Why? Why? Why?

And a few more whys on top of those

Anyone who has ever had kids knows they go through a phase during which they constantly are asking “why.”

I have not outgrown that phase.

So, today, I only have whys for you.

• Why are all our ex-presidents on the sidelines or mostly on the sidelines at this critical point in our history?

• Why are our retired generals not speaking out as the military is debased, politicized and weakened?

• Why do people back into parking spaces?

• Why don’t people care that the president and members of his cabinet are stealing us blind, are by far, by far, the most corrupt administration in history?

• No…why? Journalists, opposition politicians, average Americans, patriots, law enforcement…everyone should care about this. They should care because it’s outrageous. They should care because it undermines our system and gives influence to the highest bidder. And they should care because Trump only has immunity for official acts and there is no way to construe corruption that is explicitly forbidden by the Constitution as official.

• Why aren’t people demanding that the US government not be allowed to contract with white supremacists who are actively trying to help our enemies while undermining U.S. interests? And yes, I’m looking at you, Elon.

• Why isn’t there a movement to ban crypto from any use by the US government or any officials associated with the US government? Untraceable money should not be something we have anything to do with. For that matter, why aren’t people actively working to ban crypto (which is all a giant scam to begin with)?

• Why do some leaders at home and abroad still try to placate Trump who is a.) a lame duck and b.) ends up abusing all who try to work with him? When will they learn?

• Why can’t people remember to use their turn signals? Or for those using GPS, why can’t GPS do it for them?

• Why do people fall for slight modulations in tone from a guy like Marco Rubio and give him the benefit of the doubt (as when he just spoke at the Munich Security Conference) for not sounding quite as thuggish as J.D. Vance? The message was the same—condescending, underscoring the U.S. is no longer a good partner for Europe, full of white supremacist messages, light on any mentions of real threats we face (like from Russia or China)? The mainstream media go easy on these guys so they can maintain access and the rest of us…the rest of the world…suffers as a consequence. For further proof of this see Rubio’s kissing up to Orban immediately after he departed Munich? Smooth fascism is not better than crude fascism. In many ways it is worse.

• Why do tech bros—already widely despised—not realize that the Trump administration’s embrace of AI and other new technologies to create a next gen police state and the corrupt deals they are cutting with them will take their already horrible reputations and make them worse…setting them up for a big backlash in the post Trump world that is (Higher Powers willing) just around the corner?

• Why are the Olympics even televised the old-fashioned way anymore? Do people still watch in “prime time?” Is “prime time” still a thing anymore? I follow in my feeds what is happening and when something interesting happens, I download whatever few minutes of highlights or contest I’m interested in.

• Is it possible we were all dropped on our heads simultaneously and that we are all suffering from the same kind of delusion or mass brain injury and that none of this craziness is really happening? I mean seriously? RFK says germs won’t affect him because he spent so much time snorting coke off of toilet seats and Kristi Noem is having her boyfriend fire Coast Guard officers for not taking proper care of Noem’s blankie if as the boyfriend is also scamming off his ties to DHS? And all that is ok?

• Why, I ask for the millionth time, aren’t Americans marching in the streets as never before in protest of the serial travesties of this government?

• Why can’t people grapple with the idea that the impact of AI will be complicated and hard to predict—since AI is not just one thing but is really short-hand for a technological upheaval on the scale of or bigger in consequence than the industrial revolution? And why do people by the overstated, self-serving views of evangelists or the extreme, often ignorant views of doomsayers? AI will do a great deal of good…advance mankind in many ways…and produce massive labor market disruption and, in all likelihood, drive both economic and political inequality to unprecedented heights. It can democratize us and empower police states, produce great innovation and remake society in ways for which we are unprepared. Furthermore, it is going to happen much faster than any prior such upheaval (of which there have been very few on a similar scale in recorded history). We need philosophers to be debating how we want it to be used for our benefit before we deploy not after. But it won’t happen so, buckle up. We’re going to learn on the fly and make many mistakes along the way.

• Why do people still use the stock market or the bond market or GDP growth as metrics for how well we’re doing when none of them actually reflect that at all?

• Why, speaking of the prior point, does anyone believe any statistics coming from an administration that lies constantly and that has attacked the independence and resources of the historic providers of those statistics?

• Why do people continue to give so much credence to the coverage of a “paper of record” that has serially underplayed the threats we face, normalized the actual real-life villains who have attacked our institutions and values, and, at the same time, provided unfair, unflattering coverage of promising alternative views (Mamdani, AOC, etc.)? Why don’t they realize the role it plays in perpetuating the views of the entrenched, super-empowered establishment?

• Why would anyone support enterprises like X or other media outlets owned by men (yes, it’s all men) who are twisting them to serve their political purposes and self-interests? Seriously, we all have plenty of options for getting our news…why stick to old corrupted ones (or new corrupted ones) out of habit?

• Why are so many commentators and analysts that I personally find deeply annoying and of dubious value-added so popular?

• Why is the American foreign policy establishment so committed to maintaining the approaches and institutions that have guided and perpetuated it for so long when the U.S. has such a lousy foreign policy track record?

• Why do people not care more that we just let the only remaining strategic nuclear weapons arms control pact in existence lapse and that we are entering a new nuclear arms race?

Why? I ask you, why?

Ok. I’ll stop there. I have more questions. But we’ll save them for another day?