New Insights

Feelings—resentments, excitements, humor, pleasure—quietly add up, sort themselves into big piles, and, after a while, put us in political groups. 

One of the biggest causes of frustration, and bad feelings, is the changes in the way we have to do things.  In the old days, if you got sick, you knew what to do.  If you got into an accident.  If a new couple moved in next door.  But these days, a lot of us aren't sure what to do!  Everything seems different; even taking a picture at an anniversary celebration.  It used to be that a guy from a studio would stand us all out in a nice array, get out this huge camera, and a picture would be ready in about a week, ready for framing.  These days, anyone can take a picture, and ... email it to everybody. 

The immediate reaction is to long for the old days.  Take me back, to an older, simple time!  (To Constantinople!  No, it's Istanbul...)  All of us want this (except for our youngest relatives, who have just figured out how everything works); and some people think of the old times as the good old days, when America was great. 

'Great' might not be the best word to use.  What the MAGA crowd means is that it was great for them; not necessarily that great in the view from, say Japan (or even from the homes of the poor in any large city).  Take me back to the time before UPS!  Before cell phones!  Before traffic lights in every intersection!  Before the Democrats had set it up so that you had to do a ton of paperwork to apply for a permit to get a new fence around your property!  Prevention is better than cure, you know.  But prevention goes with a lot of paperwork. 

The gun lobby, especially, is all about reducing paperwork.  We should be able to stroll into Walmart, say, pay for a gun, and walk out with it, just like that.  But then so can any resentful psycho who wants to kill everybody. 

Fortunately, I still have a sense of humor—which many of my friends identify as my biggest liability—and I can laugh at myself.  And I can adapt to the times without hurting myself too much.  My daughter forced me to get a smart phone around 2005, when she got her first Droid, and she wanted to be able to send me photographs, and music, and all that sort of thing, and I was forced to learn the ins and outs of life in the 21st century.   Who knows, but if not for that, I might still be thinking in MAGA terms. 

The baffling thing is: how ľoyal the Republican base is, to Don Trump.  I guess I'm more comfortable with rejecting anyone who isn't up to their job pretty quickly.  Times change fast, that's true,  and we have to cut people a bit of a break, give them time to figure things out.  But if you want to be a political leader, you just have to be competent right from the word go. 

Trump, though, was a terrible manager.  The only way he survived, as a businessman, was to hire competent managers.  Even then, he didn't pay them properly; he was becoming notorious for being hard on his underlings, and his business associates not being able to rely on his word.  I think the only reason he has lasted this long is that his followers are too embarrassed to confess that he wasn't even trying, and wasn't as bright as he said he was. 

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