Tulsi Gabbard's opening indictment of the US deep state is spot on and factually uncontroversial, yet it will infuriate those who have have decided that their tribe is more important than their duty to think for themselves, Like so many others (including me), Tulsi was a longtime Democrat who became disgusted at the corruption of the Democratic party.
And for those who haven't yet seen Chuck Schumer's statement:
Douglas Murray, discussing The 1989 Address of the newly elected Czechoslovakian President Václav Havel:
The central theme of the essay...is that truth is inescapable. We can run away from the truth; we can pretend that lies are facts; we can pretend that there is no such thing as objective reality. But reality always manages to force its way into our consciousness. The dissident does not really choose to become a dissident. Dissidence is forced upon a person, born from a painful but unavoidable tension with the external world, an awareness of the suffocating, subjugating power of myth.“The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment,” Havel said in his 1990 address. “We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore one another, to care only about ourselves.”
The most devastating effect of this contamination, Havel explained, is a melting away of real emotions and relationships—a grotesque atomization that leaves us feeling deeply alone, misunderstood, frightened.
“Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and dimension, and for many of us they represented only psychological peculiarities, or they resembled gone-astray greetings from ancient times, a little ridiculous in the era of computers and spaceships,” he added.
"Beware the barrenness of a busy life." Socrates
As a gift to myself this year, I've been doubling-down on my need to spent my waning hours my intentionally. Waning? I'm 68, so I've already lived most of my life. That said, I'm in good physical shape and I'm passionate about my work as a civil rights attorney (especially First Amendment). Every day I treasure opportunities to engage with friends and family, especially the love of my life, Beverly, who I met one year ago today. I am a serious musician and an exhibiting artist. I'm lucky in more ways than I can count.
But numbers don't lie. Last year I made an intrepid assumption that I'll live about 20 more years. Simple math reveals that this is only 240 more months. Last month went quickly. In fact, the better I am at living a mindful, principled and socially engaged life, the more quickly the months flash by. My endgame: If I'm really fortunate, I'll be able to look back at my 20 year Plan and consider that it was a life well-lived, which will make it much easier to deal with my inevitable decay and death. But how do I keep on track, giving my cravings to attend to more things than I can possibly absorb?
This year I committed to unsubscribing from emails lists that seemed like good ideas at the time. There are also many commercial emails that keep popping in, unsolicited. In the past few weeks, I have unsubscribed from about 200 email lists, which makes my inbox much more inviting. Now, most of my inbox consists of emails that I will either read or at least scan. This has also addressed my concern that I might overlook important emails because they are hidden among low (or no) priority emails. I recommend this to everyone. If an email list seems interesting, but not interesting enough to subscribe to, I follow the organization or person on X (Twitter), which circumvents my inbox.
I also decided to commit (for the umpteenth time) to do a better job of making and adhering to a daily to-do list that I create either that morning or the night before. I use a combination of paper and pen at my desk and the Reminders app on my iPhone. This simple tactic works extremely well.
I also make better use of my iPhone DND feature when trying to focus, sometimes for hours. This is heaven. How did we ever get to this point where so many people assume that you will immediately respond to texts and phone calls?
These three simple things have made a noticeable difference to help me spend quality time on the things that I have personally identified as my priorities. The alternative is the lose time chasing squirrels all day, which is admittedly sometimes valuable for generating unexpected but important insights, ideas and projects, but this daydreaming and brainstorming time needs to be consciously kept in check or else it destroys one's ability to deeply concentrate one's own priorities.
Today I received a mass emailing from Cal Newport announcing a new online course called Life of Focus. I won't be signing up, but I do appreciate his three goals for his course, which closely align with my own resolutions:
Month 1: Establishing deep work hours. You'll restructure your work life to feature less distraction and more depth.v Along these same lines I recommend Newport's book: "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.Month 2: Conducting a digital declutter. You'll implement a digital declutter to help you break screen additions and cultivate a more deliberate relationship with the digital tools in your personal life.
Month 3: Taking on a deep project. In the final month, we’ll reinvest the time we’ve created at work and at home in a project that engages your mind and your soul in something meaningful.
I personally know "Elizabeth Bennett" and trust her information.
"Husband is an ER doc. He has repeatedly seen female prisoners come in pregnant or sexually assaulted by male prisoners who are housed with them because they state that they identify as female. The prison nurses generally think this situation is awful and are angry about it."
Pre-DEI: Don’t Discriminate and hire the best qualified person no matter their appearance.
DEI: Do Discriminate and hire people who are not the best qualified for the job, impugning the abilities of the people supposedly being helped. It's hard to think of anything more racist than current DEI programs. How can getting rid of DEI possibly be controversial?
