Thursday, January 22, 2026
1938 "Our Town", Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer-winner of small-town life in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, premieres (NJ)
1973 The US Supreme Court legalized most abortions (Roe v. Wade
In bed at 10, up at 6:20. 11/-6/22/-4 SEVERE WEATHER: COLD, wind chills 34 to 42 below zero.
Meds, etc. Morning meds at 9:30 a.m.
China Wins as Trump Cedes Leadership of the Global Economy: The president used a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland to renounce the last vestiges of the liberal democratic order. This is the lead headline on this morning's New York Times, on a piece by Peter S. Goodman. Excerpts:
In a long, rambling address that was by turns bombastic, aggrieved, and self-congratulatory, President Trump pronounced last rites on American leadership of the liberal democratic order forged by the United States and its allies after World War II.
Mr. Trump used a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday — a pilgrimage site for adherents of globalization — to assert that the United States was done offering its markets and its military protection to European allies he derided as freeloaders. And he vowed to advance his trade war. He characterized tariffs as the price of admission to a land of 300 million consumers.
“The United States is keeping the whole world afloat,” Mr. Trump said. “Everybody took advantage of the United States.”
. . . .
A day before Mr. Trump’s address, his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, declared during a panel discussion in Davos that the world trading system — constructed largely on American designs — was part of history.
“Globalization has failed the West and the United States of America,” Mr. Lutnick said.
Also on Tuesday, Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, provided a counterweight to the worldview espoused by the Trump administration. He lamented the “rupture” of the world order and marked “the beginning of a brutal reality where the geopolitics of the great powers is not subject to any constraints.”
I have lamented often over the last 10 years that, in my lifetime and within my memory, the United States has gone from the sole hegemon in unipolar world, admired and envied by most other non-communist countries and certainly the industrialized ones, truly 'the leader of the free world,' to an object of fear, derision, mockery, dread, dismay, and disappointment all around the world, even, and especially, to our closest neighbors Canada and Mexico. If anyone had suggested such a future for this country at the end of Barack Obama's presidency, before Trump's ascendency, I would have thought "Impossible." Alas, but we are where we are, with many years ahead.
The Jack Smith hearing is, as usual, alternatively disgusting and disappointing. Disgusting when the Republicans were questioning Smith, and disappointing when most of the Democrats were doing so. Especially disappointing was Jerry Nadler, who should have retired long ago, but most of them were disappointing. An exception was Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania, who probed actual evidence in the case of the Pennsylvania election, as opposed to characterizing and making conclusory statements about the evidence.
Another day with no desire to write, which means no desire to do much thinking or assessing my thoughts. Plus, now I have both my MacBooks not working properly, either that or I've lost even more of my executive functioning. It appears my journaling days are finally kaput, the end of a personal era, just short of 3 and 1/2 years of daily chronicles and records of an old man's looking at life and thinking about death. I'll add the hard copies next to my memoir, flowers born to blush unseen. Probably just as well because, like my step-mother Grace, I haven't lost all my marbles yet, but I seem to be working at it.
No comments:
Post a Comment