Category: Uncategorized

Throughout the day, like many people, I checked on the news from Helsinki, where Donald Trump was meeting with Vladimir Putin.  Like many people, I was worried.  I was not prepared for what I saw.

On display for the whole world, the United States President was subservient to the tyrant of Russia.  He berated his own country.  He praised the tyrant.

He was led by Putin like a performing dog.  When questioned, he spoke his answers for Putin’s approval, and when he couldn’t answer the questions, he watched admiringly as Putin answered for him.

It was eerie.  It was like a hostage video, when the hostage has come to love the captor.  The Stockholm Syndrome?  Older than that.  The Manchurian President?  Older than that.

Call it 1984.  Call it the Helsinki Syndrome.  Trump loves Big Brother.

 

At last I’m starting a web log (blog).  I’ve thought about it for a long time.  But, I always resisted, for a couple of reasons.  I resisted because, having spent so long in print media, I wanted a site that looked like a page, preferably a newspaper or magazine page.  But also, I resisted because I didn’t want to commit to the kind of work I think it will take to maintain a blog.

I’m still not sure I’m up for the work.  I don’t know how often one should post to a blog, but more than once a month comes to mind.  And the really big commitment, I suspect, is dealing with comments from the public.  Monitoring and responding to comments could take a lot of time.  We’ll see.

What I’m drawn to now is the simplicity.  Just write something and post it.  And since I have been keeping a private journal for over 40 years now, I thought I’d call this the public journal.  Excerpts from the private journal will appear here, among other things.

Thanks for reading the obligatory ‘apology’ or maybe ‘argument’ for this blog.  I’ll try to be more interesting in the future.