Politics – Page 10 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Sunday Morning Reading

Boulder bustling

The world prepares to begin a new year and wakes up to an entirely new world. Or does it?

You go to bed on a Friday night with the holiday season inching to a close and wake up on Saturday morning and your country is running Venezuela after invading it and kidnapping its president and his wife. Or so the narrative on Sunday morning goes. I’m sure it will change by the time we get to midweek. Yeah, it was that kind of weekend and that will be reflected in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading along with a host of other topics.

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I’ll lead off with a few in the moment takes on what happened in Venezuela yesterday. Note that in the moment takes often fade once the moment has its moment.

First up, David Frum says that Trump’s Critics Are Falling Into An Obvious Trap. Frankly, whether you’re a critic or a MAGA hat wearing supporter we’ve all fallen for so many obvious traps, what’s one more?

Thinking bigger picture, Tom Nichols thinks Maybe Russia and China Should Sit This One Out. They need to stop laughing first.

In the wake of the news, Carole Cadwalladr sees “a mass propaganda event” about to engulf the US in her piece, The Threat From America. She’s correct.

Written before the events of this weekend, Mathew Walther’s The Strange Death of Make America Great Again may seem out of place and time as it focuses on the MAGA culture wars within itself. I would venture that it is not, so stay tuned.

Turning to more local concerns that resonate alongside the global news, the folks at Block Club Chicago including Francia Garcia Hernádez and Madison Savedra have an excellent look at How Operation Midway Blitz Changed Our City in Chicago Under Siege.

As if not to be left out of the making bad news moment, Elon Musk’s back in the swing of things with his AI tool Grok allowing users to essentially turn X into a porn machine using photos of real folks to wreak havoc. Just note that X is still the social media platform of choice for far too many. Matteo Wong has the story in Elon Musk’s Pornography Machine.

Cory Doctorow published the text of a recent speech called A Post-American, Enshittification-Resistant Internet. He continues fighting the good fight like Sisyphus with that boulder.

JA Westenberg makes The Case For Blogging In The Ruins.

And to close out the week when holiday close out sales come to an end, Jake Lundberg takes a look at The Cult of Costco. Great piece whether you shop there or not.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Well That Happened

U.S Invades Venezuela and kidnaps president and his wife

Invading another country and kidnapping its president and his wife is certainly one way to distract from all of the many reasons the Trump regime needs to distract us from. Given that today, January 3rd is the statutory deadline to release the Epstein files, and we now have available the long transcript and video of Jack Smith’s deposition stating that the special prosecutor had irrefutable evidence that Trump was guilty it’s enough to spur suspicions in a stone. It’s also not a great way to bring the holidays to an easy end. But then nothing about beginnings and endings have been easy for far too long.

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If you haven’t heard the news about the U.S. invasion of Venezuela be grateful for summaries. I won’t regurgitate beyond the opening paragraph of this blog post. I will say that the one piece of news in what passed for a press conference, the President of the United States says we’re now going to be running Venezuela. Watching a team that can’t run its own country say it’s going to run another strikes me as ironic, but then irony rusts in revolt at the doings of this bunch of dolts.

We’ve been on a wild ride for almost a year with the Trump regime and this will undoubtedly make it even wilder in the days ahead. I don’t believe anyone, including those in the administration, knows what it all means going forward. But we’re about to find out. Like it or not. I’m guessing we won’t like it.

The only silver lining I can possibly see is that taking these actions might possibly lead to the beginning of the end of this corrupt regime run by a child molester and convicted rapist. America historically has never been good at foreign conquest and overthrowing other governments, even when taking down corrupt evil regimes. Those past attempts have at least been undertaken with reasonably intelligent adults doing the planning and the work. That’s certainly not the case with this cast of characters acting in this Made for TV tragi-comedy.

If you listened, take anything you heard from the press conference with a grain of salt. Just like most things with this group it’s all poorly supported improv. Already the vice president of Venezuela who the Trump regime says we’re going to be working with and was gracious in her conversations is already demanding the U.S return Maduro.

Good luck to us all.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

Sharing thoughts about big ideas and little things

Sunday Morning Reading is back from a two-week hiatus in which we watched the grandkids while their parents began moving into what will be their new house after the first of the year. It was a big deal featuring lots of little things with the little ones. As usual the column this week presents some interesting reading and writing that I think worth sharing. Big topics side by side with little things.

As the Christmas season I knew growing up begins to wind down and everyone begins gearing up for the New Year, I ran across Matthew Cooper’s Why We Need A New Dickens. He makes a good argument, but in my experience everyone loves reading what Dickens chronicled, but somehow it never really catches on.

Keeping somewhat in the Christmas vein The Guardian View On Far-Right Perversions Of The Christmas Message: Promoting A Gospel Of Hate by the Guardian’s editorial department hits its target, but in a glancing blow that proves my point from the link above.

NatashaMH takes on The Great Wall Of Honesty with blunt truths, bear hugs, and a bit of resilience.

JA Westenberg points out that we never pay much attention to the tech folks who do the grunt work behind the scenes to keep things running in The Rime Of The Ancient Maintainer. That’s the little story behind most of the big things we take for granted.

Illustrator Lauren Martin writes On The Pitfalls Of Saying Yes To Everything. Hat tip to Stan Stewart for this one.

I don’t usually link to book reviews in this column, but this one by Dorian Lynskey of Sven Beckert’s book Capitalism: A Global History made me buy the book. Check out Capitalism by Sven Beckert Review — An Extraordinary History Of The Economic System That Control Our Lives. (FWIW there are no affiliate links on this site.)

Speaking of the little things, David Todd McCarty enjoys The Casual Comfort Of Champagne And French Fries.

This piece by Josh Marshall has been sitting in my Sunday Morning Reading queue during the aforementioned hiatus and it’s certainly lost none of its luster with time. Check out Will The 21st Century Nabobs Win Their War On Public Accountabilty?

I’ve followed and linked to a number of Denny Henke’s posts about how he’s changing his personal computing habits this year. His 2025 End Of Year Personal Computing Check-In is worth a read even if you haven’t been paying attention up until now.

Neil Steinberg notices things big and small and occasionally writes about those he hasn’t seen in a while. Check out his observations on seeing an Armored Car.

And to close out this week and this year’s Sunday Morning Reading, here’s a piece that good friend Sumocat linked to that is indeed an obituary. One worth a look even if you never noticed or took for granted what the deceased created, The Moylan Arrow. Take a look at The Inventor Of The Little Arrow That Tells You What Side The Fuel Filler Is On Has Died by Daniel Golson.

It’s the little things that make a difference in this big world. Have a happy turn of the New Year.

The Before Times

Family circles

The Before Times. Today begins the round of family and friend holiday gatherings that follow Christmas. In Chicago basements and dining rooms. In the occasional pizza parlor on the Northwest Side. I call it The Before Times because it was before Trump. Before COVID. Before Trump again. Before some of the folks in this picture from 2014 succumbed to illness, divorced, or on the flip side gotten married and had kids, or seen their kids finish college and move on.

Like I said, before so much.

These gatherings were and are always fun. Always a bit tedious. Always full of laughter. Always with an air of tension. Always always.

While they still happen, so much has changed. Families have separated and merged into new families with new family traditions. The younger ones have scattered across the country and don’t always come back for the holidays as they build their own. As a matter of fact, we’re in the midst of building a new one with my daughter and our grandkids. One family grouping continues the bi-weekly Zoom call that began during COVID.

But that’s life and the part of life that holidays always remind us of. Regardless of what’s happening within our family circles or outside of them, life goes on. It is just always changing.

The Catechism of a Christmas Carol Revisited

Humbugs and humble remembrances

In the run up to the Christmas holiday I revisit this piece I wrote for Ellemeno called The Catechism of A Christmas Carol. It makes sense because for most of my life I revisited or restaged A Christmas Carol, or some other Christmas themed show each and every holiday season.

I revisit the piece hoping that things might have changed for the better and that the hard hearted might have taken some of Dickens’ message to heart. Sadly, this year I knew that wasn’t going to be the case. But as I suggest in the piece, that’s true every year. This year it is just more openly apparent. As ingrained as it is in most of Western culture, A Christmas Carol doesn’t seem to have the same power to change hearts that the ghosts Dickens conjured did with old Ebenezer.

In fact these days, I’m slightly surprised that the folks in charge of banning books haven’t focused on this one yet, given how contradictory it is to their aims and careless heartlessness.

I write this a week before Christmas Day, 2025, in what has been a frightening year that presages more frights to come. I imagine this weekend will see theatre’s filled watching A Christmas Carol, A Wonderful Life, A Miracle on 34th Street, etc… etc…. We can hope some in those audiences will take home a moment taken to heart, if only momentarily.

Perhaps one day we’ll return to a place where the momentary touching of hearts and salving of souls means something for at least the length of the drive home from a Christmas Eve matinee. There is always hope. And that’s what Christmas is about.

As Scrooge’s nephew Fred says:

“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

I hope you’ll read the piece. Merry Christmas to all of those who celebrate.

(image from Plateresca on Shutterstock.)

No Translation Needed

Kid’s gibberish making more sense than our political leaders

This afternoon while sitting and listening to my grandkids chatter in their own language, (at a volume that continues to set off the Loud Environment notification on my Apple Watch, I can say that not only is there a silly, naive innocence about everything I can’t decipher, but it doesn’t matter because I somehow understand it all.

What’s a bit insane about that is it that their gibberish makes more sense than all the words coming out of our supposed leaders, even as they string words together that actually form complete sentences.

Well, except for that one guy who yelled at the country in desperation.

Conflictions Part 2

Repeating the good while reminded of the bad

Continuing on a theme after yesterday’s post about conflicting feelings I ran across this interview with actors Colin Farrell and Jessie Buckley. The quote below from Colin Farrell reached out and touched all of those conflicted nerve endings in my body and soul I’m experiencing as I tend to my grandkids while watching the whirlpool that is the world at this moment.

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I have mad moments of joy in my life and joy in work and joy with my kids. But I’ve always felt that the common denominator in regard to experience as humans is pain. The one thing we’ve all felt, really, is pain. I put fear and uncertainty under that banner. Not everyone, sadly, has felt joy. And that’s a great tragedy. But I’m fascinated with pain. Every single act of aggression or violence has its root in pain that has become personalized.

I mostly buy Farrell’s statement. As for me, I’ve experienced both great joy and great pain. My always burning inner conflict is not letting the latter overwhelm the former.

These crazy days with the grandkids are full of that joy now that the visits more than the usual long weekend. Certainly when we view holiday favorite movies and continually rewind favorite laugh moments.

My grandson is continually asking me to identify the bad guys (he knows who they are after repeated viewings.) More curiously he’s asking why they are doing bad things or what makes them bad.

I hope like hell I’m giving him the right answers.

Confliction

Scream or hide?

So many conflicting feelings tonight after spending a few days with the grandkids and experiencing sheer joy and wonder, while in the same instance catching glimpses of all that’s happening around us.

In the wake of “waving arms at everything happening seemingly all at once” I would like to say I am appalled at horrors of humankind.

But I would be lying.

Perhaps my granddaughter portrays it best when she just stands in middle of the room and decides to scream at the top of her lungs for no apparent reason, or just goes quiet and decides to hide on the lower shelf of an empty cabinet.

The Wacky War On Woke Typefaces

The wingdings continue winging and dinging

I guess I feel safer. Those woke sans serif typefaces won’t be in my face any longer. At least in official communications from the State Department.

Trump professional suck up, currently serving as Secretary of State, Marco Rubio has declared that all official communications from the State Department ditch the woke typeface Calibri and return to using the more traditional Times New Roman. Apparently the Biden administration flipped on the woke switch in 2023. But no longer!

Rubio’s statement, while hiding behind the claim of clarity and formality, let the cat out the bag by castigating radical diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs in his statement. These wingdings just keep on winging and dinging with their distaste for anything they fear might smack any type of inclusion that doesn’t include bribery.

I guess if you’re on a binge to eradicate history you don’t like, ban books you’ve never read, and are afraid of anything and everything that doesn’t fit your warped world view, you might as well get rid of offending typography. Because, hey, there’s nothing else of import happening in the world that might need some attention.

Maybe we’ll find out just how far the big tech oligarchs are willing to follow the administration’s lead if they start removing the Calibri typeface from future software updates. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if that actually happens.

The Netflix Paramount Media Money Muddle

Stay tuned

It was quite comedic to watch the reaction to the news at the end of last week that Netflix had won the bidding to take over Warner Brothers. There was indeed much celebrating. There as also quite a bit of consternation. The celebration was primarily because there is an abundant school of thought that no one wanted Paramount, now essentially another tentacle of the Trump administration, to win.

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I didn’t bite on the news celebrations or the consternation being the final chapter then. Of course it wasn’t. The Netflix bid parlayed out to $72 billion. On Monday, Paramount Skydance launched a hostile all cash takeover bid of $77.9 billion.

There’s only a roughly $5-6 billion difference between the two bids, but the Paramount bid seeks to swallow up the pieces of Warner Brothers/Discovery that Netflix apparently wasn’t interested in, including media properties such as CNN, TNT Sports, and Discovery. Netflix’s bid was for Warner’s Studio and HBO’s streaming business only. Note that Warner Brothers had previously announced that it planned to split up the combined businesses in just that vein.

So, what does it all mean?

First, it means a lot of lawyers and lobbyists are going to make a lot of money. There are political, marketplace, and money pieces moving around the board in what looks to be quite a saga that I imagine Hulu will end up making a series about within a couple of years.

Netflix is after the content. And the control. Ben Thompson has an excellent run down on that, and why Netflix’s delivery system makes it make sense. Netflix has created quite a war chest for its bid (which is both cash and stock), by building a relatively slick distribution system to deliver its already abundant content, plus whatever it continues acquiring. (How many TV remotes are there without a Netflix button these days?)

Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison’s all cash bid includes quite a few players including his pop, Larry Ellison, both of whom are Trump supporters, as well as outlays from sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, and also Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners. Without those partners Paramount, valued at around $15 billion, would have a hard time competing with Netflix’s roughly $400 billion war chest. (The Wall Street Journal has a decent rundown on more of the money specifics.)

Second, it means what was already a muddle the way most of these kind of things are, will get muddled up even more due to the politics of the moment. I’ll disagree with Ben Thompson’s analysis that points out that the President doesn’t have final say on this. That may have indeed been true in a past we’re no longer living in. Those old rules no longer apply. As we’ve been learning everyday since January 20, 2025.

Third, Hollywood also has its concerns. The traditional studio power structure is not enamored of Netflix and its heretofore disdain for theatrical releases, which also brings movie theatre owners into play. I’m not sure if the Netflix bid means the death of Hollywood as some claim, but it certainly would shift the pieces, the game board, and the power structure as what began as a tech company could end up controlling much of what we see on our smaller silver screens.

Big money is at stake obviously. But when big egos get involved the costs for everyone increase. Including those flipping through content consumption choices with their remotes.

Stay tuned. I’m guessing that Hulu series will be quite a watch when all is said and done.