Did We Ever Hear Why?

 

January 3, 2026

 

I didn’t read any of the tell-all books that members of Donald Trump’s first administration wrote. I heard that they panned him, belittled his intelligence and his lack of understanding of almost everything, and listed his personality flaws by the bucketful.

 

What I never heard was why they supported whatever nonsense he spouted or went along with whatever he directed them to do.

  

Did any of them ever say? 

 

Were they under a spell? Did he spike their drinks with some sort of drug that turned them into zombies? Were they blackmailed? Were they threatened? 

 

Or did they betray the country just to get ahead politically?

 

I want to know, because now the President has ordered the kidnapping of the president of another country, for allegedly committing the same crimes that he just pardoned the president of yet another country for.

 

And people obeyed this very illegal order.

 

Why?

 

I need to know, because we need to know how to break Congress out of its Trump-supporting stupor and finally rein him in.

 

So, somebody start talking, and tell us the most important thing: Why did you do it?

 

 

 

These 3 Sentences Have Got to Go!

 

August 14, 2022

 

And now, zooming out of left field, here are some thoughts I’ve been having for a while.

 

 

These 3 sentences bug me, whether I hear them in the movies or in real life. Number 2 especially makes me nuts, because people really seem to believe it when they say it.

 

“You’re the man of the house.”

 

That’s often said by a dad to his young son as the dad goes off to war or something. I only ever see it in movies, but it should be removed at once. The dad may think he’s saying, “You’re an important person.” But what he’s doing is putting a big burden on an impressionable kid who will then feel responsible for whatever happens. Stop it. Say, “Help your mother.” That way the kid knows that Mom’s got it under control and he can be her helper.

 

“Kids are resilient.”

 

Yeah, in the way that war veterans are resilient. They bottle up the stress or trauma, and it comes out later in various unpleasant ways. A more accurate thing to say would be, “With therapy, kids can learn to come to terms with what happened.” Stop pretending that childhood is a magic spell that will cure trauma. It won’t.

 

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

 

No, what doesn’t kill you doesn’t kill you, period. It may leave you crippled, angry, sorrowful, desperate, physically weaker… Sometimes terrible things can make you grow in one way or another; but sometimes surviving just means you’re not dead yet. I feel kind of bad about picking on that phrase, because it’s meant to be encouraging; but it’s really just dismissive. “You’ll survive—get over it.”

 

So, go forth and rewrite those tired old lines.

November 13, 2022

Headline of an article in today's Post-Dispatch: "Adversity doesn't always build strength." The article discusses why not.