Some of the things I don't understand these days:
• How Donald Trump could possibly get insurance deals by inflating the value of his properties. It has always been my experience that the more something was worth, the more it cost to insure it. Do the wealthy get insurance deals?
• Why a member of the South Carolina National Guard (Nikki Haley's husband) should be deployed to Africa. What are we cooking up in Africa now? Another Libya? Or has he perhaps been sent to the Horn of Africa in support of the genocide unfolding in Gaza?
• How it benefitted Putin to murder Navalny the day before a huge victory in Ukraine; the day before the opening of the Munich Security Conference, where Navalny's wife showed up to weep on cue; at the same time that most of Europe is panicking that the U.S. may not hurl any more money into the black hole that is Ukraine; and shortly after the interview of Putin with Tucker Carlson that millions of people have at least clicked on. And likely watched.
• Why, if Alexander Smirnov is facing criminal charges for allegedly fabricating something about Biden, Hillary Clinton did not face criminal charges for the Russia-gate fabrication. (People may not know that both the DNC and the Clinton campaign were fined for "misreporting the money that funded the [infamous Steele] dossier," according to CNN.)
• Why we should never have enjoyed the benefits of oil for at least the last century, as many in Montpelier are currently insisting. According to The Orientalist (by Tom Reiss): "Since ancient times Azerbaijan's abundance of oil and natural gas, which led whole hillsides to naturally explode into flame, made it the center of Zoroastrianism, Persia's ancient pre-Muslim religion."
Should we have all just made pilgrimages to someplace like Baku, by sailing vessel and on foot, to stare and bow and worship the eruptions of oil and the flaming hillsides for centuries, instead?
• Finally, why everyone currently running for president apparently supports the genocide of the Palestinian people.
Not only am I finding it hard this year to engage in the charade of filing a tax return (to a government that just incessantly prints money anyway), but it's going to be damned hard to vote for anyone who is currently running, this November.
Jacqueline Brook
Putney
This letter to the editor was submitted to The Commons.