Happy Happy Joy Joy

We get into trouble when we attempt to measure unmeasurable concepts. Yes, we can assess a nation’s economic strength by crunching the numbers, and such an assessment might lead us to conclude that America is on shaky ground.

But how do we measure a country’s capacity for love and hate and perseverance and creativity? Numbers cannot gauge the quality of a culture’s food and music and horror movies. OK, we don’t need to measure that last one, because we all know Japan is number one.

In any case, the list of the world’s happiest countries recently came out, and while we cannot say this ranking is definitive or precise, it does give us some insight into the quality of life for a nation’s residents.

To no one’s surprise, the place to be right now is Scandinavia. Five of the top six spots are in that cold (but very happy) slice of Northern Europe The only non-Nordic nation to crack the upper ranks of happiness is Costa Rica, so score one for my fellow Latinos.

According to the list, the happiest country in the world is Finland. Researchers and social scientists give numerous reasons for why Finns are in a constant good mood. These factors range from economic stability to cultural tenacity to institutional trust. 

The president of Finland says that when it comes to nation-wide happiness, ‘I do not think there is a magic potion, but it helps to have a society which strives towards freedom, equality and justice.”

That all sounds vaguely woke, doesn’t it?

In any case, what these factors have in common is that none of them are based upon the rugged individualism, hyper-religiosity, patriotic fervor, and narrow definition of “liberty” that our conservative friends insist are integral to a nation’s well-being. 

In fact, Scandinavia is far removed from the “small government” libertarianism that conservatives insist is necessary for prosperity. The region is pretty much the antithesis of every conservative value, and yet it’s citizens are among the world’s happiest, safest, and most productive.

I haven’t been to Finland, but I’m going to gamble here and assert that if a guy in Helsinki shrieked that the government is plotting against him and guns are necessary for liberty, the Finnish populace would think that guy was a fucking lunatic. Then they would offer him free healthcare, because that’s a real thing there. 

So what happens here in America year after year, when these rankings come out, and they show that democratic socialism is a huge success story? Do conservatives acknowledge that low taxes for the rich and a shredded social-safety net do not lead to national happiness? Do they look at Scandinavia’s high quality of life and say, “Maybe we’re wrong to mock the homeless and demand that our citizens die if their insurance lapses?”

No, they tend to have a very different reaction. It’s one that preserves the illusion that their worldview is correct, and it ignores the obvious truth that healthy nations have no interest in adopting their simplistic ideals.

What is this reaction? I will discuss it in my next post.

Backfire Blues

You know that phrase “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”?

Our illustrious president has taken this advice to mean, “Piss off your friends and give people who want to destroy your country a big hug.”

You see, it’s bad enough that our butterfly-brained chief executive does pretty much whatever Putin wants him to do. But ever since he reclaimed the White House, this former best friend of Epstein has “gone out of his way to antagonize our allies and partners, warning them that the United States will act alone and working to undermine the international alliances the U.S. has shaped since World War II.” The twist is that ever since instigating “a regional war in the Middle East after ignoring what virtually everyone said would be the result of attacking Iran a second time, Trump is begging other countries to come to his aid.”

To the surprise of absolutely no one (except the Trump Administration, which is constantly surprised when their moronic plans explode into chaos), our allies are saying, “Not my problem.”

The president of the United States has been reduced to the status of a blubbering nine-year-old upset that nobody came to his party. 

“Fine, I didn’t want them to come anyway. It was just a test.”

Sure it was.

There is one key difference, however. The dysregulated kid can be given cake to soothe the pain. 

But a power-hungry narcissist with a bottomless pit of a black heart will not be happy until everybody suffers.

And the suffering is coming.

This botched excursion, unique in American history in that nobody can say exactly why we’re at war, has already killed thousands of people. Here in the well-insulated United States, this idiotic campaign could raise the price of food, gas, plane tickets, and those cheap toys you get your kids as stocking stuffers for Christmas.

Yeah, pretty much everything. But I guess inflation is patriotic now.

In any case, the “window for Donald Trump to end the Iran war by simply declaring victory and walking away is rapidly closing.” Soon, the man who cannot be bothered to read anything and rarely stays on one topic for more than a minute will have to “face a stark choice: He can take greater risks in pursuit of a decisive tactical success, prepare the country for a prolonged conflict that could last for many months, or seek a negotiated settlement that involves a real compromise with Tehran.”

It should be perfectly obvious to all but the most delusional that America’s reckless, childish leader “does not think strategically… historically, geographically, or even rationally.” The man “does not consider the wider implications of his decisions [or] take responsibility when these decisions go wrong.” This wildly unpopular president “acts on whim and impulse, and when he changes his mind—when he feels new whims and new impulses—he simply lies about whatever he said or did before.”

We are at the tipping point where the US will either get dragged into yet another horrific ground war in the Middle East, or we will slink away in embarrassment after unleashing death and destruction for no discernable reason.

How’s that for winning?

The State of Things

Now that we have it on good authority that the Iran War will be over in about 19 minutes, we can move on to other issues.

Hey, who knew conquering a nation of 90 million people would be so quick, easy, and pain-free? Those adjectives, incidentally, describe the main goals of American life and are the only criterion for assessing if we’re willing to get up off the couch.

In any case, I’m going to return my attention to the ostensible focus of this site, which is Latino culture.

So here’s an uplifting stat for you: More Latinas are pursuing a bachelor’s degree or higher than ever before.

This is great news. Considering education is the best equalizer for inequality, it’s just a matter of time before… what’s that? Despite these significant strides in educational attainment, “Latinas who have a bachelor’s degree or higher still earned lower wages on average compared to white men”?

Well, damn.

Are there any other areas in which Latinas have shown huge increases? Yes, the fertility rate for teens in Texas rose for the first time in over a decade, “a shift driven by disproportionately high rates among Hispanic teens” after the state’s six-week state abortion ban took effect.

So congrats, Texas. You are tops in Latina teen mothers.

Those two stats do not balance out. In truth, the status of Latinos in America is as dire as it has ever been. This may be why a disturbingly high number of Latinos are giving up and joining the lunatics who would just as soon imprison or shoot us.

You see, there are “people within nearly every community who can respond to misogynistic, aggressive, conspiratorial rhetoric, and then become radicalized fairly quickly,” and Latinos are no exception. This explains why so many Latinos are joining white supremacist movements. 

As many political commentators have noted, “anyone who denies that a Latino man could also be a white supremacist is probably ignorant about the way race works, and destroys, in our country."

Hell, “far-right militias are increasingly recruiting Latino members,” and even the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer “has started publishing a Spanish-language version.”

I’m not sure what the Spanish translation is for “master race,” but I’m sure it’s loathsome in any dialect.

Among our nation’s most persistent, poisonous traits is our “long history of enmity towards various ethnic groups — Italians, Irish, and Greeks — that eventually subsided as those groups came to be considered white.”

This is because “white supremacy's ability to adapt” is astonishing, so “racism will likely be just as entrenched in a browner America as it is now,” creating a version of “white supremacy, with a tan."

OK, that is not so appealing. It seems that America possesses “not only the desire to rid the nation of Black and brown people, but aims to banish us and the issue of race from the nation’s moral conscience.”

All this is fairly depressing, which is a phrase I have been using a lot since 2016.

So if you hear any statistics that are uplifting, hopeful, or just not worrisome (I will settle for that at this point), let me know.

But if you uncover a Spanish-language version of Deutschland Uber Alles, keep it to yourself.

Bombs Away

There is something mathematically pure about the Republican Party. For the past 30 years, they have insisted that once they have the presidency, everything will be great, but the exact opposite — i.e., massive chaos — always occurs.

This predictable political formula of A plus B equals C would be charming enough. But it’s the specifics that amaze and astound.

Consider that the last three GOP presidents (Bush Sr., Bush Jr., and Trump) all began their terms with solid economies and ended their terms with recessions. Although Jr.’s was the worst, Trump 2.0 has the potential to create a definite trend of economic downturns intensifying with each Republican administration.

However, the most amazing mathematical formula, too precise to be coincidence, is that the last three GOP presidents have waged an unnecessary war in the Middle East, with the rationale for each one becoming more ludicrous than the last.

We’ve gone from defending Kuwait to imaginary WMDs to… well, nobody really knows why we’re bombing Iran. It could be one of a dozen vague, contradictory reasons or no reason at all.

This latest round of GOP warmongering in the Middle East looks to end the trilogy with a full-blown scene of total Armageddon. Seriously, we have religious zealots who are eager to kill us all for the glory of Jesus (which theologians would tell you is not something Christ would actually want). But hey, if the apocalypse comes, at least we would be spared another GOP president.

In any case, I have long wondered about voters who insist that Republicans are better for the economy, despite a century of evidence that this is not true. However, now I have to ponder why any sane adult would look at Trump during the 2024 election, listen to the GOP’s shrieked bloodlust, and think “They are the party of peace.”

Yeah, Trump said he wouldn’t start any wars, but it was a minor miracle that he didn’t launch one during his first term. He was too busy golfing and denying Covid to attack anybody. Only a child would believe that our luck would last. Trump and his right-wing acolytes are happy only when Americans are dropping bombs on people.

Invading Venezuela was just too easy and didn’t deliver the carnage that conservatives love and the distraction that Trump needed. And that is why “the most powerful man on Earth is cavalierly bombing and reshaping one of the most geopolitically explosive regions in the world — and has offered nothing even approaching a coherent explanation for why he’s doing it or what he’s aiming to achieve.” We all know that it was horrific enough “for America to have a mad king, [but] now the world is seeing the rise of a mad emperor.”

Our lunatic president — who has really shot to hell his chances of winning that elusive Nobel Peace Prize — “is telling liesabout the war that not only contradict one another, but contradict themselves internally.” We have to ask if this misbegotten war is “about a nuclear program that doesn’t exist” or a regime change “that we haven’t thought through” or “an imaginary Iranian threat to elections.” Our befuddled commander in chief “has claimed both that he already destroyed Iran’s nuclear program and that he is now destroying it,” which makes it a Schrodinger’s cat of atomic weaponry.

This conflict — which has yet to gain a catchy name, so we will likely go with the Iran War — has been launched “without explanation, without Congress, without even an attempt to build public support, [and] without a coherent strategy.”

Of course, that’s not entirely true. Because according to the GOP ideology, “the dominance itself is the point; there is no other endgame.”

As for the war itself, at some point, America “may be forced to choose between an escalation or an embarrassing climbdown.”

Assuming that this campaign doesn’t end in a disaster that makes the Iraq War look like a mighty victory, our best hope is that our easily distracted president just gets bored with the war and impulsively calls it off. That would not be the first time he creates a cataclysm, leaves a mess for others to clean up, and declares victory.

If we tell him that America has won the war already, will he tweet himself congratulations and go back to ranting about paper straws?

Sounds like a coherent strategy to me.

Those Who Don’t Remember History…

As we know, supporters of Trump come in all styles.

There are angry young men, cackling oligarchs, virulent racists, smug misogynists, cowed conservatives, frightened boomers, furious Gen Xers, religious zealots, conspiratorial lunatics, pedophile defenders, oblivious minorities, and casual voters who wanted cheaper eggs, among other demographics.

It’s more difficult to find highly educated professionals who see a blithering, self-aggrandizing bigot go on and on about himself who think “This is the guy.” But you will find them. There are economists who support his tariffs, political scientists who insist Trump is a strategic genius, and doctors who like polio. 

However, one professional class refuses to get on board the Trump train. That would be the historians.

I have yet to see a prominent historian say, “This is a golden age, and Americans will celebrate Trump in the future.” Indeed, historians are among Trump’s strongest critics. They really dislike the guy.

Many will say, “Who cares what a bunch of elitist eggheads think?” And then these people will steal the historian’s lunch money and yell, “Nerd” while giving them wedgies.

But in some ways, Trump’s horrible reputation with historians may be even more alarming than his notoriety among scientists, journalists, heads of state, and anyone who believes that citizens should not be murdered in the street.

You see, historians have devoted their lives to studying the past, analyzing the present, and presenting conclusions. And pretty much all of them are saying, “This shit is fucked up and will lead to chaos for years, even generations.” And they have been saying this since his first term.

Historians are shouting about the signs of fascism, the parallels to other countries that dabbled with authoritarianism, and the fact that the GOP has a Nazi problem. They are pointing out that all of this has happened, in some form, in many other countries over many decades, and it has always led to catastrophe.

They are the Cassandras that Americans are not listening to, either because it’s too disturbing, too unbelievable, or too easy to dismiss as the caterwauling emanating from ivory towers.

But keep in mind that historians judge presidents differently than voters and journalists do. Historians don’t evaluate leaders on how the economy is doing today (although the answer is “not well”). Nor do they obsess over partisan ideology, culture wars, or political wins and losses. 

Rather, historians prioritize long-term institutional effects, like constitutional norms, minority rights, commitment to rule of law, respect for democratic processes, and the peaceful transfer of power.

And guess what? Trump sucks at all of those.

If historians don’t like a president, it’s usually not because he was mean to trans people or constantly insulted allies (but let’s be honest, that doesn’t help). No, historians interpret warning signs in democracies and say, “This is ominous as fuck for all these reasons that we have seen in other countries, and America will not be an exception.”

Other experts are beginning to agree, like the research firm that states “the United States [is] the principal source of global risk in 2026.”

Unless we alter our terrifying trajectory, the historians of 2126 will shake their heads at our ignorance, sigh, and add America to the long list of countries that didn’t pay attention to the lessons of history.