Well, folks, it’s that time of the year again. No no … not the ‘holiday season’ … well, yeah, it is that too, but I was referring to Time Magazine’s Person of the Year! Tomorrow, Time will announce this year’s person. I looked at the list this afternoon and the first name stunned me … China’s Xi Jinping … the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. Okay, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, considering they nominated the former guy as recently as 2020. But still … shouldn’t Person of the Year be an honour held for people who have done and/or are doing something good in the world? Yes, I do realize that they don’t necessarily award it to ‘good’ people, but rather those who were the biggest newsmakers of the year, but still …
And it gets even better …
The U.S. Supreme Court in all their “glory” is also on the list because, according to Time, it is “incredibly influential this year due to its conservative supermajority.” Time seems to applaud their decisions that have set women’s rights back to the last century and taken authority to try to save the planet from disaster away from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Elon Musk and Ron DeSantis both made the list, as well. Elon because he “has garnered controversy surrounding his takeover of Twitter” and Ron because a) he won his election, and b) his little stunt of flying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard that gained him lots of attention.
Others on the list include MacKenzie Scott (Jeff Bezos ex-wife), Liz Cheney, and Janet Yellen … all decent sorts who have done some good, but not Person-of-the-Year sort of good. I suppose we should just be thankful that Kanye West, Stuart Rhodes or Nick Fuentes aren’t in the running!
There is really only one person on the list who I consider worthy of the honour of being named “Person of the Year” and that is Volodymyr Zelenskyy (and Time didn’t even spell his name right!) He is fighting the Russian bear on behalf of the people of Ukraine and has never once wavered, never considered backing down. He is truly a man of courage and convictions, and if I had a vote on the Time Person of the Year, my vote would be for President Zelenskyy!
And those same people who called their brokers on Monday, placed yet another call saying, “SELL, SELL, SELL!!!” And thus was born an all new level of volatility in the S&P, the Dow Jones, and Nasdaq, with two-day losses thus far, more than wiping out Monday’s gains and then some. You know those playground things, basically a board on a fulcrum that are called teeter-totters, or see-saws? They go up-down-up-down …
That is what the U.S. economy is on. Market fluctuations based on anticipation of economic or political events are not unusual. However, rarely are they as significant and immediate based on naught more than a word or a tweet from a madman! If … IF Donald Trump were a mentally and emotionally stable leader, one might understand why such a remark would set the wheels in motion for a market tumble. But, given his rarely-coherent state of mind, his lies and reversals, I cannot imagine why anybody would base financial decisions on one of his multitude of daily tweets.
Once again, Trump has made himself, and by extension all of us, a laughingstock. But it goes deeper than that. He is playing a game, the rules of which he is ignorant. And the stakes, for the average person like you and I, are our 401(k)s, our pensions and retirement plans. On an even larger scale, he is playing with the economic well-being of not only the U.S., but global economies as well.
Finally we are coming to see that there is a very real danger in the hate speech of Alex Jones and his ilk, and finally social media is taking a stand against it. I am pleased. Alex Jones, on the other hand, is not.
A pretty major disaster for our California residents, wouldn’t you say? And yet, Donald Trump remained silent and apparently oblivious until Sunday. He should have stayed silent and oblivious.
Sargeant Cuauhtemoc “Temo” Juarez is an Iraq combat veteran who served as a Marine infantryman and then an Army National Guardsman. He is a U.S. citizen and, until last week was a Trump supporter. He has been married to his wife, Alejandra, for twenty years and they have two daughters, Pamela, 16, and Estela, age 9. Alejandra came to this country illegally as a teenager more than 20 years ago, and has lived with her husband and two daughters in Davenport, Florida. Until Friday, when she was deported.
Yes, you heard me right. She was taken from her husband and daughters and sent to Mexico, a country where she is now a stranger. Until last week, Temo didn’t really believe it would happen. The couple had met with lawyers, there is a bill in her name pending in Congress, and they had contacted immigration officials asking for a hearing before an immigration judge. But all their efforts were for naught, and on Friday Ms. Juarez returned, against her will, to Mexico under Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy.
You may not remember, but it was just over a year ago that I wrote a 
I’m working on some number of projects at the moment … I say ‘some number’, for I have no idea what that number even is, nor do I have a clue how many will reach fruition. (Mind bounce in the rabbit hole can be a chancy thing) But for today, I had a bunch of snippets, bits ‘n pieces that I came across this weekend, most of which leave me shrugging my shoulders, saying, “make of that what you will”. Hence the title of this post.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, could now serve for life, or at least for as long as he chooses. Or until he is deposed.
On the more positive side, Xi’s policies have begun to lift millions of people out of poverty, reformed state-owned enterprises, protected the environment and built strategic industries. It is predicted that China will eclipse the United States as the world’s largest economy in absolute terms within two decades.
With the U.S. having largely given up its role as a global leader in this era of Trump, China is in position to step in and fill that void. What does that mean for the world? Possibly that Xi will take a global leadership role in such things as nuclear proliferation and climate change. For China, it almost certainly will mean an increase in authoritarianism. China’s economy has seen growth rate of 6%-7% in recent years, and if this continues, Xi may lead China to global economic dominance.
The Western leaders have been largely silent, apparently unconcerned over Xi’s move to expand his power, in part because China was already an autocracy, with only one party, the Communist Party. But another reason is global stability. Rather the “bird in the hand is better than two in the bush” concept. President Xi has proven that he is able to lead, has improved the economic status of China and the Chinese people, and is concerned over climate change. With unrest in other areas, such as the U.S. under Trump, and the UK in the throes of Brexit, and the Middle East in a constant state of flux, the world does not need more chaos.
On a more humorous side note, just this week, the letter ‘N’ has been banished from the internet by Chinese censors! Yes, you heard me … the letter ‘N’. Why? Victor Mair, a University of Pennsylvania China expert, speculated it was “probably out of fear on the part of the government that ‘N’ = ‘n terms in office’, where possibly n > 2”. Make any sense to you? Other things on the censor’s list are:
Much as he might like to, Donald Trump cannot take a page from Xi’s book and eliminate the 22nd Amendment, which states …
And then … we heard no more about Kushner for the most part. The latest Kushner headlines:
Filosofa's Word 