Category: Uncategorized

For purposes of gauging the anthropological and sociological development of humanity, academic specialists have usefully divided its long history into designated “Ages,” relevant to the respective progress of its physical and cultural development. Thus we read of the Prehistoric Ages, the “Stone Age,”” the ” Iron and Bronze Ages,” the Pre and Post, “Industrial Ages, the “Middle and “Dark” Ages, the “Age of Enlightenment,” and, finally, the”Modern Age,” The mere cursoryreview of such conveniently denominated periods will readily reveal the ubiquitous advancement of Hunkind toward his present state.

For the thematic purposes of this writing, we have editorially chosen to designate the presenting portion of the “Modern Age” as the “Age of Trump,” or, dynamically, the “Dystopian Age,” by reason of the latter’s consistent Orwellian distortion of factual reality and its all-pervadingl dissonance.

To be clear, we have selectively employed the phrase “dystopian society” as one in which people live in insecurity or fear, depression, and misery under the control of a government that maintains its own perfection, but, in actuality, is painfully dehumanizing. Such a bizarrely nightmarish scenario is in its zenith of irrationality and level of moral caricature as we speak. For the first (and, hopefully, the last) time, empirical reality has been rendered acceptably subjective and acceptably viewed via an analogous fun house-distorting mirror.

The toxic etiology of such an insalubrious state of affairs is difficult to rationally tolerate, albeit, surprisingly, simple to account for, based upon the ubiquitous folk proverb, “The fish stinks (or, “rots”) from the head” [“piscus primus a capitolefoefet,” from Erasmus’ Adages]. Such consequential decline mandates a compliant society; o unhappily found in the Nation’s substantial underbelly of poorly informed and inadequately educated, grievance-inclined populists, financed by profit-loving, anti-regulation industrialists.

The fateful elevation of Donald J. Trump to the Nation’s Oval Office was not merely a defeat for principled, mainstream American citizens, but, as it soon evinced, an unexpected and effectively profound reversal in the ongoing development and maturation of human society. Human progress suffered while the populist underbelly of our Nation celebrated Trump’s dystopic and megalomaniac denigration of empirical reality, in favor of his atavistic and non-rational concept of “alternate facts,” and a primitive, subjective, and self-serving “alternate reality.”

Irrational, self-serving conspiracy ideation replaced empirical facts, and utilitarian reality orientation was overridden to comport with the transmogrification of gto irrational ideation, founded on selfish economic interest; butressed by an all-out autocratic attack upon the public media and higher education; the latter, reprehensible policies, historically common to would-be autocrats, as publicly declared by Donald Trump, have historically consulted the identical recipe. The egregious, societally backward results have been, unfortunately, outlined in previous writings and universally elsewhere.

The historic operation of our tri-partite polity, the significance of our usefully competitive two-party system, and the responses to occurring events were now governed by egocentric impulse and amorally perceived, ignorant criteria, rather than on factual rectitude and accepted historical precedent. National standards and public policy were predictably distorted by irresponsible populist sources of consumption, rather than by reliable news sources.

In sum, the evaluation of political issues declined to the status of chosen perspectives, rather than factual reality. The reality of the election was not based upon the popular competition of rational principles, but empirically reduced to a competition between public grifters and guileful demagogues. Irrational conspiracy theory, bigotry and competing populist propaganda memes were the controverted contents of the election during the Trump fiasco. The competition was, sadly, not between relevant political and economic principles but between competing, disparate ideologies of basic reality.

It is our hope and expectation that the noisome fog of Trump-inspired dystopia will be dispelled upon his salutary retirement from office and that the beneficial course of rational and salubrious progress towards more rational a nd just governance will historically and beneficially resume.

-p.

The reader is requested to recall the lighted exhibits installed in the walls of the New York Museum of Natural History, portraying animal life in its respective recreated natural environment. The designated name is specifically indicated, and the museum goer is free to furnish their personal reaction and enunciated response.

For the specific purposes of this writing, the reader is respectfully requested to replicate, as possible, a typical museum visitor’s inclination to view our presented diorama, with similarly curious objectivity, in an effort to enhance the intented, objective context of this writing; despite any previous relevant, censorious commentary, To the extent possible our present intent is to express an objective visualization of the displayed thematic subject in an analogously depicted setting of a museum diorama. In return, we will strive for literary objectivity, without any expression of rectitude or indication of subtle schadenfreude, whether or not the same are morally justified. What is intended is an objective transmission of the sui-generis persona of the sitting President and our perception of the personal cost attributed to such unique attributes.

It is our considered view, that the contextual protagonist, the President of the United States, remains, contemporaneously, of the same inclination as the “enfant terrible” described in our writings concerning our perception of his early life; viz., capable of kicking his mother in the shins to garner desperately needed personal attention, despite the predictable punitive response; Trump is perceived by us, in his maturity, as, identically the same immature supplicant for exclusive attention, (regardless of consequential cost). His lifelong need for universal recognition as an admired “winner” has apparently enjoyed a lifetime of exclusive rumination.. This syndromic life pattern is empirically accompanied by a lifelong sensitivity and militant response to phenomena appearing offensive to that existentially vital goal, whether empirically based or conceptually construed.

Such demanding lifetime syndrome mandates a “full-time of active surveillance., leaving scant consideration for empirical or objective truth. It is relevantly notable that Donald J. Trump has relevantly derogated objective fac to more personally useful, “alternate facts,” to serve his delusional aspirations to be admired or publicly celebrated as a”winner.” The countless number of dumpster-full examples of cost to the Nation and its international standing have previously been recounted and are universally known. What may not be adequately known is the extent of our presumption of the extreme personal cost attendant upon such personally imposed, external aberration, not readily discernible from the referenced, external, museum-like examination.

What is often described by the media and the multitude of Trump’s detractors is the image of a limited “bubble” in which the Donald safely and protectively resides as a contextual explanation for, his singularly bizarre perceptions and his demonstrable incapacity; Trump appears to be serving as a life-term prisoner ( no parole) in his all protective, myopic”bubble” of neuroticly fueled, rationally unexamined ambiance.

We can rationally, presume the existence of the exorbitant, life-altering cost of merely “keeping one’s head above the water,” in a daily Presidential deluge of challenges, taxing the most emotionally adjusted individual; but Donald J. Trump has irrefutably demonstrated that he falls abysmally short of such admirable status and conspicuously reacts to presenting stimuli, with demonstrably bizarre and irrationally based response, doubtlessly metastisized by his ample inventory of syxtemic egomania and egoistic neuroticism.

We can find no conceivable room for humanistic tolerance or acceptability in Trump’s Midas-like gargantuan and loveless accumulation of gold, nor of his inept iteration of the hapless, buck-naked, publicly parading Emperor without clothes. Our concern is centered upon the threatened endurance of our besieged, beloved Democratic Republic, in light of this highlighted, eternally frustrated neurotic and maliciously intended despoiler.

-p.

We have chosen to reprise a subject of existential importance, whose nature may be passed over in the extant madness of current events. The roiling issues of a democratically offensive Presidency, the abominable madness of xenophobic lunacy, the economic woes, and the reprehensible financial inequality of the Nation’s citizenry, the questionable morality of our political representatives are, individually, all- absorbing and consequential; however, at our ultimate peril, we dare not lose our sense of fundamental societal perspective. Current events, regardless of number and relatively perceived import, are empirically temporal; civilizational and societal matters have contrasting enduring consequences

The subject of our exponentially impactful, societal transmogrification from the salubrious state of personalized communication and interaction to one of singularity and personal detachment, deemed to be existentially alarming, such that we have chosen to reprise our recent statement of such contextual concern.

Our overriding anxiety relates to society’s contrasted rate of scientific (i.e., computer-digital) advancements compared to human knowledge; most specifically, its empirically dehumanizing impact. In our view, concern for the optimum health of society clearly surpasses the ability to maintain conveniently brief contact by digital device or facile automation. As we see it, the empirical increase in robotic facility, varies inversely with natural societal interaction and resultant humanism.

We have eternally urged the precedence of societal consideration of “should” as a responsible prerequisite to the felt, consequential challenge of “could.” To put it in different vocabulary, we are deeply concerned about the rate of digital progress above responsible consideration of humanistic and societal impact and knowledge. The cogent differences between “wise” and “smart,” “facile” or “convenient” appear to have far less humanistic consequences than the state of non-social and lonely. The trade-off between a fulfilled and socially satisfactory life and cold singularity would, logically and empirically, seem easy to evaluate.

In sum, we cannot let the Trump-MAGA, Epstein, Bitcoin, Venezuela, Immigration, Tariffs-inflated prices, gerrymandering, White House desercration, SCOTUS degradation, federal civil service holocaust, vaccine misrepresentation, health insurance threats, and the other plentifully cogent issues of the day, obscure the metastasizing, existential impact of Silicon Valley upon Society, Mainstrean American citizens are responsibly urged to both, “walk and chew gum,” simultaneously.

-p.

It takes a singular act of grace

Showing care for another’s plight,

Putting aside one’s personal concern

And entering another’s angst

A moment of temporal self-disregard

That will credibly suffice as “Grace.”

The voyage to another’s thoughts

The election to make a responsive trek

To another’s temporal sadness

Reveals the worth of Homo Sapiens

In its spiritual potential to

Render mute self-centered care

And reveal his skill at systemic grace,

-p.

[Leonard N, Shapiro NYC, 12/26/25]

It is quite disappointing and notably painful to acknowledge that the venerable intentions of America’s Founders have yet to be empirically realized, and that our “radical” nation exists as an avatar of liberty and democracy in inspiration and aspiration,( more than as established reality.

A Nation, founded upon enlightened and humanistic morality, governed, “by and for the People,” in which every vote counts, where “no one is above the law,” where equality of rights and of opportunity are inherent and legal, where there are no privileged classes, where the public good is exalted above other (profitable) considerations and citizens possess the sole right to determine private and personal matters, without sanction from government (or Church), simply, does not empirically exist.

Our venerable Nation, in historically coignitive dissonance, has shown itself to fail to comply with its eternally avowed representations regarding liberty and equality. The foregoing declaration is irrefutably empirical, contrary to its eternal representations of the virtues of a systemic democracy, where true equity and justice are inarguably prevalent. A brief, presumably unnecessary reference to the historic blemishes on the countenance of true democracy is contextually relevant and, summarized below, preceding our thematic remarks on the virtue and promise of our unique Nation, notwithstanding such transgressions

(a) The history of black chattel slavery may be the most egregious and discordant feature of our purported democratic polity, shamefully followed by the cruel and immoral practices of “Jim Crow” prejudice, governmental and individual.

The “Indian Removal Laws” under President Andrew Jackson, and the Japanese interment during the Second World War, plus, more recently, the Nation’s Trumpist, Gestapo-like policy practiced against the Nation’s residential Hispanic community, based upon an outrageous xenophobic neurosis.

(b) The irrefutable and outrageous demonstration of inequality of application of the law. The President, himself reveling in his hubristic exercise of unauthorized and unlimited autocratic power, despite a myriad of felony convictions and Federal Indictments. To add spice to the un-American and immoral stew, the pardoning of publicly demonstrated criminals who committed felonies in his political interest.

(c) The President and his horde of MAGA sycophantic interference with the equal vote, thus ubiquitously distorting the public will, as well as the definitional purpose of the Constitutional democratic franchise.

In light of the historical validity of the above, matters, repugnant to the existence of our American Nation as an inarguable exception to autocratic regimes such as exist in Russia, Venezuela, Hungary, and North Korea, we were ultimately successful in ascribing a notably relevant distinction; i.e., our Nation has regularly demonstrated a beneficial aspiration to achieve the political tenets of an exemplary democracy; such nations as China, Hungary and North Korea have not.

Our Nation’s avowed, but delayed, benevolent aspirations, presumably, based upon certain atavistic features of the developing human persona, appear to be taking some time; however, we remain faithfully hopeful that the intended political context of the venerable Founders will be achieved before long.

-p.

The Jewish holiday of Hannukkah is, in essence, the annual celebration of a historic military victory over the powerful Hellenic (Seleucid) invaders of ancient Jerusalem in the latter’s martial attempt to politically and culturally exterminate the extant Hebrew people. History shows that this aspiration has persisted but has notably proven unsuccessful over the ensuing centuries.

In earlier writing, we have observed that the holiday’s thematically celebrated military victory empirically permitted the survival of a people among whom the impactful advent of World Christianity was born. We have observed such an ecumenical dynamic in the historical Jewish holiday. ( see: plinyblog # M. 419) but thematically have omitted the apocryphal “miracle” responsible for the universal designation of the holiday, as “The Festival of Lights,”

As stated in the Old Testament, the successful military achievement of the modest Maccabean Army against the powerful Seleucid invaders was followed by the miracle of eight days of light from lanterns, containing only one day’s supply of oil. Celebrants traditionally eat commemoratively prepared foods, fried in oil, such as potato pancakes (“latkes”).

Students of human history will undoubtedly perceive the universal message implicit in the thematic holiday’s “Miracle of the Lights,” symbolizing the universality of Man’s eternal aspiration for the light of cultural and personal advancement.

The contrasting symbols of light and dark have ubiquitously represented the contrasting and competing forces of good and evil, life and death, knowledge and ignorance, since the ancient days of the Persian prophet, Zoroaster. The miracle of the lights, celebrated by the Hanukkah observants, is, metaphysically, an homage to the endurance of civilized reason and human awareness.

Before Copernicus, the prevailing belief was that, since Man was “the Center of the Universe,” the Sun orbited around the Earth; in reverse order to the empirically d valid “heliocentric Theory” of the obverse. Humanity’s laudable period of dedicated substitution of empirical reality for the “dark age”. superstitions” was appropriately termed “The Age of Enlightenment;” light replacing the former dark reality of ignorance. “Throwing light on the subject has been the universal aspiration for a reasonable explanation to be found for a previously unsolved problem.

Hanukkah accommodates the ultimate preference of human reason, founded upon empirical knowledge, contrasted with Dark Ages ignorance, manifested by the ubiquitous persistence of atavistic ignorance and superstition.

Happy Holidays!

-p,

Students of antiquity will predictably know that a “palimpsest” is the covering over of an erased document or parchment for the purpose of later writing, but of which traces of the erased original still remain.

We have chosen to employ the titled analogy to illustrate the sophomoric perception that, notwithstanding the earnest resolve of the mainstream citizen to adhere to his high expectations of principled conduct, the inexorable repetition of immoral conduct by President Donald Trump will effectively result in an enduring diminution of America’s traditional principles. To the contrary, we feel confident that the dedicated, moral, and humanistic citizen, notwithstanding such quotidian demonstrations of executive miscreance, will enduringly retain his personal perception of rectitude. The morally directed citizen will predictably cling to his innate values and systemic humanistic inclinations, as dictated by his benevolent life-long self-image.

The American mainstream perceptions of the actions of our contextual, self-indulgent, and delusionally egocentric sitting President are seen for what they empirically are, as opposed to their tactically worded explanations; the latter, amounting, analogically to a false and unconvincing palimpsest of the delusionally chosen action, not rationally acceptable to the informed and savvy citizen. In the singular case of Donald J. Trump, the eternal motivation is invariably based upon his delusional drive to be publicly acknowledged as a “winner.”

The fundamental dynamic behind Trump’s absurd, quotidian remarks and erratically despicable actions is his singularly delusional perception of objective reality, engendered by his lifelong, myopic, and singular aspiration to attain the neurotically based status of a declared “winner.” Any sophomoric explanations, tactical or otherwise, warrant summarily justified erasure from the parchment of empirical history and the reinstatement of the analogous process of the ancient palimpsest.

As is the case with such ancient procedures, unhappily, the erasures will be endurably and shamefully visible.

-p.

Mankind would do better

To avow that all respiring co-tenants

residing on the green, peripatetic planet,

Are, in common, Earthly dust eaters

From protozoa to platypus.

Felis domesticus to Bonobo Arborist

All dine on the Earth’s airborne menu

The aerial detritus of past performance, of

Earth’s theatrical presentation of planetary life

The silent thinkers and the dynamic doers

Of every prismatic reflection

The conglomerate of planetary respirants

Ineluctably,  fellow dust-eaters

-p.

[Leonard N. Shapiro, Kingston N,Y,2/22/25

As disconcerted and angry as we may be, relative to the myriad criminal, unconstitutional, inhumane, and immoral acts of our sitting President, our fear for the future of the American Nation is paramount. To describe our trepidation in analogical terms, we would liken its nature to a parent’s concern for his young child, daily driven over bumpy country roads by a reputed, inebriated School Bus driver.

The populist election of Donald Trump boded well, solely, for those captains of industry who sociopathically exalt profits over human and planetary salubrity. Donald J. Trump, declaring the demagogic “snake oil” meme, “Make America Great Again,” From the first day following his inauguration, Trump incompetently assisted America’s enemies by virtue of his overriding neurotic aspiration for perceived public admiration and personal grandification. Future historians will have the pragmatic benefit of countless dumpster-fulls of fetid detritus engendered by his egocentric delusion and empirically hapless incapability.

Nonetheless, as egregious as his opprobrious acts and policies have proved to be, our responsive outrage has been fundamentally overshadowed by an abject fear for the endurance of our democratic Nation, founded upon his discernable insanity. Trump’s obvious lack of reality orientation, motivated by his self-serving delusion, has proven to be palpable proof of his evident lack of mental health. We would briefly recount several instances, illustrative of the basis for our thematic declarations.

(a) During the course of his campaign for the Presidency, Trump publicly announced that he would rule (“the first day”) as a dictator. The same was an untoward and highly inappropriate declaration in a democratic election.

(b) As President, Trump outrageously claimed his intention to acquire Denmark’s Greenland, make our sovereign neighbor, Canada, a State of the Union, take back the Panama Canal, and rename the historic “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Bay of America.” The dystopic assertions are a diagnosable denial of history and the right of sovereignty.

(c) In a Nation historically featuring two major competing political parties, he has been engaged in implementing his paranoid declaration to seek “retribution” against members of the historically competing Democratic Party.

(d) Contrary to the anti-monarchial theme of the Founders, Donald Trump egotistically installed gold leaf throughout the White House in the manner of the past European Monarchist Palaces, he was a European Monarch, a style eschewed by the Founders. We are advised that the White House restrooms have also been thus enriched. He has arrogated to himself the monomaniacal authority to destroy the historic East Wing of the Nation’s (“The People’s) White House to construct a large and Ballroom, named after himself; in addition to its irrational hubris and philisophical travesty to American history, the progect will cost many millions of dollars, at a time when many Americans are living “paycheck to paycheck”.

(e) Donald J. Trump has unprecedentedly chosen to raise a private, masked army to harass and incarcerate Hispanic Americans, incarcerating and banishing them, as claimed criminals without a modicum of due process. He has also, in illegal and kinglike fashion, used the Nation’s military for his perceived domestic necessity. These latter acts, justified by “Executive Order: are irrational and contrary to the basic tenets of our Republican Democracy, as well as notably erratic.

(f) Without mandatory Congressional authority, Trump has declared War against Venezuela, bombing small boats on the high seas and murdering its sailors, on the spurious grounds that such warlike action is interdicting the importation of drugs.

(g) Donald J. Trumo has demonstrated not only his delusional hubris and dystopic sdense of reality, as shown by “(e) and “(f)”, above, and futher demonstrated by his delusional ideation and public declaration that the Nation’s economy is in excellent condition and the cost of consumer goods is lower than ever; the latter two irrational declarations, empirically far from the contrary sane observation that both are decidedly false; and notably, the result of his irrational and ignorant policies, most especially his inappropriate imposition of tariffs on our trading partners

(h) His unauthorized declaration of War against Venezuela, including the bombing of small boats and the illegal murder of Venezuelan sailors.

(i) Publicly and bizarrely announcing his felt entitlement to the Nobel Prize, despite his warlike and pathological acts set forth above, particularly, “(g)” and “(h).” Arranging to be publicly awarded (non-existent) “FIFA Peace Prize” his public declaration that the thousands of young soldiers interred at Arlington National Cemetery were “suckers” and “losers” and, emblematic of his warped persona, asked, “What was in it for them?”

(j) Hubristically and delusionally changing the name of the Kennedy Cultural and Arts Center to include “The Trump Center,” whereas empirically, the hubristic, egocentric neurotic deserves the equal cultural and artistic recognition as “Godzilla.

Article 25 of the U.S. Constitution clearly states the procedure for the removal of a disabled President. We would urge Congress to utilize this provision before Trump and his side-show menagerie of Cabinet Advisors demonstrate more grave damage to our beloved Democratic Republic.

-p.

• Novel by William Faulkner; taken from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.”

We include ourselves among the great many who mourn the ever-increasing societal trend toward personal insularity. In our view, such insalubrious change is the predictably empirical root and branch of ubiquitous discontent, and conceivably, the requisite element for the recent, unprecedented election of an amoral and repugnant personality to the office of the traditionally august American Presidency

Our thematically worrisome anti-societal trend is plainly evidenced by the observable decline in communal interactive functions such as picnics, barbeques, get-togethers, and community outings; and, notably, the rare, if at all still existent, practice of meaningful social and political conversation.

In contradistinction to the history of societal participation in communally oriented tasks for mutual benefit, individuals have observably withdrawn into a reductive, personalized, private world of their own. This latter development is empirically productive of feelings of loneliness and insecurity and ultimately, of personal discontent. It sadly appears that traditionally communal pleasures such as picnics, barbeques, square dances, and multiple other areas of beneficial, interactive participations have ubiquitously surrendered to preferento insular, personally reductive aspirations, designed exclusively for material success and occasional, ephemeral entertainment.

Regular readers of this blogspace are doubtlessly aware that we emphatically attribute the toxic etiology of such negative trends to the inadequate (and unsatisfying) mode of interactive communication, attributable to the notably impersonal “smart phone,” and the consequent diminution of emotionally required, recognizable, and self-affirming interaction.

Among the myriad of distressing sequelae of such degradation of interactive relations was the universal accommodation to such personally less satisfying, facile “advance” social exchange, and its resultant hobbling of the pathway for the humanistic need to effectively share thoughts and experiences. The existential element in enduring societal relationships is the empirical sharing of feelings and experiences, now significantly minimized by the inadequately cold digital exchange transmitted to small, lighted, handheld devices, often received without temporal relevance.

The ensuing trend of societally injurious isolation is empirically evidenced by, among other things, the costly emotional loss of a vital, healthy, self-affirming interaction with others and the myriad of personal benefits, social and psychological, derived from shared communal living; the diminution of the latter empirically resulting to feelings of personal isolation and insularity.

To be fair, the pandemic played its concommitantly injurious part in the necessitating of the prophylactic isolation of members of the community aggravated by the disease- preventative masking of individual identity; however, we are of the view that the insalubrious trend to anti-social insularity is notably, the consequence of the foolhardy human inclination to favor perceived facile mechanical devices, thoughtlessly, to the societally harmful and unthinking exclusion of emotionally required, expressive modes of personal interaction.

The Pinocchio-like, thoughtless seduction of computer facility, metastasized into a pernicious virus, amounting to a universal desire for further impersonal facility by way of robotization, exemplified by devices such as, “Alexa” remote actuators, robot-assisted driving, robotic vacuum cleaning, and auto-directional devices, as well as dating services, encyclopedic telephones (as opposed to the enriching and affirming activity of personal research), to the development of drones, personalized digital health watches, computerized books (in ignorant contrast to the tactual pleasure of holding a book and arbitrarily turning the page), the mechanization of the concept of”friend” and perhaps, morfe extremde, the scholastic cheating utility of A.I.,

The exclusive quest for individualized convenience and facility is demonstrated in the desire to attend an institution of higher education for the singular purpose of the future acquisition of a job, rather than, concomitantly, for a more mature perspective and personal growth. It sadly appears that no universal principles of sophisticated insight are of recognizable utility to the analogous, insular island located among a perceived geographic archipelago of similar, unrelated islands.

Such a thematic, disparate, insular, and perceptively individualized existence of the modern individual extends perforce to family matters. Family gatherings before the television or formerly, before the family radio, even at mealtime, have become empirically rare and anachronistic. The infrequent attendance at family dinner, often punctuated by a young member of the assembled family, engaged in consulting his or her smartphone surreptitiously under the table, is not an exotic occurrence.

We are greatly troubled by the evident lack of a mature, healthy, and empathic World perspective, analogous to the “geological phenomena” of separate and remote human islands in the unattached archipelago of human society

-p.