28 | August | 2026 | Bob Schwartz

August 28, 2026

Donald Trump Jr. and the Happy Smiling Poor of India (2018)

“The poor know all about poverty and only the morbid rich would find the topic glamorous.”
Sullivan’s Travels

Donald Trump Jr. says he admires India’s poor people because of their spirit and smiles

Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, is in India this week to promote his family’s real estate empire and more than $1 billion worth of luxury Trump Tower projects in four cities, but he still had time to praise India’s poor for their smiles.

“I don’t mean to be glib about it, but you can see the poorest of the poor and there is still a smile on a face. It’s a different spirit that you don’t see in other parts of the world … and I think there’s something unique about that. I know some of the most successful people in the world, and some of them are the most miserable people in the world.”

You can draw your own conclusions about what this says about Don Jr. and others in the Trump family and circle. You can guess who the miserable successful people might be.

As for the happy smiling poor he admires, I quote from the movie Sullivan’s Travels by Preston Sturges. A successful Hollywood director of nonsensical comedies, John L. Sullivan, wants to confront the grim reality of the Great Depression, and so plans to travel in disguise as a tramp. His butler Burrows sets him straight:

Burrows: I have never been sympathetic to the caricaturing of the poor and needy, sir.

John L. Sullivan: Who’s caricaturing? I’m going out on the road to find out what it’s like to be poor and needy and then I’m going to make a picture about it.

Burrows: If you’ll permit me to say so, sir, the subject is not an interesting one. The poor know all about poverty and only the morbid rich would find the topic glamorous.

John L. Sullivan: But I’m doing it for the poor. Don’t you understand?

Burrows: I doubt if they would appreciate it, sir.

And:

Burrows: You see, sir, rich people and theorists – who are usually rich people – think of poverty in the negative, as the lack of riches – as disease might be called the lack of health. But it isn’t, sir. Poverty is not the lack of anything, but a positive plague, virulent in itself, contagious as cholera, with filth, criminality, vice and despair as only a few of its symptoms.

August 28, 2026

Renaming frenzy: What should our oceans be called?

The mad frenzy to rename waters around the U.S. continues. An attempt was made to start calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Now Lake Ontario has been “renamed” Lake America. Soon maybe the Great Lakes will be called the Great American Lakes. (I know, don’t give anyone ideas.)

The oceans on both sides of the U.S. may be next. But there is a problem. The obvious initiative is to call each ocean the Ocean of America. But that would obviously be confusing, like having two streets with the same name.

The simple solution: Name one the Ocean of America and name the other the Other Ocean of America. In the image above, I have put Ocean of America on the Pacific, but there is no reason it can’t be the other way around.

Speaking of naming, I want to include a musical moment. Not quite Shakespeare (“A rose by any other name’) but a good point:

You call it rain
but the human name
doesn’t mean shit to a tree
—Eskimo Blue Day, Jefferson Airplane

August 28, 2026

Woke: What’s so bad about waking up?

In one of the most significant exchanges in religious history, it is reported that after the Buddha’s enlightenment, he was asked who he was. He simply replied, “I am awake.”

Trying to make “woke” a pejorative is crazy. Not crazy like a political and ideological fox, just bonkers. No matter the party or philosophy, from the White House on down, everybody wants to wake up each day, and wants those they love to wake up each day. The opposite of waking up is not waking up, and that is not what we want.

What is actually meant by the charge of “woke” is related to the Buddha’s expression. It is an accusation of being enlightened, of seeing others, all others, no matter their identities and origins, as worthy of our active care and concern. Since this is a Christian, not just a Buddhist message, it is inconceivable that so many are sworn enemies of “woke”. Not to mention that all of these anti-woke people really do want to wake up each day. Instead of the alternative.