When Donald Trump became president, my attitude was: well this will be a problem, but it’s an aberration and in four years, how much harm can he do? It turned out that he could do more to tear things apart than I thought he could.

When Joe Biden became president, I breathed deeply and was certain that things would now start to right themselves, although it would take a little time to undo the harm Trump had done. It turned out that it was unclear that things would right themselves, and that it would take much longer than I had thought it would because the Trump years were so detrimental.

The result was that on Jan 1, 2021, I was certain we were on the right path and that (seeing what happened over that entire year) on Jan 1, 2022 I hoped we were on the right path. Today, January 8, 2023 (Happy 88th, Elvis!), I am concerned that there is no right path.

I believe that 2023, or at least the first half of 2023, will be frustrating, confusing, dangerous, and fascinating. Only one of those four characteristics is positive, and 1 to 3 is a poor ratio.

I will watch the House tomorrow to see how the proposed McCarthy rules package is treated. My guess is that there might be a repeat of the Speaker chaos – after all, four defects from the Republicans on the rules package will block its passage.

The radical right wing House will not be able to put into effect any legislation that does not pass the Democratic Senate, so not much of a danger there. But the danger will be inaction – nothing will pass the House that can pass the Senate, and important matters (debt ceiling increase, appropriations) won’t be moved along at all. Simple paralysis.

In the meantime, we are going to be facing interminable investigations which will go nowhere, and we will beset with problems that are beyond the jurisdiction of Congress. For example, continued and increasing weather disasters, and foreign problems caused by the new right wing Israeli government, by the continuing Russian-Ukrainian war, by China putting more pressure on Taiwan, and so forth.

A bumpy ride, for sure. Hopefully, not more than that. And I hope we all remain safe and sound. Reminds me of that oft-stated Chinese proverb: May you live in interesting times…..but only by Zoom.

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Has this young blog become a broken record already? There is just so much to worry about.

I have to have more varied content.

By the way, last year I read 106 books, and I should at least name the ones I liked the best. My reading is largely coming from my collection of Penguins, so I am not reading what you are reading. I read 3 books the first week of this year: “The Roots of Heaven” by Romain Gary, a 1950s novel set in French Africa, where protection of elephants from big game hunters and poachers get mixed up with anti-colonialist revolts (I had a hard time keeping the characters straight, and the books is dense, but its message is interesting and the book was apparently quite influential when it came out first); “Foreigners” by Leo Walmsley, a fictionalized memoir of the author’s early life in a fishing town in North Yorkshire; C.S. Forester’s “Brown on Resolution”, a short and terrific story of a woman with an unwanted pregnancy and her goal for her son to follow his father (whom she only met one time, and he knows nothing about) into the British navy.

I am now reading “The Green Mare”, a French farce by Marcel Ayme. So far, it is quite clever and not at all worth spending time on.