Robot Jazz

  Hello, dear readers! Long time, no write! I honestly don’t know how professional writers stay on track. Between the holiday transition from Thanksgiving to Christmas and the sudden, literal disintegration of my old warhorse of a car, my writing came to a crashing halt for nearly a month. I need to work on not allowing my "RL" challenges from interfering with my aspirations to be a dedicated writing hobbyist.   🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 Let us get down to business.   Just two days ago, President Donald Trump interrupted live television to address the nation. Now, I am old enough to remember when such "special announcements," as they were once termed, complete with bespoke graphics, were reserved for issues of vital national importance: matters of war and peace, major economic policy announcements, and other issues of broad national concern. Well, as this befuddled administration is now well known for doing, Trump decided to interrupt the nation's evening to, once again, was...

  It's been too many years for me to recall - and I am too lazy to check my dusty texts - but I believe it was Plato who wrote that to live under the capricious whims of a madman was the closest one could come to being in hell. (Or maybe it was a Reddit thread quoting Plato. Who knows anymore?) Why? Because a madman, being mad, does not govern by rationality but by passing fancy and impulse. One day, he declares the sky to be blue; the next, it is green. One day vanilla is the best flavor of ice cream, the next it is chocolate. Of course, the issues will be more serious than that (or will they?), and so will be the consequences. To live under a mad regime is so dangerous because having the wrong opinion can land one in a gulag. But what is the wrong opinion when right and wrong exist in a state of quantum flux, one determined not by truth and falsehood but by lunacy? This observation has been bouncing around my head ever since Premier Trump and New York City mayor-elect Zohran...