Uh, Oh

Worse than an “uh, oh” is our abandoning the Kurds, with all that means.  Everyone from Moscow Mitch to Lindsey Graham to Pat Robertson — not to mention all the good guys, of whom they are not generally three — is horrified.  Robertson, indeed, is “absolutely appalled.”

It is so sad for democracy; so sad for what was left of our moral authority and world leadership.  So good for Putin and the world’s other journalist-murderers with whom Trump gets along so well.

But, at the risk of piling gloom upon doom, this previously scheduled column is about something else.

To wit:

Chickens generally come home to roost.

I say that never having owned one nor being entirely sure what “roosting” is.  I know which came first (the egg), but next to nothing about roosts.

And are chickens any more ever allowed the freedom of leaving home in the first place?  One reason not to eat them, unless they’re free range, is the way they’re treated.

And where do roosters fit into all this?  Do they roost, too?  And roasters?

But this is a post about your money.

John Mauldin’s letter last week is not going to cheer you up in any way — but you should read it.  He sees tough times ahead for investors and future retirees.

(He also says he’s just taken out a 6% mortgage on his home in Puerto Rico, where mortgage rates are, relative to mainland rates, crazy high.  I don’t know John — who I assume is quite wealthy — but if I did, I’d ask him, “You took out a mortgage?  Not having to pay 6% is as good as earning 6% — risk-free! — and as you’ve just argued, a 6% risk-free return is pretty great these days.)

The one hope that could keep our legs pumping straight ahead, defying gravity for a while even after we run out past the cliff — switching metaphors from chickens to cartoon characters — and that might even, conceivably, get us to the other side of the canyon without dire consequence — is the onrush of technology.

As a species we do now have the technology and resources for everyone to live decently if  . . .  an enormous if . . . we can figure out how to live with each other, sharing the fruits of the 200,000 years of struggle and misery that — especially in the last few hundred years of invention and discovery — have gotten us to this miraculous point. (That’s why books like Andrew Yang’s The War On Normal People are so relevant and important.)

But is technology enough to spare us the tough sledding Mauldin foresees?

Probably not.

For many, especially among those who voted for Trump, it’s already been decades of tough sledding.

Hence the appeal of his rallies and the hunt for someone to blame (“Lock her up!” “Send them back!”  Smash the machines!).

A start on mitigating the damage would be to vote for leaders who “believe in” science and honesty and decency and diplomacy and shared endeavor.

For now, though, as noted above, Putin is winning — big-time.