Miscellaneous observations

Man is fundamentally an animal -- specifically, a species of great ape -- and only secondarily a "rational being", a "spiritual being", an "economic actor", or anything else.  Any attempt to understand human psychology or behavior which does not take our animal nature as its starting point is a waste of time.

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No one ideology can give correct or even sane answers to every question.  Pragmatism and moderation must always temper our adherence to our belief systems.

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A new survey show Nebraska's economic-populist independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn leading his Republican opponent 46% to 42%.  This is not a sure thing but it is winnable.  We really could soon have an economic populist in the Senate who is not beholden to either party -- hopefully the beginning of a whole new movement.

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I'm well aware that the way I write sometimes does not strictly adhere to standard grammar (splitting infinitives and suchlike).  This is because I prioritize clarity and ease of reading.  If the clearest way of expressing an idea happens to transgress a grammatical rule, then I will ignore the rule.

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We now know that Mitch McConnell is technically alive, but he is clearly in no condition to handle the job of being a senator.  Then there's the obvious mental deterioration lately shown by Trump's increasingly unhinged social media posts and pronouncements.  We have systems in place to remove people who are obviously incapacitated from political office -- they just aren't working because the people who should be using them are prioritizing partisan political interests over the interests of the country.

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When somebody makes a blanket denunciation of "the left" or "the right", our suspicion should be directed first against the person who is doing that, rather than against their target.

The extremist on one side looks at the extremists on the other side, gathers their most stupid and outrageous statements and actions into a broad brush, and proceeds to tar the entire other side with that brush. The trouble is, many individuals who start out as moderates read what the hard-liners on their own side have to say (since those hard-liners are over-represented among people who write about politics) and are gradually swayed by it, polarizing the country into two camps, each convinced that the other has gone crazy.

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The first loyalty of a congresscritter or senator should be to his or her constituents, not to his or her political party.  Their job is to represent us.  "Party discipline" is contrary to democracy.

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The cynic is the most shallow, most naïve, and most gullible type of person ever to exist -- and also among the least interesting.

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In the Lindsay Clancy case, as with all violent crimes, my concern is for the victims, not for the perpetrator.  What haunts me is the horror that those children must have felt, being killed by the one person that they should have been able to count on most of all to protect them.

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Most people who think it would be "unnatural" to cure aging so that people can live for centuries probably do not think brushing their teeth is "unnatural", but fundamentally it's the same thing.  In both cases, one is using tools created by human intelligence to prevent damage which would otherwise slowly degrade one's health.

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The reason why the moan-groan-doom-gloom mentality is so dangerous is that the way we perceive our situation can affect how we deal with our situation.  Wallowing in doom and gloom leads to pessimism.  Pessimism leads to despair.  Despair leads to paralysis.  And paralysis leads to defeat even when defeat was not inevitable.  If you convince yourself that everything is hopeless, you will not take action, because you will have trapped yourself in a state of mind where you believe that taking action is futile or will even be counterproductive, regardless of the actual track record of such action in the real world.  This is why the enemy within the mental gates is so dangerous.