These are remarkable times we live in.

It’s unknown how many assassination attempts against a sitting or former president have been foiled, but we have just witnessed the first known attempt in over forty years.  In 1981, John Hinckley, Jr. shot president Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton hotel in Washington, D. C.  Reagan survived, but the attempt was a close call.  A police officer was killed and Press Secretary James Brady was also severely wounded.

On Saturday, July 13, 2024, just moments into a campaign speech in Butler, Pennsylvania, former president Donald Trump and candidate for the office again, was providentially spared as a rifle shot took a chunk out of his right ear.  Two others were not so fortunate; one was killed and two others were wounded.  A moment earlier, the shot would have struck him right in the head, but he uncharacteristically moved to point to a chart, and the bullet narrowly avoided killing him.  Trump appeared two days later at the Republican National Convention sporting a bandage on his ear, but seemed otherwise unharmed.  Remarkable.

At the same time, despite remarkable efforts to conceal the fact, the incumbent president is revealed to be suffering from some form of mental incapacitation.  Observers of the political arena such as myself have noticed this ever since his 2020 election campaign was one of invisibility; under the cover of the COVID pandemic, Joe Biden huddled in his basement, rarely coming up and out for public appearances.  When he did, he exhibited many signs of encroaching senility.  One of those signs I’ve witnessed is a relaxing of inhibitions relating to self-restraint when it comes to expressing opinions.  From my witness stand, I’ve seen Joe Biden as a lifelong racist and inveterate liar, but most of the public doesn’t see that.  They only see what the image-makers have concocted, and so have believed Joe was a typical “everyman.” Remarkable.

In my youth, the Democrat Party portrayed itself as the party of the working class.  It catered to unions, minorities and the “workers.”  The Republicans on the other hand, were depicted as being the party of the rich, of Wall Street, and international elites.  Today, the Democrats are seen as “limousine liberals” and “Gulfstream Guevaras.”  The Republicans are led by a successful businessman who entered politics late in life.  The businessman, Donald Trump, mingles with construction workers, professional wrestlers, country music artists, and flag-waving Americans who show up en masse at rallies to show that the American Dream isn’t dead.  Yet.  Remarkable.

At this writing, the Democrat Party is maneuvering to remove Biden from the ticket.  Despite a series of non-democratic moves to ensure his place as the nominee, the Democrats are now using undemocratic means to remove the man they pledge will “preserve democracy” in the country.  Remarkable.

By the same token, the Democrats have used a number of non-democratic means to remove any challenges to their party’s candidate; they worked tirelessly to keep Democrat-turned-Independent Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. off the ballot wherever possible.  And the extent to which they leveraged the power of the government using “lawfare” (a term coined to describe persecuting the opposition through the courts) to remove and imprison Donald Trump is nothing short of remarkable.

The legal procedures that Donald Trump is undergoing have all been designed to keep him off the campaign trail.  A law that was enacted but never used was the basis for convicting him of 34 charges.  For paperwork errors. At the same time, a special counsel investigating Joe Biden’s possession of classified documents found him effectively guilty of a felony, but excused him from prosecution due to his status as aged with a poor memory.  The wags would say that this election pits a convicted felon against an un-convicted felon.

The inflammatory rhetoric from the Democrats accusing the Republicans of being like Nazis, and a “threat to democracy,” among other aspersions likely resulted in motivating a young, 20 year-old to attempt to take the life of the threat.  Twenty years after the last assassination attempt on a president’s life. Remarkable.

Every election year, the media and observers anticipate an “October surprise.”  This whole 2024 election process has been nothing short of remarkable surprises.

I only wish everyone would take notice of the current state of affairs.  They are remarkable.

I often resist the urge to post articles about politics, despite the political overtones of this site’s name.  But recently an issue has come up that has me both scratching my head as well as wondering how names change, and who decides?

As I write this, Russia is invading Ukraine.  I will leave the emotional and humanitarian aspects of this aside for the moment, since my topic is about a name:  The name of Ukraine’s capital city, Kiev.  Or, as many now would have it, Kyiv.

Some quick study shows that Kiev (KEE-ev) was the common English spelling and pronunciation up until the Russians invaded, at which point the “formal” Ukrainian spelling and pronunciation of Kyiv (KEEV) was adopted by the western press.  (n.b., the phonetic spellings are taken from Wikipedia or are my own when transliteration is impractical).

Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union since 1922 as one of its “soviet socialist republics.” Ukrainian itself is an ethnic group, and traces its roots back to 32,000 B. C. As with most of Europe, empires have come and gone, and Ukraine has been absorbed and integrated into many of them.  Which brings us back to the name.

Kiev is considered to be the Russian spelling and pronunciation, and for 70+ years was the accepted form.  In 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine declared its independence.  Western usage of the name continued, although Ukrainians quickly adopted their “proper” name, and in 2019 petitioned the United States Board on Geographic Names and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to do the same.  Officially, on maps and other cartographic instruments, Kyiv is now the official name and spelling.

So the question I have is this:  Why does the media, in its “hive mind,” choose to make the distinction now?

(Side note:  As a youth, and after college, I knew the name of the Chinese capital as Peking.  In 1979, the Wade-Giles system for the romanization of written Chinese moved from Cantonese to Mandarin, and thus Peking became Beijing – technically a restoration of the name and not a change.  This was my first exposure to how different cultures apply their conventions to others).

Tossing aside the fact that Kyiv is technically accurate, why does the media now uniformly decide to use it?  There was no such focus prior to the Russian invasion.

Which got me to thinking:  If western media wants to be accurate, why do they not apply the same standard to other capitals?  A few immediate examples I can think of, and their native (albeit phonetic) pronunciations) are:

• Moscow (Moskva)
• Paris (Paree)
• Munich (Muenchen)
• Budapest (Budapesht)

And one of my favorites:  Copenhagen.  The capital of Denmark is pronounced “Koobenhavn.” English speakers typically pronounce it “Copen-hāgen.”  Some, who wish to appear worldly and effete pronounce it “Copen-hoggen” without knowing that to do is an affront to the natives.  Most Danes are too polite to mention it, but the Germanic pronunciation still carries with it the resentment of the German treatment of the Danes during WWII!

And how about Bangkok?  In Thai, the official name of the capital is Krung Thep Maha Nakon, or colloquially as Krung Thep.  According to Wikipedia,

Officially, the town was known as Thonburi Si Mahasamut (ธนบุรีศรีมหาสมุทร, from Pali and Sanskrit, literally ‘city of treasures gracing the ocean’) or Thonburi, according to the Ayutthaya Chronicles.^[15] Bangkok was likely a colloquial name, albeit one widely adopted by foreign visitors, who continued to use it to refer to the city even after the new capital’s establishment.

When King Rama I established his new capital on the river’s eastern bank, the city inherited Ayutthaya’s ceremonial name, of which there were many variants, including Krung Thep Thawarawadi Si Ayutthaya (กรุงเทพทวารวดีศรีอยุธยา) and Krung Thep Maha Nakhon Si Ayutthaya (กรุงเทพมหานครศรีอยุธยา).

As one who has traveled extensively, and who has visited many of the cities listed above, it strikes me as humorous (and perhaps even disingenuous) how the media all of a sudden “discovers” a new name for a place, and then pretend to be intellectually and snobbishly superior by using it.

I don’t update this site on a regular schedule; I do so whenever the mood strikes. I debated making this post for a day or two before actually sitting down to write, and if it weren’t for the fact I was notified of some necessary site maintenance, might have let the moment pass.

Yesterday (March 32, 2021) was the birthday of Theodor Seuss “Ted” Geisel, known worldwide by his pen name: Dr. Seuss (in truth, he was never a doctor). It was also Read Across America Day, chosen specifically to coincide with Dr. Seuss’s birthday. Geisel authored 60 books, which sold upwards of 600 million copies, and were translated into 20 languages (source: Wikipedia).

As a kid, I remember reading his books, their rhyming, almost-doggerel and bendy, twisty figures spanning pages and telling stories that were both lighthearted and childish as well as morality tales. Horton Hears a Who!‘s moral was: A person’s a person, no matter how small.

The same “Horton” (an elephant) reprised his gentle, caring role in Horton Hatches The Egg. The moral of this story is about keeping one’s word. “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. . . . An elephant’s faithful, one hundred per cent!”

Dr. Seuss’s honors include two Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, the Inkpot Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Additionally, he was honored with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame (ibid).

All of this sounds perfectly deserving of the acclaim and honors bestowed on Geisel, during his life and after his death. So why then, is this post entitled, “Unsanity?”

There are other uses for this term. I chose it because “insanity” doesn’t seem to even begin to describe what’s going on in the U. S. A. and by inference, the rest of the world today. There is a concerted effort to rewrite history, and a growing “cancel culture” has arisen that seeks to airbrush (or worse) elements of the American experience from all media and mention. Statues of Founding Fathers have been toppled Taliban-like, posts and articles have been “fact checked” and blocked from social media, and even upcoming social media site Parler was “de-platformed” by Amazon Web Services, causing the site to go completely offline for weeks until it could find another hosting service.

All of this reeks of a world gone mad. America is supposed to be the “shining city on a hill,” as Ronald Reagan quoted in his farewell address. A beacon of hope and freedom. The Statue of Liberty beckoning those “yearning to breathe free.” So, what happened?

The Loudoun County, Virginia public school system (the county in which I currently live) has determined that “after studying” Geisel’s books and tearing them apart under the guise of “social justice,” they now are deemed racist in nature and should no longer be the “focus” of the Read Across America Day. Right.

This comes right on the heels of a decision by the Hasbro Toy Company to remove the “Mr.” and “Mrs.” designations from their Potatohead toys (point of historical fact: When I was a kid, a real potato was used as the subject one plugged in the articles – eyes, glasses, hands, feet, etc.). Really? IT’S A POTATO, folks!

It would be easy to say these “issues” and items being promulgated today are insane. But that’s an easy out. It goes beyond sane or insane. It’s UNSANE!

Lately I have been seeing a number of (mostly op-ed) articles placing an asterisk after Joe Biden’s name: Biden*

I am going to adopt this typography, as it speaks volumes to how the political landscape in the U. S. A. works today. At present, Joseph Robinette Biden seems poised to assume the office of President of the Unites States despite all logical indications he did not win that office. At least not fairly.

I won’t go into the many arguments, papers, treatises, videos, affidavits, charts and proclamations that make the point that massive fraud occurred during the presidential election of 2020, and that the true winner was the incumbent. It’s extremely rare for an incumbent to lose re-election. Especially when the record of accomplishments is as lengthy as president Donald John Trump’s.

The image above, as unfocused as it may be, tells the story without words: BIden rarely left his basement, and even put a “lid” on public appearances, while Trump traveled the country holding rallies, where thousands of enthusiastic supporters showed up. Weather be damned and COVID be damned. There is so much wrong that “statistics” show how improbable Biden’s “victory” could be. Yet, the media and “big tech” played handmaidens to the Democrats, and Biden’s victory has been proclaimed as if it were a fait accompli.

Thus the asterisk. I will never believe that Biden* won the presidency. If he takes the office on January 20th, 2021, he will be a “pretender.” A “president-select,” as it were. There will always be an asterisk attached to his presidency. For me and for 74 million other Americans.

The headline is one I’ve been seeing and reading a lot recently. In my opinion, it’s an unanswerable question until we first define “normal.” I have long held that “normal” is a setting on a washing machine. There are no “normal” people, and I think a fair argument could be made that the year 2020 was anything but normal!

First, there was the COVID-19 pandemic, which as I write this, is still front page news, and has half the world’s population cowering under the bedsheets. Then there was the U. S. presidential election with the revelations of media bias, pollsters making, not taking opinion, and big tech become the ham-fisted Big Brother we’ve talked about but never worried about. Until now.

The divisiveness heightened by the election campaign continues even post-election. It staggers my mind to think that as technologically advanced as is the United States, a secure, streamlined process for holding elections — a mainstay of the American system — can’t be implemented. Oh, that’s right: One of the allegations raised is that bogeyman George Soros financed, at least in part, the manufacturer of the voting machines used in 16 states. As one side proclaims victory, the other side continues to challenge the validity and honesty of the election. What strikes me as pathetically laughable is that the presumptive winner is vowing to be “president of all,” and is expressing a desire for unity. Excuse me? This is the same party that nineteen minutes after President Trump was inaugurated proclaimed, “The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.” (Washington Post, January 20, 2017). Funny, they had four years to “unify,” work “across the aisle,” and the House of Representatives, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) concerned itself more with bogus documents, anonymous whistleblowers and efforts to block any progress by the Trump administration — including COVID relief. Were it not for Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in the Senate, it’s unlikely Trump would have been able to appoint three Associate Justices to the Supreme Court.

That all may be part of the way sausage is made, as the old saying goes, but this time, not only was the sausage-making in full view, but the mask of impartiality was stripped from the media, the pollsters, and even the big tech giants.

It has been my observation for close to twenty years, that the media had stopped reporting the news and had become a 24-hour-a-day propaganda machine. Only when cataclysmic events (fires, floods, earthquakes) transpired did the media avert its gaze from its attempts to brainwash us to do actual reporting. I have since sought to get news from abroad, where the media doesn’t have as deep an investment in the American landscape (sure, many of them are part of the globalist agenda, but they aren’t fixated on the U. S.).

When the polls were so obviously wrong in 2016 (Hillary Clinton was posted to a 96% assurance level of winning), the thinking was that the pollsters would reset their algorithms and do better next time. 2020 was that “next time,” and once again, they got it wrong. Not entirely, though. Being part of the campaign to elect Joe Biden, they continued to flog the beast in the attempt to influence voter opinion, not take it. However, they neglected the local races and House and Senate races, and came up far short. Their dishonesty is a visible as the media’s.

Big tech is the eye-opener. But maybe it shouldn’t be. It’s no secret that the majority of campaign contributions from the big tech companies go to Democrats and Leftist causes. While I can’t fully explain the why of this, I suspect much of it has to do with the Democrats’ continued outsourcing of intellectual property and manufacturing, thereby lining the coffers of the tech elites. As Dinesh D’Souza put it in his film, Trump Card (paraphrasing), “Remember when your parent told you to eat your dinner because there were starving kids in India? Nowadays, they tell their kids, ‘go to college, there are Indian kids out after your job.'” By cozying up to Washington, the big tech companies can avoid close scrutiny and possible anti-trust regulations.

The genius of the American system is twofold. First, the adventurous and entrepreneurial will find alternatives. Already, there are new social media platforms showing up that promise no censorship, and privacy of information. I have already joined MeWe, and I’m looking into Parler.

You see, it’s been my experience that when dictators, autocrats and oligarchs begin acting TOO tyrannical, the serfs rebel.

My rebellion has started. We may never get to “normal,” but then again, what is “normal?”