Slo-Mo Terrorism

The Mueller report has sparked much debate about whether the President has colluded or conspired and/or obstructed justice, and whether he’s a candidate for impeachment. But there is virtually no debate about the report’s finding that the Russians have been attacking us. And we are also repeatedly told that the American electorate doesn’t care, that we are all too busy with our persistent kitchen-table issues.

On 9/11, planes were flown into buildings. Thousands died. Manhattan’s skyline changed dramatically, and so, apparently, did our attitudes about certain foreigners. On Easter Sunday this year, a coordinated attack in Sri Lanka killed more than 300. We can broaden the definition of terrorism to include the shooting incidents in New Zealand, Parkland, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas -- the list goes on. All these things shock us into attention.

But what about the Russian interference in our elections, the spread of fake news and the attempt to foment discord among us? It’s reported that trolls have even tried to spark debate about vaccinations. In these cases, there is no attempt to shock, just the opposite, it’s all designed to be under the radar. The goal is the same, to bleep with our system and make us doubt ourselves. And the Russians are probably not the only actors on this stage. But isn’t this terrorism too? Just slower? Isn’t the damage even more widespread?

The President may blame previous administrations for failing to deal with it. Actually, he may be partly right about us being late to get on to what was happening. But now it’s his problem. Whether he colluded or conspired, we can have a discussion about,  but there is little doubt that he has done virtually nothing about it, in fact, welcomed whatever could be done to help get him elected. Isn’t our President, by sworn oath, supposed to be defending us against this stuff?

We may get angry with the Russians and want to respond in kind. We have to be careful about that, because we don’t know exactly what will happen if they start pushing the buttons they likely have already set up. In the words of Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris, this will be a war without blood, but it could still be a devastating one if it escalates. The strategy must be defense, and we need leadership going forward that makes it a priority to face up to what many in the intelligence biz are calling our greatest modern threat.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

I was never a climate-change denier, but I always believed that the real changes were way bigger than what the puny human race was responsible for. There is evidence of a great overarching cycle. There was an Ice Age long before there were enough human beings doing enough things to create it. Palm trees did once grow in Greenland, and the places we call deserts today were once moist and lush.


The big cycle is not a nice neat sine wave. We agonize over the rising average temperature of the Earth and the drastic changes we need to make to hold it down. The Earth actually knows how to do this. A Krakatoa volcano or a Mt. Pinatubo explode, and the tons of stuff they pump into the sky can lower the temperature in months. We have no control over these really big things. Even the sun has a cycle, and all it will take is one correctly aimed solar flare and our electrical grid could be fried.



Well, all of that said, the argument that the big natural cycles are in charge and that  we humans aren’t to blame for climate change doesn’t hold water anymore. When there are almost 8 billion of us in various stages of civilization doing what we do, sheer logic says we must be having an impact. The changes that used to take millennia are now happening within a couple of generations, it seems. So why shouldn’t we take the steps necessary to clean up after ourselves and save our planet? We are the frogs in the about-to-be boiling water. Some of us, at least, can feel it getting hotter.



Al Gore’s warnings about climate change have faded a bit, but now it’s a 29-year-old former waitress and bartender from the Bronx, and those like her, who are leading us forward. The congresswoman we call AOC is truly a global thinker, and whether we agree with her on everything or not, she is great at commanding attention and focusing it on what we need to do – and fast.



If the Bible is any guide, the Lord’s patience is running short. As the story goes, when humans were too engrossed in sinful behavior to change, he decided to start over, sending a great flood over the Earth and wiping almost everybody and everything out. These days, we have two choices, it seems: clean up our act, or start building a really big boat.

Space Invaders

I really didn’t want to write about this topic AGAIN, but here we go. Now it’s former vice president Joe Biden accused of inappropriately touching females. In this case, most seem to feel there was no sexual intent, but at least one complained that her “personal space” was violated.

I know what that means, and I’m not dismissing it. But there’s still something wrong with this picture, and it’s not my own gender defensiveness. Under modern standards, as I have said before, I couldn’t be elected dogcatcher. But don’t worry. “Ah shall not seek, and ah will not accept...”


We’ve heard a lot about courageous women coming forward through #metoo over the past couple of years to report sexual abuse by men. But it’s unfortunate that shame has been weaponized. We certainly need to discuss appropriate behavior and what the new standard should be. But the first behavior that needs adoption is that men and women must learn to have this discussion between each other, preferably  at the time of the offense, instead of turning it into a Twitter bomb later. Men have to stop this behavior, and if they don’t, women need to look them in the eye and say, “Please don’t do that,” or find another way to communicate it directly, whether it’s to a date, a celebrity, a superior, a clergyman, or even a family member. That requires even more courage than taking it to the media.


As for Mr. Biden, I don’t think it’s this behavior that is disqualifying. He would certainly make a good President. That said, I do think the combination of his gender, age, and even race may be. Democrats seem to be looking for younger candidates who appear to better reflect them and who have a good working knowledge of the new challenges of the future. It’s not about space invasion.


In the meantime, maybe there’s a tech solution to this. Give us a phone app that creates a force field around us, that we could set at will. The field could be as little as a few inches or up to a few feet, or we could turn it off entirely for cocktail parties. But when it’s on, anyone who enters our personal space would get a mild shock or hear a buzzer. Now THERE's a billion-dollar idea.


I don’t know whether it’s related, but I heard a statistic the other day to the effect that young people in the US are having 23 percent less sex these days. But hey, that’s great news for the environment, no? Fewer little carbon footprints to worry about. Why isn’t THAT in the Green New Deal?