Friday, November 18, 2022

Quick takes on four matters currently on the nation's plate

 Elon Musk/Twitter - With staff ranging from comms people to critical systems engineers bailing by the thousands and by the hour, one is seeing a lot of been-nice-mutually-following-you-here-here-are-my other-social-media-platform-addresses tweets. 

Some are arguing that the Musk takeover is exactly what was needed at Twitter, that it was just classic fat-trimming. But he set about steering the company toward the most toxic organizational culture he could have. He sure got a decisive response to his if-you're-on-board-with-our-new-hardcore-work-pace-respond-by-5 PM ultimatum. 

I've just really had it with arrogant rich guys swaggering into business situations and upending everything just to stroke their own egos. The world needs less bullying, not more. 

Ukraine - Within a week, the country went from the jubilation of liberating Kherson to experiencing the most sustained missile attack from Russia since the invasion began. With a moment of hair-raising drama for the West, with the missile explosion in Poland. Zelensky is still insisting that the circumstances of that aren't decisively determined, but I think that's because he, quite understandably, is inclined to smell the hint of a threat in any development. Let us hope Western support for this valuable ally doesn't waver.

Trump's announcement - The actual event in the gilded Mar-a-Lago ballroom was underwhelming. All the photos I've seem of him stepping off the stage afterward show him scowling. What's up with that? 

From the better-late-than-never file, some evangelical leaders who have supported the Very Stable Genius are considering that it was a bad bet.  

Donors are bailing.

Ivanka telling her dad that she's not going anywhere near this 2024 campaign is an interesting development. She's long struck me as far less prone to ate-up-edness than her brothers - the ones with the same mother as her. 

It's not 2016 anymore. 

The new House majority's intentions - Oh, sheesh. It hasn't taken any time at all for incoming committee chairs to signal plans to launch investigations, with Hunter Biden first and foremost among them. Look, it's no secret that Hunter's been an unsavory character. His laptop is an undeniably juicy piece of electronics. But with inflation still raging, crime out of control in way too many cities, a southern border more porous than ever, and with questions about how involved - or not - the federal government should be in eduction surrounding that issue's red-hot current status, this looks like a squandering of a ripe opportunity. One does hear House Pubs speaking of working to steer energy policy in a common-sense direction and some other initiatives that have actual relevance to national wellbeing, but they are sullied by this zeal for investigations.

Respect for Marriage Act - Dems' bundling of interracial marriage with same-sex "marriage" allowed them to be disingenuous about situations like that of Mitch McConnell, who voted against it, even as he's married to a Chinese woman. Saw what you did there.

There's a supremely dismaying piece at Christianity Today that takes the hey-we-just-have-to-acknowledge-that-this-is-now-the-lay-of-the-land attitude that I decried in a recent Precipice post. One v can be so into what is that one decides that what should be is not worth pursuing. And I have to wonder why new CT editor Russell Moore was cool with running a piece that asserts that "in a morally pluralistic society, a few concession yield a win for the common good." That's tacitly granting that the United States is a fundamentally different country from what it was fifteen years ago. 

The basic architecture of the universe is apparent not only in the way human families have formed over the course of our history's species, but in the sexual behavior of every other species defined by the male-female dichotomy. We are trying to define what is beyond our capacity to define. It will not end well. 


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