I've been on a roll since the new year 2026 reading a lot of books. So far already since January I've read 10 books: The Mammoth Hunters [by Jean M. Auel], Van Gogh The Passionate Eye [Pascal Bonafoux], Plato's Symposium, Caesar's War on Gaul, Lolita by Nabokov, Words of Wisdom, The Nibelungenlied, Cousin Bette by Balzac, The New Grove Mozart, and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I'm also currently reading The Portable Medieval Reader and A History of China. My reading has stayed mostly in the realms of fiction, non-fiction, western canon but I will sometimes still read science fiction, more modern day science fiction as well as the golden age sci fi stuff.
All the reading has been keeping me sharp and keeping me going. The state of our country isn't good and now all of a sudden we're on day 5 in a war against Iran with our partner Israel. What does reading all these great books of the western canon tell you about the political nature of the times we're currently living in? As Hegel would put it, "We learn from history that we don't learn from history." As bad as Trump and the MAGA Republican tinfoil hat crowd are, we have seen this before and we have been here before.
Even this war against Iran. We're shooting at them with all these airstrikes and we're hoping for a regime change with no boots on the ground as of yet, which is unheard of and has never happened before. Well, this scene looks a lot like Bush's declaration of war in Afghanistan, but at least Bush got approval from Congress to go to war. With Trump, he declared it and we were instantly in war. It's an interesting time to be alive in the United States, being someone of my age, of my education, of my economic and social class.
You see, you could argue that Americans like me, American citizens with good education, good family structure, they're doing okay economically, they're eating well, they're exercising, they're getting entertained, they have friends and family, they read books, etc, well you might say that Trump, what Trump does, and the new war against Iran, maybe it might not affect them as much as you think.
The reality is that the Trump regime has had a profound influence on practically every facet of American culture, politics, entertainment, and governance. I believe, personally, that ever since President Trump was elected, since even the first time, American culture has largely degenerated and gotten worse and worse. I could even see it among the largely minority employees and management at the retail grocery job I worked at for years. You could see that because they loved Trump and praised him, they wanted to become like Trump, which included becoming more hateful and full of cruelty towards others around them. For them Trump wasn't just a symbol of American conservatism, he was the example to show them that it was okay to be a racist, to be hateful, to be cruel, and show it anywhere and anytime they wanted. Yeah, it was that bad there folks. That was just a market. Imagine how people who love Trump would act in a mob [January 6], or in Congress as leaders in the White House. Houston, we have a problem.
Which brings us to the end of February 2026, a new war with Iran. This war is like the perfect foil for Trump because he was already in trouble for the killings of two US Citizens with his gestapo-esque police force ICE [Rene Good, and Alex Pretti who were called terrorists by Kristi Nome leader of Homeland Security] and in addition Trump was in trouble for his too close ties to child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Also, there's the fact that the economy under Trump has slowed down a lot, there's a lot less jobs, food and gas prices are very high, and companies are putting more and more money and effort into AI [stupid idea] when in reality, Americans are struggling to pay rent, eat well, and find a job that gives them enough cash to live in a house or apartment. Trump's problem as President as always, has been affordability, as Democrats would say. Trump inherited a robust economy from Biden, and now when you go to Fatburger you're paying $24 for a burger, fries, and a soda.
It almost seems at times like what Trump does is seemingly random. Which makes you wonder what is really going on in this world, what systems are controlling what's going on behind the scenes. For example, you notice how not once has Trump pushed back against Putin despite Putin's war crimes against Ukraine. So it makes you wonder, what does Putin have on Trump? Is Trump really a pedophile rapist like the newly reported story said? If its true, then we have to seriously discuss and decide what kind of a country we are and what kind of a country we should be. Because if we allow a guy who's done that to be our President and get us into a war then we have fundamentally failed as a democratic experiment.
It helps to be somewhat of a cynic right now. In a way, to stay informed, you pretty much have to read the news every 24-48 hours or watch the news on TV daily, just to stay up to date on basic information, but in reality, you still have to question everything, not only Trump and his administration and their actions, but also the news and media itself, as well as yourself. Henry David Thoreau has this great quote where he says all the news stories are all things that have happened in other super old news stories from other times and years. That was a stunning revelation because in some sense, yes, it's very true.
But why is this, why is that quote true? I think a small part of being a cynic is the feeling and knowing that something is amiss, something is not right, even though you don't know what it is, something like a conspiracy, who's to say that there isn't something like that going on right now and/or has been going on since the foundation of this state. Like I said, you have to question everything, even yourself and your own beliefs, even if you have a low education level, play videogames, and are more concerned about being 'turnt at da club.' There's something undeniable about the current times we're living in that has an eerie similarity to the past, something we don't understand, or perhaps will never be granted the right to understand. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!
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