For decades the United States Constitution and the arcane rules of the US Senate have stymied American democracy in a variety of ways. We have become their hostages. Recently it appears that the expressed desire of a heavy majority of voters may yet again be thwarted in two important concerns of the American people: a permanent federal law upholding the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision fifty years ago, and tighter gun control laws and universal background checks for every purchaser of guns.

When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24 of 2022, none of the NATO nations, especially the United States, became engaged in the warfare. After all, NATO had prevented Ukraine from joining its ranks. Instead, NATO massively united to provide the Ukrainians the weapons, other materiel, and humanitarian assistance to enable Ukraine to thwart the Russians. The US has provided nearly a hundred billion dollars of military and other aid, and our western partners have contributed an equal or greater amount.

Now the United States finds itself in another period when its attention is largely directed inward upon itself and its own domestic problems, of which there is an abundance. President Biden is plagued by the plague and by his own declining popular support, the Congress is hopelessly catatonic because of its mean-spirited polarization, and the American people have fallen into a “woe is us” attitude. This inward-looking stance places our nation and the world in acute danger because of the alarming rise of autocracy in many nations, including the USA. At the moment, Russian interference in Ukraine is the most obvious issue. But Vladimir Putin is not the only autocrat who represents a threat to democracy and world peace.

Joe Biden started out, it seemed, intending to be another Franklin Roosevelt. He had a major insurmountable obstacle, however. Roosevelt had a large majority in both the Senate and the House in 1932, and Biden has a bare majority in in the House in 2020, and an even split in the Senate. The tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris is necessary in case of a tie in the Senate, of which one is too many, especially lately.

A few years ago, Peter Schweizer wrote a book called Secret Empires. He is the co-founder and president of the Government Accountability Institute, which is an organization of investigative journalists whose primary aim is to expose various kinds of corruption among government officials. Secret Empires focuses particularly on insider stock trading among high government politicians and officials.

Seeking a “cure for cancer” is a fool’s errand. That is because there is not one kind of cancer, but hundreds of varieties. Therefore there is not one cause of cancer, but many kinds. Cancer has hundreds of very specific types. Cancer therefore has many causes, and many singular cures. For this reason it is almost certain there shall never be a “cure for cancer,” because each type of cancer has its own cure, if indeed there might ever be cures for all types. That almost certainly will never happen.

Why do Americans play American football? It is a violent sport. Anyone who denies that denies reality. Such people are only kidding themselves.

Whole articles and books have been written about “OK” by linguists and philologists (literally, “lovers of words”). The trouble is that not many people read such academic treatises, and thus are unaware of word origins. Nonetheless, by now, a century and a half after Martin Van Buren shuffled off this mortal coil (Google it), billions of people around the world, using hundreds of languages, know what OK means, even if they have no idea of where it came from.

No one since Mao Zedong had such a profound influence on modern-day Chinese culture as its current president, Xi Jinping. However, Xi has had a far more beneficial effect than the cultural and economic wreckage wrought by Mao, the founder of modern China.

Last night I watched a two-hour CNN special entitled Trumping Democracy. It chronicled the attempts of Donald Trump to declare his defeat in the 2020 election a conspiratorial fraud by the Democrats. The only Members of Congress asked to participate in the program were some of the ten Republican House of Representative members who voted to impeach President Trump when that vote was passed shortly after the election. In addition, other officials who had served in the Trump administration who had resigned in protest over his post-election machinations also were interviewed.

Team sports of any kind, especially when there is an enormous crowd of partisan spectators, have the ability to bring disparate groups of people into the common enterprise of trying to cheer on their team to victory, or of letting them know that even in defeat their efforts are cherished by the fans. There is nothing else in human society, historically or contemporaneously, which magically unifies large gatherings of otherwise disunited humans as does team sports. There are no Republicans or Democrats, no management or workers, just fans.

The Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court allowed anyone to contribute any amount to any candidate on the spurious principle that it is an expression of free speech. It has turned our country into a kleptocracy that is controlled by a very small group of Americans with an incomprehensibly huge political war-chest to purchase whatever they desire in tax policy. A few billion dollars more for the IRS would result in megabillions more in tax revenue, and that plutocrats understandably abhor.

In this final essay in a series of four essays, I want to address a problem which has become painfully more acute in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. With the undeniable increase in life expectancy, there are way too many old people in powerful elected or appointed positions in government or in government agencies or on corporate boards of directors. I make these observations as a readily certified old codger myself.

Throughout the developed world, there is a growing shortage of workers for all kinds of jobs, especially low-skill, low-paying, boring jobs. Now that the world economy at last is picking up after the pandemic, there are too few people applying for the jobs for which employers are seeking workers. Some of the explanations for this rare economic phenomenon come from the pandemic itself. After have been furloughed or laid off, many people have decided they liked not having to work for a few to several months, and they took early retirement. Others realized the jobs they had are not worth going back to, and so they quit. But why? Can they afford to retire early, or to live sufficiently comfortably that they can stop working? Apparently millions have given affirmative answers to both of those questions.

When Clarence Thomas became a justice during the administration of George H. W. Bush, Mr. Thomas told his law clerks when he began his tenure, “I ain’t evolving.” By that statement he wanted them to know he would not be like Justices Blackmun and Suter, also Republicans appointed by Republican presidents. He would remain a rock-ribbed conservative as long as he served as a member of the nation’s highest judicial body. He most certainly has remained true to his word.

Nearly all legislatures in nearly every nation on earth have too many plutocrats to enable Big Picture legislation to pass which benefits the middle and lower classes as much as the relatively small percentage of upper class citizens. However, in an evenly divided legislature, too many proletarians can stymie wise legislation for anyone, let alone for everyone. Radical conservatives and radical liberals are anathema to moderate legislation being enacted.

That nature of the backgrounds of those who serve in the legislative and executive branches of all levels of government has a powerful effect on the nature of decisions those legislators or executives make. Most people elected to office tend to be successful in whatever is their occupation or profession, and in addition, many of them tend to be wealthy.

An old aphorism declares that the wheels of justice grind slowly. With respect to the various legal investigations being made into the dealings and finaglings of our former president before, during, and after his term in office, but especially with respect to January 6, 2021, it will no doubt be many months or a few years before Mr. Trump is subpoenaed to appear in a courtroom.

Five minutes ago I just finished reading a guest editorial by Joseph Turow, a professor of media systems at the University of Pennsylvania. He wrote an explanation of how, when anyone calls an 800 number about any product, the conversation may be recorded (for training purposes, don’t you know?). Then, by the marvels (malevolence?) of AI, Artificial Intelligence, the information of your specific type of personality is sold to advertisers, so that when you call another 800 number, their voice-recognition software will funnel you to the type of sales representative who is most capable to succeed at selling you whatever it is you are inquiring about. (You thought those long waits were because there were so many other calls ahead of you.)

Why are whites most opposed to teaching young people the history of slavery and racial attitudes in America, and Blacks are most in favor of doing so? Why are Hispanics and Asians more favorable than whites to divulging previous trends about race in America? Do whites have something to hide? Are there features of racial history in the USA which might display whites in a bad light?