Running on Empty

Howlin' at the Moon ^ | 18 May 2025 | Martin Hackworth

[Rummyfan]

I was sitting around coffee with friends a few mornings ago when the subject of Trump’s tariffs came up, prompted, no doubt, by the temporary decline of our 401(k)s. My coffee crew and I mostly agree in our views on Trump, and those can be summed up as not getting too worked up about him simply because of what came before. I’m far from crazy about the guy, but we live in a remarkable age. Standards just aren’t what they used to be. That’s evident all around.

I think that the majority of Americans saw things roughly the same way last November when they cast their votes for Trump in the presidential election. While Trump and Harris each represented different sides of whatever is worse than awful, at least Trump wouldn’t be encouraging boys to participate in girls’ sports behind their parents’ backs and then mandate counseling for the kids and encourage termination of parental rights for objectors.

It’s a low bar, but he does have that going for him.

None of this is fiction. It’s not paranoia. It’s just the 21st century. It’s a brave new world, and things that would have seemed insane just a few years ago are now commonplace. Trump as president is one of the lesser crazy things I wrestle with from day to day.

Consider the controversy surrounding Lia Thomas, a man formerly known as William Thomas, who joined the University of Pennsylvania men’s swim team in his 2017 freshman year. In 2019, Thomas began transitioning with hormone therapy to “identify” as female and came out as a trans woman shortly thereafter.

[Rummyfan]

The “Greatest Generation” freed people from terrible places. This generation gets confused over which bathroom to use.

[Rummyfan]

Those young people, my generation’s parents, may not have had a college education and professional bona fides, but they knew which bathroom to use and figured out a way to save the entire world from tyranny despite lacking safe spaces and equity. When those young people returned home, they put the horrors of war behind them and began to build the most prosperous nation in human history, despite the handicap of lacking any knowledge of intersectionality. Somehow, they made do.

Indeed they did.

[Rummyfan]

,B.We are, these days, a nation in the thrall of lazy, dishonest, spineless, clueless, incompetent, yet endlessly entitled and arrogant academics, bureaucrats, politicians, media figures, and other “experts” who can’t seem to find their way from their heads to their asses with their hands when something important, like, say, COVID or the 25th Amendment, is in play.

But I believe the pendulum is swinging back...

[Political Junkie Too]

Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels
I don't know how to tell you all just how crazy this life feels
Look around for the friends that I used to turn to to pull me through
Looking into their eyes I see them running, too

-PJ

[BobL]

“When those young people returned home, they put the horrors of war behind them and began to build the most prosperous nation in human history, despite the handicap of lacking any knowledge of intersectionality. Somehow, they made do.”

They did fine, just didn’t bother to pass down their values to their kids or protect their kids from the monsters that were taking over ‘education’.

[metmom]

While Trump and Harris each represented different sides of whatever is worse than awful, at least Trump wouldn’t be encouraging boys to participate in girls’ sports behind their parents’ backs and then mandate counseling for the kids and encourage termination of parental rights for objectors.

I stopped reading right there.

Trump was lightyears better a choice than harris. Not even close to being in the same league.