when I noticed the COVID-19 graphic on CNN.

9 Comments | tags: charts, COVID-19, graphs | posted in Politics, Society, Wednesday Wow

January 20, 2021

Inauguration Wow

By Wyrd Smythe

Today the sun simultaneously set and rose. We had our own democratic version of: “The King is dead! Long live the King!” (An old phrase apt given the deposed would-be kinglet.)