"Why aren’t there calls for Trump to step down as the nominee?"

 

Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that what happened to him wasn’t a prosecution. He called it a persecution. He was wrong. It’s a conviction. Donald Trump is now a convicted felon.

Americans have let Trump shake their faith in many of our democratic institutions our country is built on, From the start of his first campaign, Trump denigrated immigrants as criminals. He challenged confidence in our elections, the work of the intelligence community, the Justice Department, military leaders, and perhaps most dangerously of all, public health officials during a deadly pandemic. Now, and unsurprisingly, he’s after the jury system that convicted him. He’s spent months calling prosecutors, judges, and witnesses corrupt and putting them and their families in danger.

Trump has plenty of surrogates to do his bidding. He has no concerns about exposing the 12 brave Americans who served on the jury that convicted him to the risk of harassment and violence. NBC reported that a non-profit that conducts public interest research found posts that contained addresses of people claimed to be jurors on a message board known for pro-Trump content.

It is long past time to draw a line and stop the damage Trump is doing to democracy. But still, Republicans pander to him shamelessly.

At the time the Access Hollywood Tape was released, Senator Lee said, “I respectfully ask you [Trump] with all due respect, to step aside. Step down,” in a Facebook video. He mentioned the women in his family and said that if someone spoke to them like Trump had, “I wouldn’t hire that person, wouldn’t want to be associated with that person … I certainly don’t think I would feel comfortable hiring that person to be the leader of the free world.” But Lee has endorsed Trump in this election and apparently has no intention of backing away.

Independents and other voters may take a different view. Guilt is a powerful word. There are polls that suggest it may exert a gravitational pull over some voters who might have otherwise voted for Trump. We are in for a long, hard time heading into the November election, where the future of democracy will hang in the balance, not metaphorically, like candidates sometimes say it will in the next election, but in a very real, concrete sense.

Hunter Biden, the President’s son, goes on trial Monday. Keep that in mind as Donald Trump claims the system has been politicized against him.

Trump will be sentenced on July 11, five days before the start of the Republican National Convention. There has been a lack of clarity in the reporting about the sentence Trump faces. That’s because of the way New York handles this type of Class E felony, which a friend in a New York DA’s office called “loosey goosey.” As I understand it, the Judge can sentence to a range as high as 1 3/4 to 4 years, but it will be up to the Parole Board to determine how much of that sentence he actually serves. And the Judge does not have to impose a custodial sentence, he can go all the way down to probation if he chooses to. My understanding of how this works is still evolving, and I’ll update you as we learn more.

What we do know is that, like in every other case, the probation department will conduct an assessment of the now-convicted defendant and create a presentence investigation that provides the Judge with the information necessary to arrive at the appropriate sentence. In his press conference this morning, the District Attorney did not say whether he would seek a custodial sentence. There is every reason to ask for one here, including Trump’s repeated, atrocious violations of the gag order in the case. It is a first time, nonviolent offense, so the Judge may not impose custody, but the People have every right to ask for it here.

Even if the Judge imposes a custodial sentence, expect to see Trump remain free on bond during the pendency of the appeal. That would be consistent with the principle that permits a defendant who raises serious issues on appeal to do so. Trump does have some serious issues to raise, whether or not he succeeds. I don’t expect him to, but he is entitled to the same right all defendants have to pursue an appeal. The Judge would be well within his rights to condition an appeal bond on strict adherence to the terms of the gag order.

The issues we will likely see surface on appeal include:

·       Whether Stormy Daniels’ testimony exceeded what was permissible and unduly prejudiced Trump. This will be contested, but the Judge let her testimony in to complete the story of the crime, and in any event, defense questions opened the door to her testimony.

·       Whether it was error to permit the DA to use a federal campaign finance fraud crime as the object offense that converted the misdemeanor into a felony. This is a pure legal issue, and the weight of the evidence appears to be on the People’s side, but there are some unique issues here that need to be litigated.

·       Whether the Judge was correct to permit the jury to return a verdict that was unanimous about the object crime but not the means used to accomplish it. We’ve discussed this previously and again, it’s a legal issue where the DA appears to have a strong argument.

·       Whether there was sufficient evidence to support the verdict. Defendants frequently argue this on appeal but only rarely win. The question is whether a reasonable jury could have found the defendant guilty, and there was sufficient evidence here to support that conclusion.

 

There will be others too, but these are some of the main ones to expect. None of this will happen until after Trump is sentenced in July, and the process will take time, so we will deal with it when it happens.

This sentiment, or something akin to it, is circulating widely on social media.

I’m Interested in what you think about it. Do you believe this is true, or is this another spin effort by Trump? 

Here’s my response: Trump was convicted by a jury of his peers who heard all the evidence and found him guilty. We should trust the jury.

Trump claims the indictment was a Democratic ploy. There is no evidence to support that. It doesn’t make sense that 12 jurors, picked from a randomly summoned pool with Trump’s lawyers’ full involvement, a jury that included members who claimed Truth Social or the Wall St. Journal as primary news sources, would have unanimously found him guilty if he wasn’t. Occam’s Razor says to look first to the simplest answer. There is no need for conspiracy theories here. The jury convicted Trump because he was guilty.

Trump will spin the verdict, as he did this morning in a long and less than lucid press conference.

Americans should ignore him and use the same common sense the jury did. The jurors saw every piece of evidence firsthand; they considered it all together. They decided it met the government’s burden of proving Donald Trump guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In our system of justice, that is their decision to make.

It is well worth making this point with anyone who questions the verdict. What approach would they rather have American justice use? A king? Is it Donald Trump who now metes out justice in America?

A better question: Why aren’t there calls for Trump to step down as the nominee? That is how any other politician would be treated.

Trump said the real verdict on his case will come on November 5. I hope so. I’m ready to get to work on that, and I bet you are too.

We’re in this together,

Joyce Vance

President Joe Biden in Contrast to trump

 

The defense and the prosecution [yesterday] made their closing statements in the New York criminal case against Trump for falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels. The payment was intended to stop her account of her sexual encounter with Trump from becoming public in the days before the 2016 election, when the Trump campaign was already reeling from the Access Hollywood tape showing Trump boasting of sexual assault.  

The Biden-Harris campaign showed up at the trial today with veteran actor Robert DeNiro and former police officers Michael Fanone and Harry Dunn, who protected the U.S. Capitol and members of Congress from rioters on January 6, 2021. In words seemingly calculated to get under Trump’s skin, DeNiro said, “We New Yorkers used to tolerate him when he was just another grubby real estate hustler masquerading as a big shot,” and called him a coward. 

When Robert Costa of CBS News asked campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler why they had shown up at the trial, Tyler answered: “Because you all are here. You’ve been incessantly covering this day in and day out, and we want to remind the American people ahead of the…first debate on June 27 of the unique, persistent, and growing threat that Donald Trump poses to the American people and to our democracy. So, since you all are here, we’re here communicating that message.” 

In remarks at Arlington National Cemetery in observance of Memorial Day, President Joe Biden honored “the sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of women and men who’ve given their lives for this nation. Each one…a link in the chain of honor stretching back to our founding days. Each one bound by common commitment—not to a place, not to a person, not to a President, but to an idea unlike any idea in human history: the idea of the United States of America.”

“[F]reedom has never been guaranteed,” Biden said. “Every generation has to earn it; fight for it; defend it in battle between autocracy and democracy, between the greed of a few and the rights of many…. And just as our fallen heroes have kept the ultimate faith with our country and our democracy, we must keep faith with them,” he said. 

His speech at Arlington echoed the message he delivered to this year’s graduating class at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he urged the graduates to hold fast to their oaths. “On your very first day at West Point, you raised your right hands and took an oath—not to a political party, not to a president, but to the Constitution of the United States of America—against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” he said to applause. Soldiers “have given their lives for that Constitution. They have fought to defend the freedoms that it protects: the right to vote, the right to worship, the right to raise your voice in protest. They have saved and sacrificed to ensure, as President Lincoln said, a ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.’”

“[N]othing is guaranteed about our democracy in America. Every generation has an obligation to defend it, to protect it, to preserve it, to choose it,” he said. “Now, it’s your turn.” Biden spent more than an hour saluting and shaking the hand of each graduate. 

In contrast, Trump ushered in Memorial Day with a post on his social media company, saying: “Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country, & to the Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York that presided over, get this, TWO separate trials, that awarded a woman, who I never met before (a quick handshake at a celebrity event, 25 years ago, doesn’t count!), 91 MILLION DOLLARS for “DEFAMATION.” 

He then continued to attack E. Jean Carroll, the writer who successfully sued him for defamation, before turning to attack Judge Arthur Engoron, who presided over the civil case of Trump and the Trump Organization falsifying documents, and Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the current criminal case in New York. 

The message behind this extraordinary post was twofold: Trump can think of nothing but himself…and he appears to be terrified. 

On Saturday, May 25, Trump had an experience quite different from his usual reception at rallies of hand-picked supporters. He was resoundingly booed at the national convention of the Libertarian Party in Washington, D.C., where Secret Service agents confiscated squeaky rubber chickens before his speech. Attendees jeered Trump’s order, “You have to combine with us,” even when he reminded them of his libertarian credentials—tax cuts and defunding of federal equality programs—and promised to pardon the January 6 rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol. 

Trump also promised to pardon Ross Ulbricht, who founded and from January 2011 to October 2013 ran an online criminal marketplace called Silk Road, where more than $200 million in illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services, such as computer hacking, were bought and sold. Most of the sales were of drugs, with the Silk Road home page listing nearly 13,000 options, including heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, and LSD. The wares were linked to at least six deaths from overdose around the world. In May 2015, Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison and was ordered to forfeit more than $180 million. 

Libertarians want Ulbricht released because they support drug legalization on the grounds that people should be able to make their own choices and they see Ulbricht’s sentence as government overreach. Trump has repeatedly called for the death penalty for drug dealers, making his promise to pardon Ulbricht an illustration of just how badly he thinks he needs the support of Libertarian voters. But they refused to endorse him. 

Trump appeared angry, and on Sunday, as Greg Sargent reported in The New Republic, he reposted a video of a man raging at MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. In it, the man says that when Trump is reelected: “He’ll get rid of all you f*cking liberals. You liberals are gone when he f*cking wins. You f*cking blowjob liberals are done. Uncle Donnie’s gonna take this election—landslide. Landslide, you f*cking half a blowjob. Landslide. Get the f*ck out of here, you scumbag.” 

Trump’s elevation of this video, Sargent notes, is a dangerous escalation of his already violent rhetoric, and yet it has gotten very little media attention. 

Last November, Matt Gertz of Media Matters reported that ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News provided 18 times more coverage of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s comment at a fundraising event that “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables” who are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic,” than they provided of Trump’s November 2023 promise to “root out the communist, Marxist, fascist and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” 

CNN, the Fox News Channel, and MSNBC mentioned the “deplorables” comment nearly 9 times more than Trump’s “vermin” language. The ratio for the five highest-circulating U.S. newspapers was 29:1. 

Clinton’s statement was consistent with polling, and she added that the rest of Trump’s supporters were “people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change.” She said: “Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.”

Sargent noted that news stories require context and that Trump’s elevation of the violent video should be placed alongside his many threats to prosecute his enemies. While there is often concern over disrespect toward right-wing voters, Sargent writes, there has been very little attention to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s posting of “a video that declares a large ideological subgroup of Americans ‘done’ and ‘gone’ if he is elected.”

Scott MacFarlane of CBS News reported yesterday that Republicans have ignored a law passed in March 2022 requiring the placement of a small plaque honoring police officers who protected the U.S. Capitol and the lawmakers and staffers there on January 6, 2021. It was supposed to be in place by March 2023 but has not gone up. 

A spokesperson for House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) says his office is working on it. Kayla Tausche of CNN reported today that three of the police officers at the Capitol that day—Sergeant Aquilino Gonell and Officer Harry Dunn, both retired, and Officer Daniel Hodges, who is still with the Washington, D.C., metropolitan police—will be traveling to swing states for the Biden campaign to tell voters that Trump threatens Americans’ fundamental rights. 

Finally, today, Melinda French Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced $1 billion in new spending over the next two years “for people and organizations working on behalf of women and families around the world, including on reproductive rights in the United States.” Only 2% of charitable giving in the U.S. goes to these organizations, she wrote the New York Times, and “[f]or too long, a lack of money has forced organizations fighting for women's rights into a defensive posture while the enemies of progress play offense. I want to help even the match.”

—Heather Cox Richardson

Notes:

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/26/libertarians-reject-trump-rfk-chase-oliver-presidential-nominee-00160040

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/05/27/remarks-by-president-biden-at-the-156th-national-memorial-day-observance-arlington-va/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/05/25/remarks-by-president-biden-in-commencement-address-to-the-united-states-military-academy-at-west-point-west-point-ny/

https://newrepublic.com/article/181973/trump-media-attacks-media-dangerous-turn

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-fails-to-install-plaque-honoring-jan-6-police-officers/

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/28/politics/biden-campaign-january-6-officers/index.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c722qy5dzlgo

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/25/trump-commute-ross-ulbricht-sentence-libertarian-convention-00160025

https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ross-ulbricht-aka-dread-pirate-roberts-sentenced-life-federal-prison-creating

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-is-spotlighting-ross-ulbricht-silk-road-appeal-to-libertarians-2024

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4305566-trump-doubles-down-death-penalty-for-drug-dealers/

https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/major-news-outlets-gave-much-less-coverage-trumps-vermin-attack-then-they-did-clintons

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4687060-donald-trump-squeaky-chicken-libertarian-controversy/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/opinion/melinda-french-gates-reproductive-rights.html

 

More military veterans and active duty service members are dying by suicide than in battle – understanding why can help with prevention

 

Although service members know they may lose their lives in combat in service of their country, they may not expect to lose their lives – or those they love – to suicide. A 2021 study estimated that four times as many active duty service members and veterans died by suicide as died in battle since 9/11.

Despite recent calls to action to improve suicide prevention within the military, suicide rates remain elevated among service members. In particular, active duty Army suicide rates were nearly two times higher than other active duty military services and more than two and a half times higher than the general population. Suicide rates are even more elevated in veterans, with an estimated 17 or more dying by suicide each day in 2021.

My research is aimed at identifying what drives high rates of suicide among certain groups. Better understanding what causes active-duty service members and veterans to think about and plan suicide is imperative for efforts to prevent it.

Risk factors for suicide within the military

There are many reasons why service members and veterans may have elevated rates of thoughts of suicide and death. Notably, risk factors for active-duty service members can be different from those of veterans.

Some factors linked to suicide in active duty service members include loneliness, relationship issues, workplace difficulties, trauma, disrupted schedules, increased stress, poor sleep, injury and chronic pain. On top of these same factors, veterans may also experience difficulties transitioning to civilian life.

Additionally, service members may have an elevated capability for suicide, meaning a decreased fear of death, high pain tolerance and familiarity with using highly lethal means like firearms.   

Rethinking suicide research in the military

Increasing rates of suicide suggest that researchers need to study suicide differently in order to save more lives. Fortunately, several research advances are helping scientists rethink the way people study suicide within and outside the military.

In my lab’s recent study, we harnessed some of these innovations to study what drives thoughts of suicide among service members. We asked 92 participants to download an app on their phones and take short surveys assessing suicide risk factors four times per day for one month. Using a newer type of statistical method called network analysis, we were able to pinpoint which symptoms related to suicide risk had the greatest influence on other symptoms at one moment in time as well as over time.

Overall, we found that feeling ineffective or like a burden to others, a sense of low belonging or feeling disconnected from others, and agitation are important drivers of moment-to-moment and longer-term risk for thoughts of suicide among service members and veterans.

Increasing effectiveness and belonging

Based on our study results, considering how the military both fosters and hinders a sense of belonging and effectiveness could help address suicide risk factors. This may become even more important as demands created by technology, such as drone pilots operating in siloed facilities, may lead active duty service members to be less connected to one another.

Additionally, some active-duty service members report task saturation – feeling like they have too much to do without enough time, resources or tools to get tasks done. They also report working an unbalanced amount of hours that precludes rest and reflection. Allowing soldiers more time to do their work and reflect on it could renew their sense of effectiveness and improve their understanding of how they contribute to overall goals.

Additionally, military leadership could find ways to prioritize and reward group-level achievements over individual accomplishments. This could lead to both increased belonging and reduced feelings of ineffectiveness, in turn reducing thoughts of suicide.

Finally, relaxation techniques, including progressive muscle relaxation, massage and gentle movement, could be beneficial in reducing agitation.

There is still much work to do to turn the tides in the fight against suicide and help those who serve and protect us. If you or someone you love is thinking about suicide, know that you are not alone and there is help.

For military-specific resources, you can call 988 and then press 1, or text 838255. You can also visit www.veteranscrisisline.net.

April Smith, Associate Professor of Psychological Sciences, Auburn University, The Conversation

 

The Triumph of Trump, Authoritarianism and the Dis-imagination Machines by Henry Giroux

 

Donald Trump is on his way to potentially becoming the next president of the U.S. He embodies the overt, brutal, punishing symptoms of the racism, class warfare, and attacks on youth and women that have marked the U.S. since its inception.

Beneath these not-so-hidden authoritarian undercurrents lies the erosion and attacks on critical and civic education as an institution, largely destroyed by neoliberalism and its instrumental idiocy, racism, and class discrimination, along with its profoundly moronic obsession with methods, such as teaching for the test and racially and class designed zero tolerance policies.

All of these issues have been intensified and accelerated by a culture of "dis-imagination machines," in which the ruling financial elite have taken control of all major media apparatuses, relentlessly churning out commodified ignorance and a shallow notion of self-interest.

Propaganda has become the political weapon of the 21st century, corrupting every form of education and every institution associated with the production of ideas, values, and knowledge. This has undermined both the capacity for critical thinking and the concept of truth itself. The past does not simply live in the present, it has canceled out reason and justice as harbingers of a more democratic future.

The rule of dis-imagination machines and manufactured ignorance isn't confined to the morally and politically vacuous right. The liberal mainstream media rarely cross the line in attacking gangster capitalism or inviting truly informed commentators such as Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Robin Kelley, Michael Yates, Maya Schenwar, Jeffrey St. Clair, Mark Anthony Neal; Thom Hartmann, Naomi Klein, or Chris Hedges to discuss the pressing problems facing the U.S.

The punishing state now wraps itself in mindless entertainment or cruel invective parading as political theater. Americans are bombarded with the babble of liberals who are too weak to name Trump as a fascist or a racist, or who treat him as either a normal candidate or an exceptional clown rather than a symptom of a dark deeper malaise, echoing a pernicious and frightening past.

The google, Instagram, Facebook, and x culture of today is the enemy of historical consciousness. It is a place where history dies as does the power to learn from the past. It is about the culture of immediacy, a culture where informed thinking disappears in a culture of advertisements, reality TV, game shows, and a regressive avalanche of commodification and privatization.

The spectacle swallows any viable notion of agency, turning out zombies consumed with the emotional release and satisfaction that comes with the cleansing power of bigotry. MAGA hats are the new symbols of a death-culture.

 Even many on the left has neglected to recognize the centrality of education to politics for years. There jargon drowns and sabotages itself in the language of structure, and too often jargon functions as a firewall of obscurity. This is not a call to be overly simplistic, but to hold the bar of analysis high while still being able to be both rigorous and accessible so that people can recognize themselves in the language, in the rhetoric of persuasion. 

 America is now home to a significant number of utterly reactionary, ignorant people who are complicit in a society that will ultimately destroy their dignity, welfare, and agency, not to mention democracy itself. Orwell and Huxley could not have invented a scenario where the merging of power and culture today works so insidiously to usher in fascism under the banner of "free elections."

Equally insidious is the sight of Vichy-like politicians and celebrities condemning young people facing police violence while ignoring some of the most serious problems facing the globe. This is the same group that believes that Trump won the 2020 election, the thugs who beat the police and ransacked the Capitol are hostages.

To all those who supported and continue to support this shallow view of politics and education, and the indoctrination factories being produced in Florida and other places, you have nothing to be proud of. The horror depicted in the film "Zone of Interest" is no longer merely a subject of entertainment or far-right distortion. It is a stark reality that no longer hides in the shadows of history. Those who remain silent, look away, or find solace in comforting lies have become akin to the "good Germans" who looked the other way in the 1930s.

-Henry Giroux

20 Rules for Life (2024 Edition) by Peter Greene

 

After first posting this list years ago, I have made it a tradition to get it out every year and re-examine it, edit it, and remind myself why I thought such things in the first place (it is also a way to give myself the day off for my birthday). I will keep my original observation-- that this list does not represent any particular signs of wisdom on my part, because I discovered these rules much in the same way that a dim cow discovers an electric fence. Also, I'll note that it gets longer every year; if you think you see a book in this, feel free to contact me with a publishing offer. In the meantime, I exercise a blogger's privilege to be self-indulgent.

My rules for life, in no particular order.

1. Don't be a dick.

There is no excuse for being mean on purpose. You will hurt people in life, either through ignorance or just because sometimes life puts us on collision courses with others and people get hurt. Sometimes conflict and struggle appear, and there is no way out but through. There is enough hurt and trouble and disappointment and rejection naturally occurring in the world; there is no reason to deliberately go out of your way to add more.

This is doubly true these days, even though some folks have decided that being a dick is a worthy goal, that inflicting hurt on Those People Who Deserve It Because They Are Wrong is some sort of virtue. It isn't. Be kind.

2. Do better.

You are not necessarily going to be great. But you can always be better. You can always do a better job today than you did yesterday. Make better choices. Do better. You can always do better. Important note: having screwed up yesterday does not excuse from doing better today. No matter how lost or in the weeds you may be, no matter where you are, there's always a direction that takes you towards better.

3. Tell the truth (as best you can).

Words matter. Do not use them as tools with which to attack the world or attempt to pry prizes out of your fellow humans (see Rule #1). "Untrue but advantageous for my team" is not an okay substitute for "true to the best of my understanding." Say what you understand to be true. Life is too short to put your name to a lie. 

This does not mean that every word out of your mouth is some sort of Pronouncement from God. Nor does it mean you must be unkind. 

But you simply can't speak, post, write or publish words that you know to be untrue. Untruths are not an acceptable means to an end, if for no other reason than if you do not achieve that end, then all that's left is you being a liar.

4. Seek to understand.

The necessary companion to #3. Do not seek comfort or confirmation. Do not simply look for ways to prove what you already believe. Seek to understand, and always be open to the possibility that what you knew to be true yesterday must be rewritten today in the light of new, better understanding. Ignoring evidence you don't like because you want to protect your cherished beliefs is not helpful. Understand that this is a journey you will never complete, and it's not okay to quit.

5. Listen and pay attention.

Shut up, listen, watch, and pay attention. How else will you seek understanding? Watch carefully. Really see. Really hear. People in particular, even the ones who lie, will tell you who they are if you just pay attention. 

Don't skip moments because you think they're minor. Your life is happening right now, and the idea of Special Moments just tricks us into ignoring a million other moments that are just as important. Also, love is not a thing you do at people-- to say that you care about someone even as you don't actually hear or see them is a lie.

Also, pay attention to things and people who contradict your cherished beliefs about yourself, because there may be something there that you really need to hear.

6. Be grateful.

You are the recipient of all sorts of bounty that you didn't earn. Call it the grace of God or good fortune, but be grateful for the gifts you have been given. You did not make yourself. Nobody owes you anything, but you owe God/the Universe/fate everything. I have been hugely fortunate/blessed/privileged; I would have to be some sort of huge dope to grab all that life has given me and say, "This is mine. I made this. It's all because I'm so richly deserving." I've been given gifts, and the only rational response I can think of is to be grateful. That's important because gratitude is the parent of generosity and grace. These days, the world needs more grace.

7. Mind the 5%.

95% of life is silly foolishness that humans just made up and then pretended had some Great Significance. Only about 5% really matters, has real value. Don't spend energy, worry, fret, concern, time, stress on the other 95%. I'm pretty sure that part of what happened during the pandemic is a whole bunch of folks looked around at their lives and thought, "Man, 95% of this is bullshit that I don't even care about." The trick is that every person has a different idea of what constitutes the 5%, and sometimes the path to honoring and loving that other person is to indulge their 5%.

8. Mind your own business (and hush).

Somehow, we have arrived at a culture in which everyone needs to have and express an opinion about everything. If it's not your monkey, not your circus, and not a topic about which you know a single damn thing, what do you suppose you will add by chiming in? There are people whose whole day is organized around roaming the internet so they can unleash their opinion on people (see Rule #1). This does not make the world a better place, doesn't make them better people, and doesn't help solve the issue.

9. Take care of the people around you.

"What difference can one person make" is the wrong question. It is impossible for any individual human to avoid making a difference. Every day you make a difference either for good or bad. People cross your path. You either makes their lives a little better or you don't. Choose to make them better. The opportunity to make the world a better place is right in front of your face every day; it just happens to look like other people (including the annoying ones). Nobody is in a better position than you are to take care of the people right in front of your face.

These opportunities may come at inconvenient times in inconvenient forms. That's tough--we don't get to pick our times or circumstances, but we can either rise to meet them or bail. Bailing does not make the world better. Take care of people.

10. Commit.

If you're going to do it, do it. Commitment gets up and gets the job done on the days when love and passion are too tired to get off the couch. Also, commitment is like food. You don't eat on Monday and then say, "Well, that takes care of that. I don't need to think about eating for another week or so. " Commitment must be renewed regularly.

11. Shut up and do the work.

While I recognize there are successful people who ignore this rule, this is my list, so these are my rules. And my rule is: Stop talking about how hard you're working or what a great job you're doing or what tremendous obstacles you're overcoming. In short, stop delivering variations on, "Hey, look at me do this work! Look at me!" Sometimes we spend too much time talking about the work instead of just doing the work. Self-reflection is valuable, but at some point you just have to get on with the work. 

Note, however, there is a difference between "Hey, lookit me do this work" and "Hey, look at this important work that needs to be done." Ask the ego check question-- if you could do the work under the condition that nobody would ever know that you did it, would you still sign up? If the answer isn't "yes," ask yourself why not.

One of the side effects of social media is that not only do we curate and craft our lives, but we want lots of other people to participate in and confirm the narrative that we're creating. "You're canceling me," often means "You are refusing to corroborate my preferred narrative." We don't just want an audience; we want pliable co-stars. Worry less about both. Don't craft your narrative; do the work.

12. Assume good intent.

Do not assume that everyone who disagrees with you is either evil or stupid. They may well be either, or both-- but make them prove it. People mostly see themselves as following a set of rules that makes sense to them. If you can understand their set of rules, you can understand why they do what they do. Doesn't mean you'll like it any better, but you may have a basis for trying to talk to them about it. And as a bare minimum, you will see yourself operating in a world where people are trying to do the right thing, rather than a hostile universe filled with senseless evil idiots. It's a happier, more hopeful way to see the world.

Also, this: when you paint all your opponents as monsters, you provide excellent cover for the actual monsters out there, and you excuse monstrous behavior in yourself.

13. Don't waste time on people who are not being serious.

Some people forget to be serious. They don't use words seriously. They don't have a serious understanding of other people or their actions or the consequences of those actions. They can be silly or careless or mean, but whatever batch of words they are tossing together, they are not serious about them. They are not guided by principle or empathy or anything substantial. There's no time-waters quite like trying to change the mind of a person about X when that person has no serious opinion about X to begin with.

Note: do not mistake grimness for seriousness and do not mistake joy and fun for the absence of seriousness. Beware: One of the great tricks of not-being-serious people is to get you to waste time on them, to spend time and energy thinking, fretting, arguing acting about shiny foolishness, leaving them free for larger abuses that go unchecked.

14. Don't forget the point.

Whatever it is you're doing, don't lose sight of the point. It's basic Drivers Ed 101. If you look a foot in front of the car, you'll wander all over the road. If you stare right at the tree you want to miss, you will drive right into it. Where you look is where you go. Keep your eye on the goal. Remember your purpose. And don't try to shorthand it; don't imagine that you know the path that guarantees the outcome you want. Focus on the point (even if it's a goal that you may never reach) because otherwise you will miss Really Good Stuff because you had too many fixed ideas about what the path to your destination is supposed to look like.

Therefore...

15. Don't be misled by your expectations.

Most of our daily misery (not the real big suffering stuff) is the result of measuring our actual situation against expectations we've created for ourselves. So many times we could be saying "Wow! A steak!" but instead we go with, "Dammit, where's my watermelon?"

Doors will appear on your path. Open them even if they are not exactly what you were expecting or looking for. Don't simply fight or flee everything that surprises or challenges you (but don't be a dope about it, either). Most of what I've screwed up in life came from reacting in fear-- not sensible evaluation of potential problems, but just visceral fear. Most of what is good about my life has come from saying "yes." And most of that is not at all what I would have expected or planned for.

16. People are complicated (mostly).

People grow up. People learn things. People have a day on which their peculiar batch of quirks is just what the day needs; our strengths and weaknesses are often the exact same thing just in different contexts. Awful people can have good moments, and good people can have awful moments-- it's a mistake to assume that someone is all one thing or another. Nobody can be safely written off and ignored completely. Corollary: nobody can be unquestioningly trusted and uncritically accepted all the time. People are a mixed mess of stuff. Trying to sort folks into good guys and bad guys is a fool's game.

17. Make something.

[A poem] music, art, refurbished furniture, machinery. Something.

18. Show up.

The first rule of all relationships is that you have to show up. And you have to fully show up. People cannot have a relationship with someone who isn't there, and that includes someone who looks kind of like they're there but who isn't really. In the combination of retirement and parenting again, I'm reminded that this also means nor just being fully present, but remembering to show up at all. You put your head down, go to work, and then a week or two later you're suddenly remembering that it's been a while since you checked in with someone. Rule #2 applies.

Part B of this rule is that when you show up, you may suddenly find out that the place and time requires something of you. Showing up means answering that call.

19. Refine your core.

Know who you are. Strip the definition of yourself of references to situation and circumstance; don't make the definition about your car, your hair, your job, your house. The more compact your definition of self, the less it will be buffeted and beaten by changes in circumstance. When you define yourself by your car and haircut, the loss of your car or your hair is an existential crisis. Refining your core means you don't waste existential panic on minor bumps in the road. Note: this is good work to do long before you, say, retire from a lifelong career that largely defined you.

20. How you treat people is about you, not about them.

It's useful to understand this because it frees you from the need to be a great Agent of Justice in the world, meting out rewards and punishments based on what you think about what people have done or said. It keeps you from wasting time trying to decide what someone deserves, which is not your call anyway. It also gives you power back that you give up when your stance is that you have to wait to see what someone says or does before you react to it. 

Treat people well because that's how you should treat people, not because you have decided they deserve it. But don't be a dope; if someone shows you that they will always bite you in the hand, it's prudent to stop offering them your hand.

Peter Greene  

CURMUDGUCATION: 20 Rules for Life (2024 Edition)