Commentary by Andy Piggott

Twisted Tongues

blogger — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 15:31:16 +0000

Twisted Tongues (Part 1)

In a world where, for many, instant gratification is too long a wait, there has been an arms race in unrealistic language-learning expectations.
In the 1980s, it was Spanish in 3 months, a popular beginner’s course consisting of a book and three cassettes. As the pace of living heated up, the promises became more outrageous: Italian in a week, One day Portuguese, Half-hour Urdu, Five minute French. Spanish reached ‘Lightspeed’ several years ago, ironically taught by a Brit who severely mangles English — and by his Spanish better half, who speaks much better English and even manages to make a South Shields accent sound sexy.

What next? Fluent Swahili in a nano-second? Or perhaps, Finnish before you start?

Anyone who ever enrolled in a foreign language evening class would have noticed that the first class, full of enthusiastic new learners, was dramatically diminished by the third session, with only a hardcore making it through to the end of term.

English speakers are often dismayed to find that in languages with Latin roots, e.g., French, Spanish, Italian, etc., all nouns have a gender that seems, and often is, entirely arbitrary. A chair is feminine, an armchair is masculine. Liberty is feminine, power masculine. Knowledge masculine, wisdom feminine. The truth is feminine, while a lie is masculine.
Furthermore, all adjectives must agree with nouns in gender and quantity. Thus, as boats are masculine and cars feminine, we must say “un bateau blanc, deux bateaux blancs, une voiture blanche, deux voitures blanches.” The fun doesn’t stop with plain vanilla adjectives; possessives like ‘my’ become “mon, ma or mes”; ‘your’ “ton, ta or tes” depending on the gender and number involved. This book is “ce livre” but this letter is “cette lettre.” All the boys “tous les garçons” all the girls “toutes les filles.”

Verbally Challenged

Each English verb has 5 forms to remember; e.g., ‘to write’; write, writes, writing, wrote and written. Sure, it’s wrote and not ‘writed’ and there is that superfluous silent letter.
On the other hand, the learner of French must instantly select the correct one of the 37 forms of each and every French verb when speaking and understand several more when reading.
I do snort, with mock indignation, when Spaniards complain about how many irregular verbs there are in English! Actually, the indignation is real, only the ‘mock’ is mock. Even ignoring the rarely used future subjunctive, each Spanish verb still has a whopping 55 different forms, and many of the most common verbs are ridiculously irregular.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the vast majority of learners give up long before getting to grips with the dreaded subjunctive mood in any of the ‘Romance’ languages.

Not All Beer and Skittles

Despite English’s relative simplicity it is far from a walk in the park for learners. Making one’s way through the minefield of pronunciation and spelling is not for the ~~feint~~ faint-hearted.
Take just one example; ‘ough’

Ough in plough rhymes with now, as you know.
It’s very hard for learners to know how to say plough; it requires thorough thought. It’s still tough enough, though, for a native to know.

Though rhymes with the bow used for arrows, though not with the bow or prow of a boat. It rhymes with no and know, but not now.

Cough and trough sound like the off a learner becomes thoroughly cheesed.

Rough isn’t like cough; it rhymes with enough, which makes it tough for learners to pronounce off the cuff.

Through sounds like threw; it rhymes with you and U2, too (as no doubt you knew).

In bought, brought, and thought, ough sounds like ore or oar or… or. (Sometimes, the rules you’ve been taught mean naught).

BTW, when visiting my hometown of Loughborough, don’t get stressed that the first ‘ough’ rhymes with ‘stuff,’ while the second, being unstressed, is pronounced as an ‘uh.’
Say Luff-bruh. ‘Nough said?

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Mankind: More Man, Less Kind

blogger — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 12:27:12 +0000

Mankind: More Man, Less Kind

Modern Man arrived late on the scene in the already long-established drama of life on planet Earth. Centre stage was held by fierce carnivores, red in tooth and claw.
For much of its first 300,000 years of existence, this most recent iteration of hominin was a mere bit player, waiting in the wings to clear up the scraps discarded by the terrifying stars of the show, Eking out a precarious existence: supremely adaptable but otherwise still low in the pecking order of megafauna.

Gradually, as language evolved, we developed strategies that gave us the upper hand in the hunt. The opposable thumb of that hand helped fashion and then wield spears with precision.

In Africa, our first home, we only partially trashed the ecosystem, upsetting the equilibrium less than what was to follow elsewhere. Creatures that had coevolved with us were rightly wary of us and our technology. However, despite our still small numbers, we did manage to wipe out the Giant African Buffalo and Short-Horned Giraffe. Fortunately, many others slipped through the net.

There were probably no more than 10,000 to 50,000 humans total when we began to venture forth from Africa 70,000 years ago. At the same time, there were millions of elephants and buffalo and hundreds of thousands of lions and giraffes. Humans constituted less than one-thousandth of one percent of the total biomass of the world’s mammals, ranging from the smallest rodents to the great whales.

The Plunder Down Under

The first wave of Homo sapiens arrived in Australia somewhere between 40,000 and 65,000 years ago and did what humans have always done when they hit virgin territories: slash, burn, then chase and slaughter anything that couldn’t escape. When our ancestors crossed the land bridge that still connected it to Papua New Guinea, the local fauna didn’t know what hit them. With no time to evolve survival techniques to counter already well-honed hunting skills, species fell like ninepins.

By the time European settlers arrived, Australia’s First Nations certainly lived in close harmony with nature, but who knows how long it took to get to that happy state.
How long did reality take to sink in? At what point did it become obvious, in a verbal history with a ‘one, two, many’ counting system, that food stocks were not infinite and were in decline?

We can imagine a scenario where the extended family is still many but the game is perhaps not quite as many as before. The balance would shift slowly, with no way of keeping an accurate tally. An elder might remember that in his or her youth there were many kangaroos and many family members, but it would not have been possible to calculate the supply and demand until food sources became too scarce. A nomadic lifestyle probably masked the decline of larger species until it was too late, at least for the prey species in question.

Of course, a superior counting system doesn’t guarantee better land and wildlife management. ‘First-Fleeters’ ignored the hard-won wisdom of Indigenous Australians and instead tried to impose a system of European land management that was flawed from the start. Large-scale deforestation for agriculture, drastically reduced native habitats. Many invasive species spread aggressively, altering ecosystems and reducing native biodiversity.

A New World Awaits

In the 15,000 or so years after humans followed herds of mammoth and bison across the Bering Land Bridge into North America, about 70% of megafauna was wiped out, including the aforementioned mammoths, along with mastodons, Giant Ground Sloths, Saber-Toothed Cats, camels, tapirs, and a veritable menagerie of never-to-be-seen-again fauna.
Like the mythical frog in boiling water, the people that populated prehistory were probably never aware of the gradual shift in conditions. When the balance between prey and population was destroyed by unsustainable hunting, species were lost, but humans usually found just enough alternatives to survive the lean times.

When Europeans arrived, their ‘superior’ technology polished off large swathes of the remaining wildlife. In 1800, there were 30 to 60 million bison roaming the Great Plains; by the time ‘Bison Bill’ Cody and his mates had finished around 1883, as few as 300 individuals survived.

Massive Shifts in the Biomass

About 6,000 years ago, shortly after the Garden of Eden according to Bible literalists, the actual human population was probably between 20 and 30 million. Humans accounted for less than 1% of total mammalian life, with their domestic animals accounting for another 1 to 2%.
Despite the loss of many large mammals during the initial spread of humans, wild animals still accounted for well over 95% of mammalian biomass on the planet.

When J.C. was in short trousers, or their cultural equivalent, the human population was probably between 170 and 300 million. Humans and their domesticated animals made up about 10 to 20% of the total mammalian life, with the remaining 80-90% still being wild animals.

Sustainability is not hard-wired into us. There is still a “trawl-to-the-last-fish” mentality for example that ignores the catastrophic effects of overfishing.
We stand apart from the natural equilibrium that had slowly evolved, shifted and re-adjusted over millions of years, which had prevented a single species from dominating all others.
Predator numbers have always self-regulated; excess hunters die off or reproduce less, in line with a sustainable population of their prey. We are the exception.

Now, with 8,000,000,000 people, our livestock, and our pets, wild animals represent only a miserable and declining 4% of mammalian biomass!
It seems that too much is never enough, but only when it comes to Homo sapiens.

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Creation Myths and Cosmic Realities

blogger — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 12:36:45 +0000

The Pillars of Creation captured by the James Webb Telescope (NASA)

Creation Myths and Cosmic Reality

For the first 300,000 years of human existence, our known universe extended as far as the horizon visible from the furthest point our legs would carry us, bounded by the stretch of sky above us.
Within this limited vision, the power of the Sun was blindingly obvious, while a Hunter’s Moon could mean the difference between feast and famine. What could be more reasonable than worshipping the Sun and the Moon? Clearly, the difference they made was like night and day!
On cloudless nights, the myriad points of twinkling light and fugitive shooting stars fired the imagination and were woven into countless mythologies.
Our very narrow understanding of the scale of the universe was natural, given the scant amount of accumulated knowledge.

Knowing that we were smarter than the average bear made it seem reasonable to place ourselves at the very centre of a precarious and threatening existence.
When the known world encompassed just a small part of our globe, the overestimation of our importance was understandable.

Perhaps, while sitting around the modern miracle of fire, twiddling their opposable thumbs, a few wise, weary 35-year-olds—unable to keep up with the hunt and searching for ways to keep their place in the communal cave—noticed that the cycles of the Moon lined up with idle daily scratchings on cave walls.
This proto-astronomy may have marked the beginning of scientific observation.

Revealed Religion and Reviled Science

When the Torah, the Bible, and the Quran were confectioned, no human had ever travelled faster than a galloping horse, risen higher off the ground than their tallest building or crossed an ocean. The Earth was still a vast and largely unexplored centre of the known universe.
By the time Jesus of Nazareth was born, the size of the Earth had been known for more than 200 years. However, mankind’s enormous collective ego still positioned us front and centre in the grand design. After all, men were fashioned in God’s image.

When Copernicus placed the Sun at the centre of the universe, the Earth—and by extension, those who had dominion over it—was relegated in the celestial scheme of things.
This Earth-as-the-centre-of-creation-shattering discovery should have put humanity’s importance into perspective. Instead, the Church metaphorically shot the messenger.
In 1610, peering through his telescope, Galileo Galilei realised that the Milky Way was composed of countless individual stars. The size of the universe had suddenly expanded by unimaginable orders of magnitude.
This giant leap for mankind should have garnered honours and glory; instead, in 1633, Galileo faced the Inquisition.

Dogmatic as ever, the Church continued to maintain—on pain of death—that the entire universe beyond Earth was fabricated on the fourth day of creation: Thursday, October 26th, 4004 BC, according to Bishop James Ussher’s 1650 calculations.
Clearly, as Man (woman being a mere costal afterthought) was so f*cking important, God spent as much time on Adam (the apple of His eye) as He did on the entire visible (93 billion light-years across) and non-visible universe combined.

To Infinity and Beyond!

Fast forward 300 years, and little had fundamentally changed—at least among the fundamentalists. Some ideas that had been gospel, and God help you if you questioned them, were now seen as allegorical by more moderate believers, as the credibility gaps became gaping chasms.
The final nail in the coffin of humanity’s hubris should have been hammered in 1924, when Hubble confirmed that the already mind-bendingly massive Milky Way was not the whole universe but just one of countless galaxies! The ground should have seismically shifted once more under the feet of the faithful. Predictably, this breathtaking discovery was steadfastly ignored by the willfully ignorant.

A hundred years later, we know there are at least 100 billion galaxies—and possibly two trillion—in the visible universe. (For the time being, let’s not even trouble our boggled minds with the enormity of what lies beyond that visible part.)
Needless to say, organised religions remain doggedly disinterested in all but their small, impoverished, blinkered view of the Cosmos.
Over 80% of the world’s population still describe themselves as believers in one or another of those religions.
More scarily, at least to me, 40% of American Christians believe the Bible should be taken literally, word for word: Six days of creation, the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Ark, and even all the truly scary Apocalyptic shit in Revelation.

Flat-Earthers, by comparison—and only by comparison—seem relatively rational.

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Loughborough Fair

blogger — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 15:45:39 +0000

All the Fun of the Fair

On the second weekend of November, the entire centre of our hometown, Loughborough, is subsumed by the annual fair. It began in 1221 as a livestock and trade fair, and it has been held every year since, except during the two world wars and in 2020 due to COVID.
Coming just after Bonfire Night, the shorter days signal the approaching end of the year. It’s a highly anticipated event for locals and the final big fair of the year on the circuit: three and a half days of flashing lights, pumping pop songs, and the smell of diesel generators.

A Familiar Face in the Crowd

Growing up in a town of around 40,000 in the ’70s, it was easy to go years without seeing people you had gone to school with or worked alongside. However, if you stood in one spot long enough on the Friday night of the fair, you’d likely see most of the people you’d ever known pass by.
Since we left England in 1981, our visits back have rarely coincided with the fair, as it’s too early for a Christmas visit and not the obvious time of year weather-wise. The last time we went to the fair was about 30 years ago, when we took our niece and nephew.
I was constantly scanning the crowd for familiar faces, but unfortunately, they all managed to avoid me.

I imagine a child today will have much the same experience as their grandparents did in their day. For more than a century, the annual extravaganza has been about rides like the Waltzers and the Big Wheel, with prices seemingly index-linked to cost three times what they’re worth, rising to five times when the pubs close on the final night.
No doubt some of the rides have become more extreme over the last three decades to capture the attention of the VR generation, but hopefully, the Waltzers are still in front of the Town Hall and the Carousel Horses still give the toddlers a thrill.
As well as the rides, all the fun of the fair includes the stalls: rigged games of skill to win gaudy stuffed toys, hook-a-duck for the kiddies and darts or the rifle range for the older punters.
Traditional fair fare includes candy floss and toffee apples for the sweet-toothed, while hot dogs, hamburgers, and mushy peas counter the November chills. Wetherspoons and the local chippies probably do a roaring trade, too.

A Trip Down the Time Tunnel

When steam-powered rides and attractions arrived en masse at the beginning of the 20th century, the town’s entire population probably went to take a gander at those modern marvels. Victorian-era freak shows still lingered on, and sadly, the rifle range served as practice for the looming ‘Great War’. Street carts sold hot roasted chestnuts, gingerbread, and toffee apples. Bucketloads of ale and porter were downed while kids waited outside the boozer with lemonade, ginger beer, or the new northern elixir, Vimto!
Brass bands and barrel organs provided a musical backing to steam engines and the general hubbub. The fair would have been, as it remains today, a sensory overload of sights, sounds, and smells.
Families, couples, and workers from surrounding areas would have gathered, enjoying a still-rare opportunity for leisure and to let off steam.

Back in 1721, when the fair celebrated its 500th anniversary—the same year Walpole became Britain’s first Prime Minister—the entertainment included hand-turned roundabouts, puppet shows, musical performances, and gambling: dice games, cards, and cockfighting. There were games of skill: archery contests, quoits, and skittles.
Plenty of ale, small beer and cider washed down meat pies filled with beef, pork, or game, sold as portable snacks. The fair would have been bustling and noisy, with the mingling smells of food, animals, and the occasional less pleasant odours of the time. It was both a place of commerce and a rare chance for entertainment and courtship. In those pre-Industrial Revolution days, the population was only 2,000 to 3,000, so the majority of the faces would have been familiar to most.
It also had a reputation for rowdiness: gambling losses, theft, occasional brawls, and intemperate behaviour of all kinds!

In medieval times, despite being a trade fair, there was plenty of fun to be had too. Traveling minstrels played the lute, harp, and hurdy-gurdy, sang ballads and told stories. Performers entertained crowds with juggling, tightrope walking, and tumbling acts. Magicians, puppeteers, and fire-eaters roamed the fair, while archery contests and wrestling matches drew competitors and spectators alike. Mystery plays were also performed. Sadly, bear-baiting likely attracted crowds as well.
Vittles included spit-roast meat, honey cakes, and candied fruit, while locally brewed ale and mead flowed freely.
In 1351, to regulate the workforce decimated by the plague, the fair became a Hiring Fair and remained so until the late 1800s.

The Generation Game

Most of us have little memory or knowledge of our eight great-grandparents, if we ever knew them, and none at all of our sixteen great-great-grandparents.
When we do the arithmetic—with thirty generations between the first Loughborough Fair and now—each of us would theoretically have 1,073,741,824 great (x28)-grandparents. The population of the town in 1221 was about 500 and the world population was only about 360 million at the time.
It becomes clear that our family trees are heavily entangled, root and branch, particularly as people generally didn’t stray too far from their birthplace for most of the next 800 years.
So, next time you’re watching the crowd pass you on the second weekend in November, don’t be too startled if you see faces that you can’t quite place but that look familiar.

As I’m still hoping to see the fair at least one more time, I might just see your familiar face in the crowd—unless you see me first!

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The Triumph of Hate

blogger — Sun, 10 Nov 2024 13:14:32 +0000

The Triumph of Hate

If Only…

In 2016, American blue-collar workers felt forgotten, abandoned, and ready to try something radical. Bernie Sanders, a lifelong advocate for workers’ rights, energised young Americans more than any politician since the ’60s. But, unsurprisingly, the Establishment Democrats sidelined him, opting instead for the more Wall-Street-friendly and seemingly “safer” Hillary Clinton.
Of course, Bernie might have cocked it up, as those of us on the Left sometimes do through naïveté more than maleficence. If he had, he would have been ousted in 2020 and would have relinquished office, perhaps grumpily, but without inciting insurrection. On the other hand, Sanders could have been another FDR or LBJ, and in that counterfactual world, Trump might have spent the last eight years cheating at golf while dreaming of Arnie Palmer’s wang.

It was not to be, and the world paid the price.

Extreme Turbulence, Soft Landing

By the time Biden got his shot at the top job, he was already in decline. That said, he saw off Trump in 2020, before enacting surprisingly progressive policies and setting to work on long-neglected infrastructure.
The massive cash infusions into the economy helped to clean up Trump’s COVID-era mess, sparing the country from Depression-level suffering. Predictably, inflation was a painful side effect, hitting the lowest earners hardest. Corporate America seized the moment to hike prices, further punishing those who could least afford it.
It would have been easy to crash the economic jumbo jet while battling unprecedented conditions. Instead, Biden’s team pulled off a landing soft enough to rival the ‘Miracle on the Hudson’.
It was however devastating when Biden announced after the 2022 midterms that he would seek a second term. The “only I can do it” mentality undermined the lifetime work of a good man.

With the public’s attention span limited to 280 characters or a soundbite, policies that saved countless people from pandemic-induced suffering went largely undefended. Kamala Harris didn’t dare explain these achievements in detail, knowing all too well that “if you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
That radical lefty publication, The Economist, along with a slew of experts, acknowledged the strength of the U.S. economy under Biden. If the central bank had lowered interest rates just a few months earlier, inflation might have eased noticeably by the election. Instead the Dems were crucified for ‘gas’ prices higher than when no one was driving anywhere.
In 2025 the poorest will pay the price in tariffs on necessities while the rich will benefit from yet more tax cuts.

Strange Bedfellows

As Obama said, sexism is still a problem amongst the ‘brothers’; likewise, much of Latino culture remains steeped in machismo. Add in the residual racism that persists in some parts, and the playing field seemed anything but level for a female candidate of Afro-Indian background.
Kamala tried desperately to build and hold together a coalition that included such strange bedfellows as Bernie, AOC and the Cheneys. Unfortunately, Dubbya and Romney, along with most other decent Republicans, didn’t show up.
Sadly the necessary compromises alienated all-or-nothing voters. The young, already the least likely to vote, chose to punish Harris for lack of action on Gaza and by default tacitly endorsed Trump and strengthened Netanyahu’s hand.

Meanwhile, an unholy alliance of grifters, fundamentalists, tech barons, xenophobes, and misogynists was backed by the ‘low information’ MAGA masses. (If that sounds condescending and superior, well, f*ck it—I’m not running for office!) Anyone who is allowed to drive a car, buy a gun, operate heavy machinery, or vote, and still finds Trump fit to be President, truly is deplorable!

Intelligence is far from the most important human quality. Personally, I’d take a kind-hearted slow learner over a heartless genius any day. Likewise, the foolish can be forgiven for falling for the snake-oil salesman’s purdy talk, but culpability increases exponentially among the intellectually unimpaired.
Musk may be smart tech-wise but when it comes to ‘emotional intelligence,’ he—who gives himself a $56,000,000,000 bonus while sacking thousands of his employees—must rank somewhere between idiot and moron.

The Right Gone Wrong

Moving between the Left’s echo chamber to the Right-wing version was like leaving the Shire and entering Mordor. There, you’d find no joy—just a looped clip of Harris on migrant detainees receiving sex changes.
The MAGA mob is not about caring and sharing; some might be punching the clock for minimum wage, but they’re ‘just one lucky break’ away from being the ones doing the ‘punching down.’ They cheer Musk and Trump laughing about cutting jobs, knowing they’d be just as heartless given half a chance.

This is no longer just a left-vs.-right difference. Truth, science, decency, democracy, equal rights, and the rule of law are all on the line. It’s not hyperbole to speak of good versus evil, and it’s clear America has chosen to embrace its dark side!

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Election Turnout

blogger — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 13:14:03 +0000

Turn Out!

Voting is now underway in the U.S. presidential election, and its outcome seems to be a coin toss.
As recently as a week ago, the best-informed analysts’ predictions were for a probable Electoral College landslide for one of the candidates. They just couldn’t say which one!

Sometimes, the only choice is to choose the lesser of two evils, but even then that is still a vital decision.
Today, the choice is much easier: between a decent, middle-of-the-road Democrat and a despicable excuse for a man who believes in nothing but his own self-interest.

We know that about one in two Americans who bother to vote will actively choose Trump.
The approximately one-third of eligible voters who will vote for Biden will need to exceed the Republican vote by at least three million to stand a chance against the stacked deck of the Electoral College system.
We also know that one in three Americans won’t get off their couch to vote: “Why bother? They’re all the same.”
While it could be argued that those who are so disinterested are no great loss to democracy, it is a bitter irony that they are usually among the most affected.
As an aside, I wonder how many of these disengaged and disinterested citizens would stand in line for hours for the latest iteration of the iPhone. How much time and money would they spend to snag Taylor Swift or Super Bowl tickets?

You can’t always get what you want

In what is close to a true dichotomy, only the Republicans or the Democrats can win the presidency. Third-party candidates are doomed to failure but can and do significantly affect the final outcome.
In 2000, Ralph Nader, along with hanging chads, gave the White House to the Republicans.
While I share most of Jill Stein’s environmental aims, as in 2016, her run for president could help elect the biggest threat to Planet Earth. She is effectively being played as a “useful idiot” by the Republicans.
As the French philosopher Voltaire wrote, “Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien”—the perfect is the enemy of the good. As the English philosophers Jagger and Richards wrote, “You can’t always get what you want.”

The best chance for decency to prevail is for a huge turnout among women, particularly in the swing states. It needs to be big enough to overcome residual racism and sexism and definitive enough to silence the MAGA crowd.
That way, America and the rest of us just might get what we need!

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Trump

blogger — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 14:17:39 +0000

In November 2020, the world breathed a collective sigh of relief. Despite Trump’s bluster and shenanigans, the insanity was at an end. It had been an exhausting four years, but finally, it was over. Post-January 6th, it seemed clear that Trump had driven the final nail into his political coffin by inciting an insurrection.

Unfortunately, what should have been unthinkable is now highly likely: a second Trump term.
The difference between Republicans and Democrats once appeared less stark; it was more a difference in priorities and emphasis. Judged by European standards, they ranged from Centre-Left with F.D.R., L.B.J., and Biden through to Right with Reagan and George W.

The GOP had always claimed to be the party of patriotism, moral and financial probity, and a believer in strong alliances and the rule of law. However, the mask slipped when Trump was elected, and craven desire overrode any semblance of decency as large swathes of the right jettisoned morality to cozy up to the orange one.

Sadly, reason seems to have been thrown out the window along with accountability and the truth. The sheer volume of Trump’s lies is staggering—a tsunami of demonstrably false claims that hits the media with wave upon wave of falsehoods that overwhelm even the fleetest-footed fact-checkers.

After hearing 10,000 lies, what difference does another 10 egregious lies a day make? The constant barrage of jaw-dropping whoppers numbs the senses of the gullible and casts doubt on everything. The MAGA crowd has been inoculated against the truth.

Newly eligible Gen Z voters don’t remember the pre-Trump political landscape, so this insanity is their normal.

Viewed from outside the USA, the 2024 Presidential Election should be a foregone conclusion—a no-brainer. A simple choice between a competent, sane human being and a narcissistic sociopath with authoritarian leanings.

For the last several decades, referencing Hitler has signaled hyperbole in political debate, but now in 2024, it has become scarily apt. Especially when a running mate compares his own candidate to the Führer! This week, Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, a right-leaning retired four-star general, talked of Trump’s fascist tendencies and admiration of Hitler.

In a country steeped in religious humbuggery, it is perhaps unsurprising that the orange flimflam man isn’t laughed off stage for suggesting bullet-swerve divine intervention. Trump will likely garner the support of more than 80% of white evangelical Protestants, a fact that beggars belief and shames those believers.

A moral vacuum of a man-child hawking Chinese-made bibles while being unable to quote a single biblical verse. As a proselytizing atheist, I would suggest, “And Jesus wept.”

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