ON BEING COUNTERFACTUAL OR COUNTERINTUITIVE OR COMPLETELY CONFUSED        

Let’s see if I can draw a logic path concerning several items of interest, while striving to ignore inside baseball machinations, memos of mixed interest, and incessant noise emanating from the Oval Office.  Careful, unemotional readers (all three of you) will observe that the listing of topics deliberately excludes character analyses of the Big Tweeter.

First, as a premise, approximately 99% of all presidential candidates make promises relating to jobs. At present, the economy is recording its eighth year of gains and unemployment is at a ten-year low.

Second, a majority of everybody likes the combination of a strong military (if no other reason than its impact on local employment) and no wars (understanding the definition of our involvement in the Middle East is beyond my comprehension). I guess one could quibble about related details, but it does seem that this duality is the current condition, irrespective of aggressive verbiage.

Third, sexual predators of all political persuasions are getting their comeuppance. The environment is good for such revelations and punishments. Women are being incrementally empowered.

Fourth, there is a plane full of NY Times board members and Harvard professors, complete with their families, en route to s…thole countries. They are taking advantage of a one-year all-expenses paid offer  from George Soros. Conveniently, they will be able to stay in the houses being left empty by residents of those countries who are fleeing to the United States.  (Trigger warning after the fact: I made this one up. The rest are like, you know, accurate.)

Fifth, the stock market moving to record highs (even with a slight blip recently) has enriched (on paper) not only the 1%, but the vast numbers who have stocks in their pension and other retirement plans.

Sixth, some kids are getting a good education, some are not. Hello, nothing new there.

Seventh, healthcare is, uh, a mess, both before and now. Perhaps Warren, Jeff, and Jamie will be able to fix it. A much higher probability is that Warren and I will have punched our timecards before there can be a definitive judgement on the success of their endeavor.

Eighth, thousands of words could be written about immigration reform (I have contributed more than a few in previous posts), but not here. In my little scorecard at the close, this area has to be considered a negative in looking at the impact of the current administration.

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So there you have it, a totally incomplete list of contemporary political situations: four positives, two neutrals, one negative, and one irrelevant but hopefully humorous bit of insightful cynicism.

Do not leaders get credit or blame for all kinds of things which happen while they are in charge, even if nothing they did was the true proximate reason for either the positives or the negatives. Historically, that has been the case, but apparently to give any credit to the most disapproved head man this country has ever seen is something the bicoastal media/intellectual elites cannot tolerate.

(P.S. Note that this collective group is populated with some of the “best and brightest” whose advice was so disastrous in the recent presidential  campaign. In truth, the election was lost, not won, a key reason for much of the emotional thrashing — which knows no limits or end, falling short in its contribution to the pervasive angst only when compared with the erratic antics, factual looseness, and offensive verbiage of the nation’s top office-holder.)