When my friends and I were growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, we regarded California as if it were a foreign country–if not another planet. The widespread speculation was that California was one big movie/TV studio, that had beaches for the thousands of blond-haired surfers who spoke some extremely hip language, and had adoring, bikini-clad girls clinging to them.
Yet living here soon taught me that, though this perception of the Golden State was in some measure true for the cities and towns on the Pacific, a trip 30 – 40 miles inland exposed a culture that wasn’t altogether different than that of Central Pennsylvania, or Central Alabama for that matter.
I bring this up because of the recent announcement (see above) that the University of California, with its 10 campuses, won five Nobel Prizes recently. UC Santa Barbara alone has 11 Nobel laureates, nine of which are in physics and materials science. That’s a lot of intelligence floating around in a city whose population is only about 89,000.
Per my point, however, 2GreenEnergy “headquarters” is about 30 miles inland from Santa Barbara. Where they have people speaking French and discussing quantum physics, we have saloons and rodeos.
I’m not complaining (too much). It’s still a great place to live, and if I want to find someone to converse with on the subject of quarks and neutrinos, they’re only a short drive away.
Here’s a good reminder of how the United States is regarded today.
No, it’s not how like it was just a few years ago when we were a land of law, and we had allies all around the countries that supported honesty and democracy around the world.
Now, the leaders of Canada, Panama, and Greenland all fear for their safety, and the world lives in fear of the insanity into which the U.S. has descended.
Hardcore Trump supporters are having a great time watching their hero illegally invade other countries and commit whatever moral atrocity he performed the day before.
The rest of the world is in shock over the fact that Trump has turned this country into an authoritarian state.
It’s easy to understand the thinking of the lady in the cartoon here.
As the author of the words at left suggests, the Founding Fathers probably did give us too much credit.
But to be fair, they couldn’t have possibly imagined that the descendants of their countrymen would have, 250 years later, devolved into a nation in which criminal thugs would be held the highest regard by a country full of ignorant and hateful people.
When we Boomers were growing up in the last half of the 20th Century, crime bosses were viewed as scum, even when they somehow avoided dying in prison. Now they have taken over the country, and the greatest of all time lives in the White House.
What Has Happened in the United States Recently
Current Events Can Be Depressing
The United States Descends into Darkness
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