Best to all of you on this Monday Monday. I hope you’ll check out our new podcast episode, which dropped this morning. It’s available here on this website and wherever you get your podcasts.
This episode is particularly well-timed. It’s a conversation with one of our country’s top sociologists, Dr. Roger Barnes. He has written brilliantly about what appears to be America’s insistence on surrendering its greatness, and has some very thoughtful proposals about how we can reclaim it.
It’s well-timed because we are this very morning seeing a new wave of The Big Lie. The Big Lie is an existential threat to our identity and institutions.
And then there are Kevin McCarthy’s lies. They are numerous, egregious and undeniably documented. And still he and his party’s cowards dismiss them as “overblown” and “no big deal.” These lies are by no means trivial. They are foundational. And they are not now “past tense.” They continue to pollute our present and threaten our future.
I’m still trying to view this horrific war in Ukraine ultimately as an opportunity to make the world a better, and more stable, place. Putin’s demise would make the world a better and more stable place. And Putin’s demise is now plausible.
Our Secretaries of State and Defense, respectively, represented our country with honor, firmness and distinction on Sunday. Secretary Austin is now openly talking about weakening Russia. That’s a good thing, and we should not be reluctant to say that. Secretary Blinken stated that a free Ukraine will still be on the scene long after Putin has disappeared from it. Yeah, the Biden Administration is really soft on Russia. (Can you imagine how badly Trump would have effed this up?) I will remind you that it was only ten weeks ago that Trump publicly called Putin a “genius,” a “peacekeeper” and “very savvy.” That alone should disqualify Trump from ever again opening his mouth on any subject other than bathtub rubber duckies.
The distorted cacophony about “Critical Race Theory” is simply a cynical attempt to ban ANY historical and academic discussion or even reference to the role that race and racial injustice has played in American history. That’s not the way open and enlightened societies operate. Recognizing these failures is not hating America. It is loving it. It is loving it so deeply and sincerely that we can resolve to fix it. And nobody’s kid is being asked to feel guilty. Empathy and a desire to do better are not “guilt.”