Weekly Mind Dump: Gloom, Doom & the Crossroads We Face

One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction.

Week of 3/2-8, 2025:

It’s hard to get up in the morning — if you’re not a cult member basking in “alternative facts” in Cloud Cuckooland — and face the day’s news headlines: “Trump Wins All Seven Swing States.” “Trump Makes a Trifecta Sweep with Control of House and Senate.” “Trump Signs Executive Order Eliminating Birthright Citizenship.” “Trump Fires Black and Female Senior Military Leaders.” “Tariffs Threaten Global Depression.” “Washington Abandons Ukraine, Embraces Moscow.” “Musk Fires Thousands of Federal Workers.” “Rule of Law Threatened with Mass Justice Department Dismissals.” “RFK Pushes Castor Oil in Response to Measles Outbreak.” Etc., etc. It’s like Ground Hog Day every day — but transformed into Halloween.

I write about this stuff and have so for years, first for POLITICO Magazine, then for the Washington Monthly, and now in this newsletter. I just perused my cover page. The titles are all depressing: “We Are No Longer the Good Guys.” “Observations on Becoming a Soviet Satellite Nation.” “America’s Descent from City on a Hill to Mafia State.” “The Moral Collapse of the American People.” And on and on. Friends quip that I’m a good news undertaker, a serial murderer of joy and optimism, the Darth Vader of good tidings. My wife asks me, “How can you spend hours every day immersed in bad news and not go crazy?” A friend recently asked me, “Do you think there’s any danger in being so out there against this regime?” Another told me I was “brave” for taking on MAGA world with my writing.

And then there are the thinly veiled threats. A MAGA-moonie posted on one of my LinkedIn commentaries: “You are now on our list.” Another wrote, “I still blame people like you for the covid shutdowns and mandates, so I guess we’ll be even.” And this: “James, you need professional help.”

Anyway, I respond that I call the shots as I see them. I can’t help it if the world is hurtling toward Hell on greased skids. It’s my job to report on it. And it’s my first amendment right (at least for now).

Perhaps my dark soul stems from my being a night owl. My most productive writing comes after the sun goes down. Like some manic ghoul, I type madly away, becoming more inspired as the moon rises and the sky blackens. I routinely write until 3:00 am every evening (right now it’s 3:30am). If I’m on a roll, I’ll stretch it out till 4:00 or 4:30. I come to life at night. Somewhere in the family tree, there’s no doubt vampire blood.

This routine started out as necessity. Working at the State Department or at one of our overseas missions, of course, I was tied to an 8:15-5:30 (more like 8:15-7:00, or later) schedule. Right after dinner, I’d lock myself away and write my novels and get as much in as possible before midnight. On weekends and holidays, I’d let myself go and succumb to my inherent vampire ways. I’d get so ensconced in my work that my wife would crack that she was a “writer’s widow.”

“All profound things and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence,” wrote Herman Melville. One imagines that Captain Ahab and the great white whale were spawned in a swale of silence as Melville, too, literally burnt the midnight oil to produce his masterpieces of fiction. But the silence of the marketplace threw him into a three-decade funk. His unfinished Billy Budd, which he was working on at the time of his death, wasn’t published until thirty-three years later.

And it is silence that motivates this writer. The silence of the night, when most living things retreat to slumber, provides the uninterrupted peace of mind to focus on this world or create new worlds. Listen to them — the children of the night. What music they make!

The Spanish have a saying, Quién a solas se ríe, de sus maldades se acuerda. “He who laughs when he is alone is remembering his evil deeds.” A family member who slipped downstairs for a nocturnal glass of milk in my house might overhear me cackling in the solitude of my study. It may be because I read about the latest court ruling against Trump, or his approval numbers plummeting, or RFK promoting alchemy, or I just re-read “The Tell-Tale Heart” (btw, it was recently Poe’s 226th birthday), or my putting the final polish on my latest clever punditry

Here’s the problem: we live in truly crazy times when at least a third of Americans have lost their minds and another twenty percent, or so, are too preoccupied with their favorite vacuous sitcoms to care as a phalanx of characters out of a 1950s B-grade horror movie methodically dismantle our democracy while spouting superstitious conspiracy drivel that puts the Dark Ages to shame. What is there to be happy or optimistic about? I mean, war with Canada? Like really? I live a short drive to the border. The Maple Leaf flies side-by-side with Old Glory from buildings, public and private. I now have nightmares of hordes of raging beaver-skin-bedecked Canucks descending upon our farms and villages. Domine, a furore Canadensium libera nos!

I recall Woody Allen’s fictional “speech to graduates”: “More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

Indeed.

Have a nice day! 😊