About Me

Unlike Sarah Palin and Russia, I actually live (uncomfortably) close enough to the U.S. so that I can see it from my back window.

Having lived in the U.S. for 9 years, and being whelmed by the news that radiates from it nearly a quarter century after departing, I feel some connection to what happens politically in the neighbouring land.

I am not a politically active person in any land, I do not have any education in political science, psychology, sociology, philosophy or anything that would make me a natural in the field of political analysis.  What I do know is some history and seeing some trends and making forecasts and inferences from what I know.

One of the biggest influences in my small and imperfect knowledge of U.S. history came in the '90s when I lived in Nevada and tuned into the local NPR affiliate KUNR for entertainment.  One of the banner programming choices was 'The Thomas Jefferson Hour' where a historian by the name of Clay Jenkinson fielded questions from listeners assuming the persona of Thomas Jefferson.  This gave me an understanding of the U.S. Constitution and how it was supposed to be interpreted.  One point that Jenkinson frequently brought up was that it was a living document that changed and was not set in stone.  He felt that the Constitution had to evolve and change with the times, usually with a Constitution Convention every 20 or so years where the document would be rewritten and modified, not like the current document that has not changed much, just a handful of amendments, in some 250 years.

"History repeats itself" is an often-used adage.  While major events do not reoccur like they did in the past, there seems to be patterns and broad similarities.  Unfortunately, human memory is also short for most.

Writing my thoughts on this subject has long been on my mind (see the Introductory post).  The event of the past weeks and months have made these thoughts more relevant now than ever.