A summer or so ago I went with friends to sit in the Guadalupe river. We had beer, snacks, and a popup shelter. We were joined by about a million of our fellow citizens who were floating down the river on inner tubes, boom boxes booming. Needless to say, all those people doing all the things people do in rivers, made the typically clear Guadalupe about as muddy as the Mississippi, and I can only imagine what things were being added to the soup by the tubers.

I say this because when I think about commenting on current events, the entire world feels as cloudy and murky as the Guadalupe did that day. Things float by but it’s hard to get a grasp of what they are. Why, for instance, have we picked a trade fight with Canada and how’s it going? We’re deporting people but who are they and where are they going, and what threat did they pose that we can now feel safer from? And what does renaming the Gulf of Mexico do for us? Presidential edicts are dropping from the heavens like rain, and it’s hard to keep up. Whatever happened to legislation, laws? Is it really possible to repeal amendments with an executive order?

Personally, I yearn for the days of my youth when I saw things with much greater clarity, when racial discrimination was wrong, poverty was bad, and communism was the enemy. Although, the days of my youth also consisted of power to the people and being told if we didn’t love America we should leave. A lot of us did. Some went to Vietnam and died there, and a fair number went to Canada. And is it okay to suggest that all those corporations who left with all their jobs didn’t love America? That seems an odd take, but it’s a world  of odd takes anymore. So, what’s another? Paradigms are shifting all over the place, even for me, and all I can do is hope I survive.