If a dread of not being understood be hidden in the breasts of other young people to anything like the extent to which it used to be hidden in mine - which I consider probable, as I have no particular reason to suspect myself of having been a monstrosity - it is the key to many reservations.
I'm going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there's an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened.
People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing-refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.
It's the same thing that drives people to want to experience sexual pleasure or have one too many drinks. We all want to experience the other, and to get out of our daily existence.
Life is so damned hard, so damned hard... It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can't be hurt ever any more. That's the last and worst thing it does.
It is my fondest wish that in the fullness of time, the American people will look back on the Franken presidency as something of a mixed bag and not as a complete disaster.
I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposing severe penalties on anyone who burns the American flag, whereas they are responsible for burning that for which the flag stands: the United States as a territory, as a people, and as a biological manifestation. That is an example of our perennial confusion of symbols with realities.
The older I get, the more centered I become and the more I think I really know about myself. What I know is that what other people do doesn't really have any effect on me.
If we have a phased redeployment where we're as careful getting out as we were careless getting in, then there's not reason why we shouldn't be able to prevent the wholesale slaughter I think some people have suggested might occur.