Lord knows, I tried

 

When I started blogging, I tried to follow a few simple rules.

I tried not to write about things I don’t know anything about. When I had a strong opinion about something, I tried to back it up with facts. And, when I had written two or three blogs about a single subject, I tried not to do it again for a while so that people wouldn’t get bored.

I tried. Lord knows I tried.

But, the Republicans just won’t stop. They still keep doing the same old things, trying to pretend that there are some magic words that - if they chant them long enough - reality will change.

It must be nice to think you can go to sleep with your computer playing the latest argument about how Donald Trump won the election and that, when you wake up, he will be back in the White House.

Sleep. Dream. Win. Make America Great Again. Build it back better. Oh, wait, that’s the wrong channel.

It doesn’t make much sense to try and catalog all the things that have happened since the election, because the list is endless. Now, to be fair, not all Democrats have covered themselves with glory, and not all Republicans have gone off the rails. Heck, I don’t even know how to rate the press coverage lately. 

Maybe a “B” for some of the national media, maybe a “D” for Facebook. 

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a good example of what has gone wrong with the GOP, and we don’t even know what she did to make up for it. That was explained in a secret meeting.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can look it up. Or, you can just ignore her - you will probably be happier that way.

Now just one more truth about why I haven’t been blogging lately. My son and his wife and children are having some work done on their home, and are living with us. That turned my family of two into a family of seven. So, instead of blogging, I have been running around chasing a three year old, and being chased by her. When her brother gets home from school, there is a chance to play with Lego. If the weather ever gets warm, we can go outside and clean up after my dogs.

Having a good time with kids is an excellent therapy for political obsession.

But, enough of that. Let’s look to the future. I’ll start with some random thoughts and some interesting questions. At least interesting for me.

First is the issue of bipartisanship. You know. Republicans keep criticizing president Biden for not being bipartisan, not cooperating with them, not sharing policy decisions with them.  Essentially they are charging that he is acting just like they did for the past four years.

My question - a two parter - is just who is he supposed to co-operate with? Which Republican Party? The one that decided to keep Liz Cheney in her leadership roll in the House of Representatives after she voted to impeach Trump, or the one that solidly supported Marjorie Taylor Greene?

See, it’s a good thing you looked it up. I don’t have to explain it to you.

Now here’s another question. What happens in six months when the whole nation can see the contrast between our current president and the last one. In politics, work on the next election starts the day after the votes are counted.

So, while Democrats have to figure out how to deal with Republicans - and learn who they are - the Republicans have to do the same thing. They have to find candidates. They have to raise money. They have to explain how all those people who stormed Congress in an effort to overthrow the nation’s popular vote weren’t really doing what Donald Trump told them to do.

You know, the guy who promised he would be right there with them. 

“We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he told the crowd. Then Trump told them “…we’re going to the Capitol, and we’re going to try and give.…we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don’t need any of our help. We’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

 You know what happened next.

So, let’s watch the Republican Party try to figure out what they stand for and who their candidates will be. It should tell the nation a lot. Maybe they will even try to come up with a party platform saying what they stand for and where they want to take the country.

Their decision not to have one during the last Presidential election seems, in hindsight, a bad idea. The idea was Donald Trump’s, but I don’t recall him saying that it was a mistake. I don’t recall him ever saying that anything he did was a mistake.

I could be wrong, of course. If I am, that would be my mistake. See how easy it is to say?

So, what else is there to worry about. Let me say it another way - what will I be blogging about next?

Well, there’s the flawed belief that everything will get back to normal once the vaccine is given to everyone. That’s just a few months away. But a lot of the businesses that vanished will never come back, which will leave a lot of people unemployed and a lot of business owners in a very bad place.

The 450,000 dead will still be gone, and a lot of the 26 million people who contracted it may have lingering health problems. Then there are the problems that will shake the real estate market to the core, and the huge disruptions that will follow our nation’s shift away from oil and coal to renewable energy.

That we could stop easily if we don’t make the change. What is there to lose, except maybe New York City and Boston and New Orleans to flooding, half the state of California and most of Florida from rising oceans and wildfires, and the massive disruption when our population shifts out of those places to the rural heartland and starts demanding public transportation, schools and hospitals. Yes, there are costs for staying with oil as a long-term source of power.

Which gets me to my last question of the day. What will the Saudi Royal Family do with its oil?

Now the House of Saud has grown a lot since the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was established in the family’s name in 1932. There are about 15,000 members today, almost none of whom take part in the running of Saudi Arabia.

The net worth of the Royal Family is estimated at about $1.5 trillion - which makes Bill Gates a piker by comparison - and most of that wealth is in its unimaginably vast underground oil reserves.

Which would be fine if the world weren’t moving away from fossil fuels to produce energy. Imagine that every wind farm, every solar panel and every electric car is removing just a bit of the demand for all that Saudi oil.

In 20 or 30 years - maybe more, maybe less - there won’t be much demand for that oil for power plants or gasoline. The world will have more oil reserves than it can possibly use, no matter how many alternate uses there are for it.

So, the Saudis are working hard to convert their oil to money, and to invest it in other things. But, there is so much will money that it can really upset the market. Just how many half-vacant office buildings can they buy up in London and New York and Tokyo? And what happens when they try to sell even a small portion of those vast holdings.

Besides, who can the Saudis trust. Everyone will welcome their investments, but what happens when they try to take their cash out of Russia or Germany? What will get nationalized in Africa or even by the other countries in the Middle East.

They could invest in Russia, of course, but Russia already has oligarchs. In fact, the richest man in Russia today is Vladimir Putin, whose net worth reportedly went from $18.1 billion a year ago to $19.7 billion today, a neat trick on his government salary. He was one of only two of the top ten Russians whose wealth went up this year.

So do the Saudis really want to invest in Russia? In the United States, where the Republicans are split and rioters stormed the Capital?

Somehow, I don’t see them investing heavily in Israel or with the Palestinians. Or even the Chinese.

Enough deep thoughts. I’m going back to playing with the grandkids.