These United States of America

Honestly, I haven’t paid any attention to politics since November 5, 2024 when the election results came out. I guess I’ve been crushed into silence and abstinence from news of any kind. Haha. I don’t think I’m the only one who feels like he got hit by a bus. The vibe of Trump’s win this time is noticeably different from the last time. In 2016, there were reactions: handwringing, indignation, anger and even rage. Right now, it feels like the air has been let completely out of the balloon. There appears to be no fight left. The capitulation looks complete. Everyone’s kissing Caligula’s ring, by which I mean his rear end. Understandably so. We’re dealing with two vengeful people now. Trump and Elon Musk. It would not be a good idea for any CEO or politician or whoever else who has any sort of broader economic interest to make enemies out of these two.

I’ll confess I’ve caught a headline or two here and there. It’s hard to miss the clown car when it’s rolling through the main street in your town. Trump wants to rename the Panama Canal to the USA canal. He wants to buy Greenland from Denmark. He is apparently willing to send American troops if necessary to get these done. Do we really need American soldiers for this? I think Tucker Carlson and Kanye West can get the job done.

Also, Trump wants Canada to “voluntarily” merge with the US and become its 52nd state. Else, he has threatened to rain havoc on the Canadian economy by imposing tariffs. Trump’s rationale for wanting Canada? National security. Per Trump, America spends way too much money on protecting Canada and gets nothing in return. O Canada, how low have you fallen! If the “merger” happens, it will undoubtedly be a great deal for the US. We will get to plunder Canadian resources while treating it like Idaho or Wyoming, which no one even knows is part of the country until they visit the Yellowstone park. On the bright side, we will gain some genuinely good citizens. Canadians are genuinely good people. In all my years of working with Canadians, I’m yet to come across an a-hole. Not to mention, we will have every (ice) hockey Olympic gold in the bag, till eternity. It would be a terrible, terrible deal for the Canadians. I don’t think it is a good idea to turn Canada into Idaho. I can’t imagine the Canadians want that either.

Another kerfuffle has arisen, thanks to Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk. Vivek got the ball rolling by suggesting that America’s decline is largely in part due to its culture of revering the football jocks and prom queens over the nerds. He effectively said that most Americans were too dumb to do the jobs available in the country, and we needed foreign workers (read: H1B visas) to power the economy. Elon chimed in vigorously in support. Hmm, let’s see. First, Laurel and Hardy railed against schools and universities, calling them too woke and evil, and not worth attending. They even threated to shut down the Department of Education. Now, they’re saying that Americans are too dumb because they don’t take schools and colleges seriously. I think I’ll leave it to the MAGA crowd to figure this one out. But I agree with Vivek that we ought to treat the nerds better. A lot of the problems in the world today are being caused by nerds who couldn’t manage to talk to a girl or get a date in college. Sam Altman is trying to put everyone out of their jobs. Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk are threatening to nuke the government apparatus. Where do I even start with on Bill Gates? I’m convinced that Mark Zuckerberg is an extra-terrestrial creature that is doing its damnedest to pretend to be human. The list of vengeful nerds who were once rejected and ended up playing video games and plotting mayhem in mom’s basement is growing alarmingly long. We need a nerds non-proliferation program pronto. It’s a pandemic at this point.

President Jimmy Carter was buried last week. All the Presidents and Vice Presidents (current and former) were in attendance, making for some interesting dynamics between Trump and the rest of them. At one point, Trump was seen saying something to Obama, who responded with a chuckle, sending the country into shock. Who would even talk to Trump, let alone laugh at one of his jokes, right? Kamala Harris even turned and gave them a look which reminded me of the look I get from my missus when I read her one of the racy jokes from my college WhatsApp group. There has been much speculation about what their conversation was about. My guess is Trump asked Obama if he knew where JD Vance was, and Obama honestly thought that Trump was making a joke. No one has seen Vance since November 5th. While I’m not exactly missing his grotesque beard and bizarre eyeliner, I’m a teeny bit worried for the lad. I’m hoping that he’s out there somewhere near the Panama canal, trying to figure out where to plant the new name board. At one point, Trump and his former Veep, Mike Pence, came face to face during the funeral and were forced to shake hands. What do you even tell a guy who tried to get a mob to hang you when you meet him in a church during a funeral? He’s the kind of guy Mother must have warned you about, isn’t he, Mike? (Just so you know, Mike Pence calls his wife “Mother.” Don’t ask me why. Don’t even go there. We’ve got enough on our hands already).

Next week is the Inauguration Day or the Insurrection Day, depending on who gets elected as the President of the United States. What comes after that is anyone’s guess. Whatever happens, we’re going to have to find a way to laugh through all of it. It can be hard to chuckle when someone’s trying to set your house on fire. Not just your house. Also Canada’s, Panama’s and Denmark’s houses. But hey, the alternative is anger leading to insanity. So, chuckle we will, until the flames reach the roof. Maybe they won’t. Hope springs eternal.

Have a great week. Adios for now.

The Dylan biopic and Amaran

By some cosmic coincidence, I happened to watch two wonderful movies in the last week, which, on the face of things, are completely unconnected and yet bound by a deep truth at the bottom of it all. The first movie was “A Complete Unknown,” an account of Bob Dylan’s rise to fame. The second was “Amaran,” a tribute to Major Mukund Varadarajan, martyred in an anti-insurgency operation in Kashmir.

In this week’s installment, I’ve included my reviews of these two films.

Review of “A Complete Unknown,” the Bob Dylan biopic

Sometime in 1965, there was a night in Newport that split the folk music community and tore the 1960s right down the middle. Bob Dylan went electric (guitar wise), scandalizing fans, one of whom yelled “Judas” as he belted out “Like a rolling stone” at the Newport Music festival.

“A Complete Unknown” starts with the arrival of a young and unknown Bob Dylan in New York City in 1961, and captures his rise to stardom, leading to that eventful night in 1965. Dylan drops out of college and arrives in the city with nothing more than a guitar, a notebook of songs, and a backpack full of lies.

“How does it feel?

How does it feel?

To be on your own

With no direction home

Like a complete unknown

Like a rolling stone?”

The movie presents Dylan as an enigmatic cipher, whom even those closest to him like Pete Seeger (folk singer) and Joan Baez (his champion with whom he had a tempestuous relationship) struggled to understand. “You were so good with words. And at keeping things vague,” Baez would later sing of him in “Diamonds and Rust.”

You may rightfully ask, “Who is this Timothy Chalamet, and what gall does he have to play Dylan, let alone sing 40 of his songs on the soundtrack?” Chalamet delivers a masterfully muted performance as “Bobbie.” He even learned to play the guitar for the movie. Is there anything this man cannot do? I think this movie automatically places him at the top of the Oscar list contenders. Monica Barbero (Top Gun 2) plays Joan Baez and captures Baez’s famous soprano beautifully. Elle Fanning puts in a strong show as Sylvie, Dylan’s girlfriend, who is tortured by his chemistry with Baez. If Ed Norton goes unnoticed, it’d only be a tribute to his masterful portrayal of Pete Seeger, Dylan’s original fan, backer, jealous rival and dogmatic folk musician. Norton learned the banjo, an extremely unforgiving instrument for the movie. You can’t tell when you watch him. You’d think he was a banjo maestro!

These are actors imitating real life and how well they do it. Sometimes it shows. Chalamet is “pretty, … maybe too pretty,” to paraphrase Dylan himself who said that about Baez.

The most memorable scene comes towards the end, in a late scene where Dylan looks over his shoulder at the three people who want him to go back on stage at Newport, all stacked up in the shot like planes waiting to land: an eager Bob Neuwirth, an I-dare-you-to Johnny Cash and a furious and betrayed Joan Baez. You can all but hear Dylan’s plaintive words from “It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding,” released that year: “It’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please them.”

Go watch it. You don’t have to be a Dylan fan to enjoy it. I’m not well versed in Dylanology and yet I was able to fully immerse in it. I give it two thumbs up only because I have but two to offer.

Review of “Amaran,” a tribute to Major Mukund Varadarajan

Life can be deliciously giving and unspeakably cruel in parts. A Malayali Christian girl meets a Tamil boy in Madras Christian College, and they fall in love. The families, who are unfamiliar with the idea of strangers falling in love, resist. The fact that the boy, Mukund Varadarajan, has enlisted in the Indian armed forces, is a hill too high to climb for the girl’s dad. “I don’t care that he is Tamil or not a Christian. I’ll never marry my daughter to an army man,” he proclaims. Eventually, it all works out. Mukund gets to marry the love of his life, and they have a beautiful daughter.

“Amaran,” is as much a tribute to the eternal nature of Major Mukund Varadarajan’s martyrdom as it is to the timeless romance between him and Indu Varghese, the girl he meets in college.

There are a few questions that haunt a human being. Why am I even here. Why do things happen. What am I supposed to be doing while I am here? For thousands of years, we’ve divided ourselves into two groups to answer these questions. One group is firm that there are no answers. Life is a biological event that plays out for no apparent rhyme or reason. The other group offers there must be more to it.

Major Mukund Varadarajan was martyred in anti-Kashmir-insurgency operation. His sacrifice makes you want to reconsider your position no matter which camp you’re in before this. It makes the believer wonder if there is a God who can be so cruel. It makes the atheist wonder if there is a God who can make us so selfless.

Sai Pallavi plays Mrs Indu Varghese, the girl who fights to marry the man she loves above all, only to lose him in the end. Did she really lose him? Or is she enriched forever? Sai Pallavi is an incredible talent, the likes of which I have not seen before in Indian cinema. She’s a genuine article and a super star. Sivakarthikeyan puts in a solid show as Mukund. A line in “Vennilavu Saaral,” a song composed by G. V. Prakash Kumar goes “Engey irul enralum, angey oli neethaney..” (Tamil). Translation: Even if it’s dark all around, you’re my light. Perhaps, that is how Mrs Indu Varghese looks on the love of her life today.

We get to live our lives because of selfless people like Mukund and Indu. The movie is heart rending. I was a complete basket case halfway through it even though I knew how it ended. Forever grateful to Major Mukund Varadarajan and his family. God bled them.

As I watched Amaran, I couldn’t help but hear Dylan’s words in my head.

“Yes, and how many times must a man look up

Before he can see the sky?

And how many ears must one man have

Before he can hear people cry?

Yes, and how many deaths will it take ’til he knows

That too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind

The answer is blowin’ in the wind.”

How many deaths will it take till we know that too many people have died? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.

Have a great week ahead.

We’re not in Kansas anymore

Trump is not yet in office, but he has been appointing people to jobs in his administration. He’s doing the classic Trump move. He will first hit you with bad news. Before you’ve had a chance to recover, he’ll hit you with worse news. It’s the political equivalent of the waterboarding torture treatment. Before long, you’re gasping for air and swearing to do whatever he tells you to do.

First, he announced that RFK Jr would head Health and Human Services. People gasped. Then he announced that Tulsi Gabbard would head National Intelligence, which oversees the spy networks among other things. People reeled. And then he came in with the left upper cut by announcing that Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman under investigation for having sex with an underaged girl, would be the new Attorney General.

Bobby Kennedy is going to take a hard look at whether we really need fluoride in our water. He will also look into processed foods and vaccines, and catch the guys who killed JFK. If you’re into measles and rotting teeth, Bobby may just be the guy for you. In passing comments to reporters, Bobby said, “Basically, everything causes cancer. We’re gonna have to ban everything.” If confirmed by the Senate, Tulsi Gabbard will be the first woman and the first openly Russian agent to head National Intelligence. In other news, rumors abound that Trump is planning to appoint Oscar the Grouch to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

The US national debt has crossed 36 trillion dollars. I could be off base here but it feels like someone should do something about it. Stock markets are at all-time highs. Bitcoin is at an all-time high. Blood alcohol levels are at all-time highs. If you had invested one dollar in Bitcoin ten minutes ago, you would have twelve million dollars right now.

In the meanwhile, Democrats continued to blame a wide variety of factors for their defeat in the elections. Latino men, white men, wokeism, Arab Americans in Detroit, and anti-incumbency have all been identified as contributing factors. My take: it’s the goddamn voters. We didn’t have enough of those.

I’ll admit I felt a twinge of sadness this morning as I went on my walk, at what could have been in the recent elections. Then I reminded myself that I had refinanced my mortgage at 2% and magically, the world got brighter.

Democratic governors have joined forces to combat “Trump’s extremism.” California’s Governor Newsom declared that the Golden State “stood ready to defend our pronouns against Donald Trump, no matter how high the cost.”

Joe Biden met Donald Trump earlier this week in the White House to plan the transition. Apparently, Trump realized, halfway through, that the Democrats were planning to perform gender change surgery on him and make him the first male and female President to serve in the White House. “When they invited me to plan the transition, I had no idea this is what Joe Biden meant. It’s not a bad idea. I would be the Greatest Woman President ever. I WOULD BE A BETTER WOMAN THAN ANY WOMAN,” tweeted Trump after the meeting.

In other news, the CEO of the restaurant chain, Red Lobster, announced that “endless shrimp” would never be on the menu ever again. When asked why, he replied, “Cuz I know how to do math.”

On a serious note …

They say that inflation ended the Roman Empire. For sure, it has ended neoliberalism in America. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) removed pronouns from her Twitter bio this week, sending the MAGA hordes into rapture. Wokeism is dead. MAGA is alive and kicking everyone on their shins. It’s perhaps time to admit that Trump is a transformational force.

I dislike Trump. He’s no more than a common grifter, who has been unwittingly propelled by forces that even he does not understand and has stumbled into where he is right now. But Trump has changed the American political landscape. Time will tell whether for the better. He has appointed Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head a new agency called the “Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE).” They have promised to fire hundreds of thousands of government employees, close entire governmental departments and save the US government at least one trillion dollars in annual expenses. As much as I may dislike these guys, I must admit their vision is bold. Bobby Kennedy wants safer vaccines and less toxins in foods. I don’t know what that means but who doesn’t want safer vaccines and healthier food, right? Except Pfizer and Coca Cola, maybe. Trump wants to close the Department of Education. Again, I am not sure what that means. File it under “can they really do that?”

I will grudgingly give respect to Trump. Not only did he win, but he is also going for it. He is following through on his promises. He has Elon and Vivek on his side this time. Last time, he had Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner. This team is an upgrade from the last time. A lot of good can come out of it. It is possible. It is exciting and scary at the same time.

We lost. He won. His victory doesn’t make him right. But it makes him the most powerful man in the world, after Elon Musk. I’m going to stay open and give him a proper listen this time. I think it’s about time we all did that. We need him to succeed. We are not in Kansas anymore.

Have a wonderful weekend.

PS: Google Ozymandias. It’s a brilliant reference. I’m proud of myself.

The revenge of the turds

Reactions to Donald Trump’s victory are pouring in. In an interview to New York Times, Nancy Pelosi squarely blamed Joe Biden for the mess, saying he should have stepped aside earlier so the Democratic Party would have had more time to conduct primaries. I couldn’t agree more with Pelosi. Joe Biden should have stepped aside in 2020 when he lost the first three primaries and allowed Bernie Sanders to win the nomination.

Speaking of Bernie, the Senator from Vermont came down harshly on the Democratic Party saying that it had lost touch with the working class, implying that it deserved to lose. He also admitted that his recent book titled, “Let’s execute all the rich people,” didn’t help the Democrats.

As it turned out, black men and women voted in droves for Kamala Harris, dispelling concerns many had raised about their possible defection to Trump. Latino men and white women turned out be the biggest surprises, voting in much larger numbers than expected for Trump. White men continued to be the bulwark of Trump’s base, crushing previous records. Older women voted more for a young Harris, and younger men voted more for an older Trump. The last time we had such a messy and incomprehensible ending was in the series finale of Game of Thrones.

A confused Joe Biden, when quizzed by reporters for his reaction, responded, “We won. Didn’t we? Which year is this?” before being reminded by aides that we were already in 2024 and gently escorted off stage.

A battle weary and forlorn Kamala Harris conceded defeat in a stirring speech delivered from Howard University. Vice President Harris spoke of how proud she was of the race she ran, and how she ran it. She asked young Americans to never stop fighting for what they believed in. She concluded with, “Dang, I should have thrown Joe Biden under the bus and driven the bus over him. Excuse me, I need a drink now.”

In the meanwhile, Trump and his Gestapo brigade have begun preparations for the second term. A source inside the Trump tent revealed that the President was taking an unconventional vetting approach to selecting Cabinet members. She said, “Listen, if you’re someone with a penchant for white collar crimes, does drugs daily and happens to have hundreds of billions of dollars, you might be the person we’re looking for. Elon Musk is the only one so far who checks all the boxes. We might have Elon run everything.”

On a serious note…

When I first landed in America in 1989 and began looking around, I immediately fell in love with the Democratic Party. They were cool, fun loving and open minded. In contrast, the Republicans were boring, buzz-killing and narrow minded. Having Strom Thurmond and Pat Buchanan on your team never helps. The Democrats were the choice of the new generation, to paraphrase a famous Pepsi ad. The party stood for free speech, pro-arts, anti-war, pro-choice, and stood with the average guy on the street against the Man. Like I said, we were cool kids back then. We marched for Rodney King. Bill Clinton played the sax on Arsenio Hall. Most importantly, the Blue team could take a joke. I remember the endless stream of jokes on late night television about Clinton. Seinfeld was on Thursday nights. All was well with the world. It was a non-stop party under Clinton.

George W Bush rudely crashed the party in 2000 and killed the vibe instantly. Then 9/11 happened, and everyone got all serious. People started getting fired for saying silly stuff. I recall Bill Maher being fired from his show, which was called Politically Incorrect. If you can’t say politically incorrect stuff on a show called Politically Incorrect, where else can you possibly say it? That was the whole point, wasn’t it? America turned into a Catholic school overnight, with headmasters and nuns roaming the corridors. We began gagging even our comedians. The cool, fun loving and open-minded Democratic Party lost its nerve and toed the line drawn by Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rush Limbaugh, who were Hall of Fame buzz-killers. In hindsight, losing that vibe in 2000-2001 was the beginning of the end of many things. I left the US for Bangalore in 2002.

Fast forward to the financial crisis and the Obama years, things got more and more heated. By the time I returned to the US in 2014, the vibe had shifted distinctly and not for the better. The first thing I noticed was that everyone was a lot glummer and meaner. I was told that we were still recovering from 2008. Jokes on late night were flat and one-sided, targeted only at the Republicans. Obama was cool but making jokes about Obama wasn’t apparently cool. We had picked teams by this time. Most tragically, we stopped making fun of ourselves.

I honestly don’t know what the cause and effect is here. Did the Democrats get angrier because they lost the fun vibe? Or did we lose our fun vibe because we got angry? Obama was many things, but he was not cool or fun in the way Bill Clinton was. Or even George W Bush for that matter, who occasionally poked fun at himself. Things just went downhill with Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. Of course, Trump put the final nail in the coffin and killed all the joy we once had. The saddest story is about Trump being so annoyed about the jokes Obama made about him that he decided to run for office and burn the place down.

A lot is going to be said over the next few months. Why did we lose? Why did he win? Why are we doing this to ourselves? The real question we should be asking is ‘why are the angry people winning?’ Joe Rogan, once a comedian, is not funny anymore. He used to be pretty funny. I used to like him. Now all he does is rile people up. Marc Maron used to be funny. Now all he does is lament and grieve and make me anxious. Ironically, even Bill Maher has turned into an angry, old man yelling at kids to stay off his lawn. We used to be Jerry Seinfeld once. We’ve turned into George Castanza.

Whatever other problems this country may have, and how much ever we may fix them, here is something to keep in mind: Angry people have never accomplished great things that lasted the test of time. Angry men ruin the world.

I really think we ought to find a way to Make America Laugh Again. MALA. Laughter, as is often said, is the best medicine there is.

MALA. We just had a Presidential candidate who had MALA in her very name. She was joyous and laughed a lot. I wish we could have had her as our President. Sigh.

Anyway, keep laughing even as you keep fighting the good fight. We will be okay, This I promise you.

Have a fantastic weekend and week ahead.

It’s the turnout, stupid.

Donald Trump has won an astonishing second term after a gap in Presidency, only the second President in American history to do so. He not only won the Electoral College, but also the popular vote, which makes his achievement even more astonishing.

The people have spoken. Maybe we need new people?

Seriously, I think it’ll be best for everyone to take a break, a couple of deep breaths, and think for a bit before we start opining on why this happened. Having said that, let’s recap what actually happened.

Here’s what happened: We elected Barack Obama twice in 2008 and 2012. Obama dominated and scarred the Republicans so much that they had no choice to burn the party down and hand it over to Trump. Democrats, on the other hand, assumed that they had a dynasty in the making. So much so that they decided to hand pick a candidate in 2016 instead of letting the nomination process work. No one who could have presented a serious challenge to Hillary Clinton was allowed to run. If we could get a Black man elected and gay marriage passed, we certainly could get a woman into the White House, right? We were giddy with success. Those are precisely the times when the best of us makes rookie mistakes. Hillary was never seriously battle tested. Then came along Bernie, an angry but cute old Jewish grandpa, who didn’t have a prayer in hell of winning the Presidential race. Or so they thought. To everyone’s surprise, Bernie won a few states in the primaries. No one paid attention to this. We had checked the boxes and presented a façade of a competitive primary. We were in a hurry to anoint our first woman President. This didn’t end well as we all know now. It wasn’t Hillary’s fault. She was possibly the most qualified candidate for Presidency, but we did ourselves a disservice by assuming she needed help in securing the nomination.

Then came 2020. We had gone from believing that we were destined to rule forever to “I don’t know if we can ever beat Trump” in just four years. Yet again, Bernie showed up and began winning the primaries. Biden finished fourth in Iowa and New Hampshire. All of us panicked. Once again, we elbowed Bernie out of the way and anointed Biden. Luckily, it worked because no one got to see or hear Biden in a Covid year. So, we figured that we had gotten away with it. Trump was put away, and we kept learning the wrong lessons. The cockiness returned.

So much so that Biden, who should have never become President in the first place, began to hallucinate about a second term. Incredibly, the party just went along with it as though it was perfectly okay to have an 82 year old running the country. Biden, who was not exactly a bright bulb even in his youth, began to dim alarmingly. Inflation was raging and the man was taking frequent naps. His job approval dropped to below 30%. 70% of the country did not want either Trump or Biden. Finally, when things became untenable, we forced him out and appointed his Veep in his place. Given the late switcheroo, there was no time to find out who else could have been better.

When Kamala Harris was anointed, Biden trailed Trump by 5-7 points nationally, and 7-9 points in swing states. She stepped into a pile of horse manure, and she had about 100 days to clean it up. To her credit and everyone’s surprise, she pulled up in the polls to draw even with Trump. Till the Election Day, no one had really any idea who was going to win. The fact she drew even with Trump is by itself an extraordinary achievement.

There was more hope than reason on either side. No one really knew what was going on. Yesterday, we found out that our hopes were misplaced. Trump, yet again, is pleasantly surprised to find himself on the winning side. He spent the last three months complaining about how the whole thing was rigged against him. He spent the last four years denying he lost in 2020. Today, he is a believer. Tomorrow, he might decide that he doesn’t care for such uncertainty anymore and do away with elections altogether. Or he may not. Who knows what goes on in that decrepit brain.

It’s easy to draw the wrong lessons from all of this. There will be plenty of analysis and theories in the weeks to come.

One thing is clear. We have got to stop tampering with the primaries. We have got to stop panicking. We must start playing the long game. We must stop blackmailing people by saying “If you don’t vote for me, you’ll get him.” When you blackmail people, it is a matter of time before they call your bluff.

In this election cycle, the most telling statistic, in my opinion, is the turnout. Overall, fewer Americans voted compared to 2020. Even fewer Democrats voted this time. My guess is we are all tired of the Democrats and Trump taking turns to drive our fear levels up. Many people decided to sit this one out.

Kamala Harris, to her credit, ran a positive campaign. She evoked joy and unity as her themes. When you raise the specter of a fascist while speaking about joy, it gets confusing. Am I supposed to be alarmed or am I supposed to be joyful? When you are the woke party that cancels people for one wrong glance, it is hard to sell unity and inclusivity. In hindsight, this was an unwinnable election for any Democrat, let alone Harris. Joe Biden had already made it unwinnable a year ago. The Democrat voter had had enough. Millions did not even show up to vote. And yeah, there was plenty of racism too.

It annoys the hell out of me that we have wasted two well qualified women candidates by acting as though they needed help in winning instead of letting them sink or swim. The road to hell is paved with misplaced chivalry.

If we stopped electing clowns like Biden, maybe the other team will stop electing clowns like Trump.

And maybe, just maybe, a woman will be able to climb that daunting hill to Presidency someday, unhindered by good intentions and false hopes.

I’m not annoyed that Trump won. It’s going to be another four years of nonsense, but I’m sure we can get through it. We’ve already done it once. Worst case, we might lose a few teeth this time because Bobby Kennedy removed all the fluoride in the water. I am annoyed that we let Joe Biden do this to us. I’m annoyed that 80-year-olds continue to be elected. Seriously, we can do way better than this.

More on everything else the next time. Have a great week!