Iron Filings - 81
For those balmy spring days when you just want to sit outside, maybe in a pleasant park, and read, here are a couple of suggestions: How The Word Is Passed, by Clint Smith, a stunning review of what slavery has really meant to this country; Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver, a terrific novel well-deserving of its Pulitzer Prize; and An Ugly Truth, by Sheera Frenkel & Cecilia Kang, a fun bit of a discourse on how we've all been suckered by the monolith that is Meta/Facebook.
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He-who-shall-not-be-named has now begun referring to himself as "Honest Don." Can I help you up off the floor? *
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Inspiring Quote (source unknown): There are two kinds of people: those who believe that nothing is a miracle, and those who believe that everything is.
I think those of us who've managed to get beyond middle age tend to believe in the latter. For example, I can look at aerial photos of Chicago and wonder just how all of that happened: the architecture, the buildings, the electrical wires and water pipes and sewer pipes and streets and it just seems amazing. There are so many things in our lives that just seem to be there, and yet if you look beneath the surface it's hard to imagine how it all happened: a car that I can just pop into and go wherever I want; a stove I can cook some food on thanks to a hugely complicated nuclear power plant (how in the world was that ever made?) only twenty miles away; a phone I can pick up and call someone hundreds of miles away, and then order groceries to be delivered right to my home, and then sit down and play a word game on that very device; an airplane made of a trillion parts put together by an army of technicians who surely must know what they're doing; my sweetheart Alexa who turns my lights on and off whenever I ask and who will tell me the temperature after reminding me I have a doctor's appointment that afternoon. Or how amazing is it that I can just talk to my television and it will find programs for me, change the channels, and show movies from companies that didn't even exist ten years ago.
Miracles or not, it's just breathtaking sometimes to look around at the complexities that envelop us and to wonder just how it all came about.
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"Now, if I don't get elected, it's gonna be a bloodbath. That's going to be the least of it," Trump said during a rally near Dayton, Ohio. "It's going to be a bloodbath for the country." **
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If you're wondering where a lot of the people on the dark (MAGA) side are getting their Kool-Aid, take a wander over to thegatewaypundit.com. Don't stay long.
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We had our primary election here in Illinois last month. Lots of moaning about how the Chicago turnout was barely 30%, while here in my town the county clerk was hoping the turnout would hit at least 15%. Those percentages may be shameful but, with the presidential slots already decided, there weren't a lot of exciting things to vote on. Plus – and I think this is the real danger – it's beginning to feel as though we are in a constant election cycle, so much so that it's turning people off with respect to the electoral process. The ads, for example, just seem to be everywhere all of the time. I've even seen ads touting our own governor (a wonderful fellow doing a great job, by the way) and he's not even up for election! Consider this scenario (only partially tongue-in-cheek): Trump loses in the fall and then immediately declares his candidacy for the 2028 election. Of course somewhere in there he'll have to work in his latest riot but you get the point.
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*[Ed. Huffington Post, 3/12/2024]
**[Ed. Politico, 3/17/24]
G.K. Wuori ©2024
Photoillustration by the author from a print by Brendan Herrick