When Nikki Haley was a U.S. Representative from Hawaii, it appeared she had solid values on things like LGBTQ rights, abortion, environmental sustainability, and so forth.
Now she’s running for president as a Republican, and she’s flip-flopped on all these issues.
What do you call someone who sells their honor and integrity for money?
I coached a few of my son’s soccer teams when he was a boy, and I recall getting after him when he would challenge a referee’s call. “You’re a player; you play. He’s a ref. Let the ref ref.”
I feel the same way about our military leaders. I think they do a pretty goddamn good job protecting our nation, and they certainly don’t need instruction from Ron DeSantis, grandstanding for the votes of hateful morons.
Anthropologists generally consider the assertion here to be true. Over most of the past +/- 200K years, humankind has fared well, largely due to its capacity to take care of its fellows. Yes, we’ve had our tyrants over the millennia, but they have never, not a single one, gotten a death grip on the rest of us, and that’s precisely because we the people have always had the will and the capacity to stand up and fight for our rights.
The recent past, however, has drawn this into question. What we’re experiencing here is the end game of unbridled capitalism, and just look at its most visible features.
In particular, notice that we’re incapable of preventing Big Oil and its billionaires from baking this planet. America elected an obvious criminal conman as its 45th president. Homeless veterans are dying of treatable diseases. There is an entire political party in the U.S. dedicated to destroying the “woke,” i.e., those with any sincere concern for the well-being of others.
Cooperation is as fashionable now as the horse and buggy.
For at least tens of thousands of years, humankind has figured out how to barter. I’ll cut your hair for 20 ears of corn. I’ll watch your kids for a dozen tomatoes.
The United States has not benefited from its decision to systemically defund public education. There are kids graduating from our high schools who think that Wisconsin is in Africa.
Yet, as illustrated here, there are children, like this genius, for whom our education system is boring beyond comprehension.
It would be wonderful if we could reach out to, and somehow inspire, all these divergent populations of young people.