Holy Week thoughts on ignoring immorality

I know the larger events of the world don't directly have effects on me. Kathleen and I sat on the patio a couple days ago, sipping wine and marveling at temps in the high 70s... in March! Our investments dropped quite a bit over the past few weeks, but we just will let them ride, so to speak, and they are likely to recover once the "war of choice" ends. We can't get the local ABC station due to a dispute over fees between the local owners and Comcast, forcing us to go to Hulu to see new shows. The horror!

But it's Holy Week and a good time to contemplete the psychic damage that our King inflicts, even as we watch him descend into madness and dementia. 

The U.S. is murdering people, plain and simple. No clear planning. No legal discussions. No sense of morality. We blow people up in small boats routinely, vaguely claiming they are drug smugglers. 

We have murdered thousands of Iranians, from national leaders to innocent children, because???

We wink at Russia committing daily war crimes in Ukraine as their drones and missiles kill civilians and seem to have no strategic goal other than to terrorize. But by all means, enjoy rising profits from oil sales. 

We are, on some level, guilty of supporting a murderous regime, and no rationalization can absolve us.

We are murderers.

Thank heavens we have Good Friday coming so we can fully confess our sins, while condemning those historical authorities who murdered Christ. 

They, of course, are us, at least symbolicly. 

Most alarming is that we can all see the immorality and massive evil right in front of us. The king goes on TV and proudly proclaims his derangement. We all know - don't we? - that something has to change, and that something truly horrible is on its way. 

After all, when things get bad the only option is to bounce back from the lowest point. Things need to fall apart to even get many Americans to notice. We have not gotten to that point yet, so there's more pain and horrific behavior and outright ugliness to come.

Rich people are so rich now that traditional morality no longer applies to them. Economic pain for most people has no effect on the billionaires. Talk about the system being rigged!

Happy Easter!

Go, you golden Hawkeyes!

When you're an Iowa Hawkeyes fan, it's always best to temper your expectations. Iowa fans may dream of national championships but unless we are back in the Dan Gable era of wrestling, Iowa is not going to regularly compete at the highest level (and wrestling has dropped a bit lately). And "compete" is not quite "win."

Even when the women's basketball team featured a once-in-a-generation talent like Caitlin Clark, the best we could muster (twice) was national runner-up. It's a big country, after all, and Iowa is a small percentage with fewer resources than many areas.

That's not to say that the Hawks can't make national news by knocking off a traditional powerhouse in football, say. It's just unlikely that Iowa will be qualifying for the playoffs. Not enough NIL money but mostly not enough great players. 

In fact, Iowa fans regularly marvel that they get to enjoy the talents of any great athletes, reasoning that those blessed few top-tier players have plenty of options beyond Iowa City and cold winters and a small community. 

Bottom line: we savor our teams' victories when they come, but don't have any illusions that the Black & Gold will be hoisting a national championship trophy.

And yet...

To everyone's surprise, the men's basketball team has reached the Elite Eight for the first time since 1999 and the final year of Tom Davis as coach. He was let go by an impatient fan base and athletic department, tired of years of being runners-up in the Big Ten and rarely going beyond the first round of the NCAA tournament. 

I will admit that I was one of those who groused about Dr. Tom for several years, longing for some magician to come in and lead the Hawks to glory. I soon learned that my wishing for some instant savior was silly and doomed. In fact, I heard a commentator last night mention the Curse of Dr. Tom and how it was only lifted when Iowa edged Nebraska, 77-71. It didn't take long for me to start pining for consistently strong teams.

Then came this season. New coach and new players beyond one redshirt freshman whose father was part of that 1999 team. There's irony for you... or maybe just a coincidence. 

The team will be big underdogs Saturday evening against another Big Ten team, Illinois, but who knows? It's March Madness and weird stuff can happen. Why not Iowa this time?

Ha! Ha! Ha!

My heart will be filled with hope but my head is quite prepared for the air to wheeze out of the balloon.

A classic Iowa fan rumor is that the new coach will immediately depart for greener pastures, perhaps being snapped up by North Carolina or Kansas, two perpetual powerhouses. 

To be an Iowa fan is to always assume we are not worthy. Perhaps that keeps us grounded, and maybe it is a self-fulfilling prophesy. 

But, win or lose, I will return next fall for Iowa football and basketball and join a large chunk of the state in dreaming of elusive glory. 

We are a stubborn lot.

Speak much ill of the dead

After last week's appalling Trump tweet about being glad that Robert Mueller is dead, I made a vow to outlive that old SOB so I can metaphorically dance on his grave.

I admit to not being proud of that vow, though it might just be enough to get me through the next few years of increasing insanity. But there it is and I am owning my sin.

I guess the reality of politics has always been that any office holder is loved by some (perhaps just over half) and hated by others. Trump may be unusual in that even those who vote for him, for whatever reason, may hate the man deep down. Who will miss him?

I am aware that it wasn't a very long trip to get to fantasizing about dancing on his grave, but I have now abandoned all sense of decorum regarding the man and his enablers.

When it comes to TV and movie villains, I often have imagined some suitably grisly demise that will leave me satisfied that justice was done, and I am somewhat ashamed that most villain deaths strike me as "not enough."

For Trump, any form of death will be fine. Just not waking up one morning is fine. An Iranian nuclear device detonated under Mar-a-lago is a bit too much, not to mention all the innocents who would then go with him.

At lunch today with some friends, there was some agreement that it may take a damaging recession or depression to move the Trump cult and elected Republicans to push our new king off the stage. Lunch and politics tend to produce far-fetched and extreme views... I mean, it's just talk.

But right now it appears that Trump is ignorant of just how deep many people's loathing is for him and his cronies. He lives in a bubble that does not include most of his supporters... maybe none of them. 

Something very bad is coming.  

Another great reminder that audience has to come first for writers

Just finished judging nearly 100 news stories published by high school students during the last half of 2025 (I know... these contests have a bit of a lag). They came from coast to coast and my task was to simply choose the top ten, in order. No comments required and that is great for me.

Took me about three hours or so and I get paid $100... so drinks are on me!

The top entries were quite good, with tightly focused ledes and abundant local sources and clear attempts to draw high school readers into the reporting. The topics ranged from last summer's flash flood tragedy in Texas to giving readers a timeline of events and local connections with the Evergreen HS shooting (our latest in Colorado). There was some nice coverage of No Kings protests with photos and local sources (and the next protest will be in eight days, so media programs can send out reporting teams again). 

But the majority of the entries had basically "lost the thread," in my view. It's not that covering the latest school boundary issues or budget problems or SNAP benefits being delayed in the last government shutdown are not important. But so many of these stories were just reports, filled with official pronouncements and lots of local and state officials offering defenses of whatever they have already decided. 

Lots of headlines seethed with anger that would more properly go with opinion pieces, and there were even a handful of sports stories in the mix -- obviously entered in the wrong category.

"The thread" is that student media has to maintain a focus on student readers, and I found myself wading through many very long and intensely researched online articles that likely drew tens of readers, if that. Of course sophomore males should be paying attention to the detailed budget options the school board has to analyze and choose from, but don't we live in the real world?

I was struck by the fact that among those 99 entries, only a handful took readers to a timely news event on the campus. I thought there might be breaking news about a drill or a power outage or a security breach of some sort. I thought there might be news about a decision by the student council or a staff member resigning due to a health issue in the middle of a term. 

Those are not earth-shattering events, of course, but those are the local news events that only student media will cover... if they choose to do so.

Or student media can get caught up in the national scandals and debates and culture wars.

Professional media is doing so well covering those now that precisely nothing seems to change. And many citizens have thrown up their hands in confusion and disgust. Lots of average humans don't know what or whom to believe.

Tough times in the news biz. Tough times for student journalists caught up in the torrent of national and world news in their TikTok feeds.

When the fictions overwhelm the truth, bad things can happen

A blogger I follow posted something yesterday that makes me think about how life can pretty much chug along for most people, despite the dysfunction of the national government, the ravings of the King, and an undefined ongoing war in the Middle East.

The post was about how people can improve in almost every way by overcoming what he calls "the crisis of human energy." He is referring to the fact that many of us complain about being tired and listless despite all the modern conveniences of life.

When asked if they get the recommended amount of exercise each week, 62 percent claimed they did. When their weekly exercise was more objectively measured, however, by a wearable device, it turns out that only 9.4 percent were actually doing what they claimed.

This should not be a big surprise, I suppose. We constantly lie to ourselves about so many things. We almost certainly don't make efficent use of our available time, for instance. We publicly claim to be eating healthy while in private we certainly do not. 

I know a woman who shares all sorts of things about her personal goals while claiming she is doing it as a form of "being accountable." She really just wants to talk about herself and has invented this "accountability" angle to force people around her to just sit and listen (and, I assume, congratulate her on her talents and willpower and all-around greatness). 

A minor fib of mine is that I just can't find the time and energy for completing a church history I am writing along with a readers theater script that I have volunteered to write while teaching three online writing classes this semester. 

I know it's a fib because I somehow can find loads of time for watching multiple TV shows each day, a couple while we have lunch and a couple more after dinner. I could argue that those hours are for me to recharge, but if I'm being honest, they are mostly mindless entertainment. That's OK, of course, but I certainly COULD swap a show for doing some additional writing or research.

Most Americans are well aware that a deluded, unintelligent, and possibly demented man is keeping the country and the world in swirling chaos each day, but we soldier on with some vague hope that "this too shall pass." It probably will, but what happens while it passes could be very ugly for many people.

What happens when you find yourself living in a country where a small majority of voters made a choice that we all have to live with for nearly three more years? 

The cult members lie to themselves, of course. FOX News lies gleefully, of course. So many pundits lie and hunt for explanations for the unexplainable. But I vaguely understand that I am lying to myself on a daily basis about the nation I live in and just paid a large tax bill to. 

I cling, almost at a DNA level, to the idea that America is a good and decent place, and that we are, overall, a country to emulate and that deserves its influence.

Now THAT is a whopper. 

It's time for the story to be told

Among the ongoing news of various scandals and missteps and outright immoral acts of our current administration, this week brought news of how the Pentagon spent hundreds of millions in September. Unspoken was the annual truth that underlies this revelation: it happens each year.

Whether it is some official rule or not, the practice has been for many decades that the military must spend all its allocation of funding by the end of the fiscal year (Oct. 1). To spend less is to send a message that funding might be reduced in the future. 

And, crucially, unspent funds cannot be rolled over into future budgets.

So, the system flips what most would call common sense -- that being budget-conscious is to be valued -- and forces each piece of the giant military establishment to spend, spend, spend.

How do I know this has been ongoing for decades, you ask? Turns out I contributed to just such an effort to spend allocated funds in my renowned tenure as base funds manager at RAF Lakenheath. It was September of 1972, and young Airman First Class Kennedy had been elevated to the funds manager role after the Master Sergeant who had occupied the position retired.

The base was between aircraft deployments (our F100s had been shipped to Turkey and the F4s were not yet coming to us from Vietnam), which likely has something to do with the supply company just telling me I was in charge of ordering basic supplies and equipment for the base. And, after all, it's not like I didn't have numerous officers sending me orders, all approved by the colonel in charge.

I was, essentially, an office drone. 

Back to a mid-September morning when I was called to the company commander and told to scour inventories and find whatever means was necessary to spend what I recall as at least $500,000 in allocated funds, and to do it within two weeks.

Unlike what happened last September, I did not consider ordering millions of dollars of fancy food for military mess halls -- that sort of choice likely required Hegseth-level approval. But after buying as many office supplies and annual needs as I could find figures for (essentially covering the 1972-73 fiscal year's major expenses that did not involve actual fighter jets and fuel, etc.), I finally came up with a somewhat audacious plan.

We had several empty aircraft hangers on base, just aching to be filled. I suggested to the company commander that toilet paper and other various paper products had very long shelf lives, so to speak, and that we could store large quantities on the base for, well, some time... at least until planes arrived from southeast Asia. 

In retrospect, it all seems short-sighted. The planes really would arrive, though not until after I rotated back to the States a year later, and those hangers would be operational again. The next fiscal year's budget would not be stocking up on toilet paper, so that next budget would need to find a new solution to any excess funds. But, orders are orders, and the captain in charge mostly just wanted to report that our excess money had been spent.

Bottom line: I placed a mammoth order for paper products, mostly TP, and some grunts from base supply really did fill a hanger with those essential products. In fact, they were flown in by a military transport plane to nearby RAF Mildenhall. 

That was my first, and pretty much ONLY experience, spending a whole lot of money that was not mine. It was like a game. 

I assume that the September, 2025, purchases felt like a game to today's supply specialists. I felt like a winner in 1972. I had done my job and everyone seemed pleased. 

Also pleased were at least four years of Air Force personnel, blessed with a seemingly endless supply of generic toilet paper. What, you thought I could order Charmin?

'No one ever went broke underestimating the ignorance of the American public'

I am a citizen of a nation whose military, under the direction of a self-styled king, has murdered over a hundred young girls who were attending a school a bit too close to a military installation in Iran. The king and his abhorant and blood-thristy minion (Hegseth) appear to just shrug and pass it off as inadvertant consequences during a war.

I guess the only recourse for anyone who, like me, believes we are in the hands of rabid madmen whose thirst for money and power knows no bounds, is to patiently wait for the midterm elections to exhultantly cast our votes for anyone not a Republican.

But that is less than satisfying. After all, we are left to watch in dismay as the country continues to summarily kill and execute and kidnap people both within and without the country's borders. 

We are now a rogue state but it seems clear that our fellow citizens can't quite wrap their heads around that fact. We were taught for so many years that we were the good guys that our current state of affairs seems unreal and (we assure ourselves) temporary.

I fear that things will not "snap back" with equal force.

One reason why is a report that Kathleen viewed on CBS that claimed many Americans apparently were not aware of the war on Iran at all, despite all the media coverage, UNTIL they noticed gas prices rising dramatically. 

Think of the level of disconnection it takes to live your life blithely, ignorant of even news about the nation going to war. Talk about "battening down the hatches."

Perhaps those ignorant souls are simply guarding their own mental health. Perhaps life really is so demanding and overwhelming that they have no more intellectual capacity.

I know politicians need to function on multiple levels, from the culture wars to international affairs to matters of constitutional importance, but if Democrats don't pay attention to that simple fact... that millions simply don't pay attention to the news from ANY source, they will disappoint.

The only thing that matters to the American zeitgeist right now is money... What's in it for them? What can they afford or not afford. What's the price of gas?

Bill Clinton and his team had it right. It really is the economy, stupid. 

And the "stupid" are a vast number of Americans, I'm afraid.

Trump won two elections by leveraging that vast expanse of stupidity. We can moan about it and shake our heads in wonder.

But Democrats need to tap into that same strategy.

Oh, and the Epstein files, of course.