The Conversation

              A declared war seems more plausible now than in any point in my life, aside from the days after September 11, 2001. You may disagree with me, but you’re reading this, so you get my opinion. In my more negative musings on this fear, I wonder what could spark this war and what would characterize the two sides. After today’s research, mostly accidental, I have a bleak fiction to share with everyone, in the hopes that this doesn’t happen.               The Federalist Papers discuss many predictions about the fate of the nation. One of the fates they discuss is a civil war as the only way to reconcile dissent among the states. In order for a faction to form, a strong state will act as a primary aggressor who will pull neighbors into their fold by philosophical or economic means. In the Civil War, this character was played by South Carolina, an...

This is one of my ideas that will have to be implemented in The Study in order for some of the programs to work.               Melania Trump had a point when she said that women need hard evidence before they accuse a man of sexual assault. Women are not believed as victims, and he said-she said is very hard to prove. We also live in a culture where the woman is often blamed for the incident, including by herself. We live in a culture where “boys will be boys” and we train women on how to avoid an all-too-common scenario, as if they have the power to prevent the situation from occurring. All this means that if women need hard evidence to see their accusers brought to justice, they need a way to gather evidence in a way that is less traumatic for the survivors, so that more will be empowered to come forward.               Talk to someone who was strong ...

              I saw Michael Moore on TV promoting his new movie last week, and I was reminded that not only is he from Flint, Michigan, but that community still has to use bottled water. It’s been years (at least 5, I forgot the exact number) since that community was able to trust their taps, and still nothing is being done to fix it. This fact is infuriating as someone who cares about the well-being of the whole country, but there is nothing I can do.               Later, as I was reading about California’s 22 nd congressional district, one of the facts that was part of the headline was not mentioned or discussed until 4 paragraphs down; part of the San Joaquin Valley does not have drinkable water, either.               This was a shock. My home state, which I am so proud of, has this problem. There are people in my ...