My plan for the next four years

Life is good once you master the art of Deletion. Every day my laptop is full of emails asking for money to do worthwhile, even noble, things, which, if I donated to them, I’d soon be living in a cardboard box in a vacant lot, and so I click on “Unsubscribe” and they go away for a while. Instead, I google “What is the prospect of international peace and understanding?” and find that the U.N. thinks it’s inevitable and dalailama.com says it’s based on compassion and foreignpolicy.com thinks the prospects are not good. We didn’t used to have Google, my kiddoes, we used to sit and worry about these things and now at last clear answers are available. Contradictory, but still.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Somebody has to be the worst president in American history.
They can all be number fourteen, as Joe Biden was
in a survey of American historians, or number eight like Ike,
or number thirty five like Richard Nixon. And isn't it

(00:30):
only fair that the worst number forty five should be
given the opportunity to improve his ranking? Of course it is. Meanwhile,
I don't need to follow his second term day by day.
I can better occupy my time with the crossword puzzle

(00:55):
and the book reviews and skip the funny pages. I
don't check my ir A every morning, or my blood
pressure or the w NBA standings or the air Quality Index.
So why should I upset myself at the thought of

(01:16):
Cash Patel running the FBID, or Tulsey Gabbard as head
of National Intelligence, or an anti vaxer as Secretary of Health.
If I want to study lunacy, why not become a
therapist and get paid for him? So I am focused

(01:41):
on the positive aspects of life. I've just succeeded at
taking a lazy one week vacation with my family at
a resort in California, at which I slept late, hung
out beside a pool under an umbrella and sipped lavender lemonade,

(02:07):
and my work ethic relaxed severely. I was very agreeable
the entire time. I even started to sort of like myself.
Once I sat in a hot tub with four people
who seemed to be employed in the software trade, and

(02:28):
I listened to their talk and I didn't understand a
single word of it, not even the or a or sense.
It was very rewarding. None of them asked me what
I do for a living, So I just sat in

(02:49):
the bubbling hot water, watching the mountains turn pink in
the sunset, and feeling very lucky not to be inflace want.
Like Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times, who
returned from a trip to China with a new perspective

(03:11):
on world affairs, life is good once you master the
art of deletion. Every day my laptop is full of
emails asking for money to do worth while, noble things,
which if I donated to them, I would soon be
living in a cardboard box in a vacant lot. And

(03:35):
so I click on unsubscribe and they go away for
a while. Instead, I google what is the prospect of
international peace and understanding? And I find that the UN
thinks it's inevitable, and Dale Lama dot com says it's

(03:56):
based on compassion, and foreign policy thinks the prospects are
not good. We didn't used to have Google. We used
to sit and worry about these things. Now, at last,
clear answers are available, contradictory, but still clear. An old

(04:21):
man sees progress on so many fronts, such as the
advent of the frozen waffle and spreadable butter. I remember
the heavy waffle irons of yesteryear, the risk of a
small child yanking the whole contraption down on his head

(04:44):
and therefore never getting into graduate school. The mixing of
the dough and prying the toasted waffle off the hot
iron and spreading rock hard butter on it and ripping
the waffle to shreds. And now it's two minutes from

(05:05):
toaster to mouth, no problem. Advances have been made in packaging.
Tiny slits enable a person to open a bag of
jelly beans or caramel corn without using brute force and
perhaps injuring a shoulder and kneading shoulder replacement. As a

(05:29):
liberal Democrat, I felt obliged to read about environmental degradation.
Poor math scores among low income children, declining respect for
governmental institutions, the loss of wildlife species, explosive economic inequality,

(05:53):
the advance of artificial intelligence towards self replication, nations falling
into and refugee populations growing, the fascination of the working
class with billionaire leaders who use political power to enrich themselves,
and so on and so forth. And now I've discovered

(06:18):
artificial tears can take the place of reading about crises.
A couple squirts in each eye, and I feel bad
for half a minute, and I accomplish about as much
as I would after reading the Times with the post.

(06:38):
And so I am avoiding having lunch with Democrats because
it's the same conversation over and over. Did you read
about this and that? And I can't just can't believe,
and so forth. And this man will do what he
will do. I say, let John Thune Mike Johnson agonize

(07:01):
over it all. I hope that he can beat out
James Buchanan, who is currently ranked as forty fourth president
by historians. He was the man who sat on his
hands as the country blundered into the Civil War. It's
a low bar, but as long as the South does

(07:24):
not delete itself. I think mister Trump can do it,
and if the South does well, thirty nine States is
still a lot of states and may be much more united.