I have lived in a variety of places with hard winters, where occasionally in February it seemed like spring but was actually false spring, followed by more, sometimes much more, hard winter.
Here is not one of those places.
The Winter Olympics are happening now. Some places share Winter Olympics-type weather, some people prefer that, some people tolerate it, with the promise of spring arriving soon or eventually. Just not yet.
Some places, like this one, rarely have anything like hard winter, though on the other hand we know that hard summer will arrive eventually, just not yet.
The birds and the plants know. So do I.
If you are somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere where winter has more than a month to go, spring is coming. If you’ve never believed anything I’ve said, believe that.
Fury erupted early on Friday after Donald Trump posted a racist video that depicts Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.
The clip appeared during one of the 79-year-old US president’s increasingly frequent late-night posting sprees to his Truth Social account, and shows the laughing faces of the former president and first lady superimposed on the bodies of primates in a jungle setting, bobbing to the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight.
There have been American moments when your reaction is “this is not happening.” Sometimes it is the sudden shock of an assassination or of towers under attack and collapsing. Sometimes it is an extended situation, like the Covid pandemic.
The Trump presidency is both. There are particular moments that shock. There is a cumulative extended experience. Defenders may say again and again that it is just “Trump being Trump.” The rest of us wonder when we will wake up from the seeming interminable nightmare.
Have we “normalized” the aberrant, hateful, inhumane and frankly demented? Have we become uncomfortably numb, knowing what is wrong but just wanting to pull the covers over our heads and get on with our lives, compromised as they may be?
Let us wake up, not from the nightmare, but to the heart of the nightmare to actualize a better dream right now.
For those who wonder whether meanness is a sin or vice, you can start with Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas, where Question 135 addresses the issue. Or you could ask your parents or your elementary school teachers or your spouse or your children: It’s not nice to be mean.
Which should make us think about why rampant meanness is not only acceptable, but encouraged, entertaining, and profitable. Cheaters may never prosper (though they often do), but meaners are doing very well these days.
Saying that all things virtuous seem to be dying and on life support is an overstatement that doesn’t get us far. Instead, four possible explanations of how what was once a private disturbance has become such a pandemic, a public poison:
Meanness by proxy: All art and performance is based on the ability and willingness of creators to express what we can’t or won’t. It would be nice to think that we only long to be the one who can move people to tears or laughter, inspire people to reach higher, and if we can’t be those creators, at least they are doing that for us. The same thing unfortunately applies to darker messaging, though. We may not be able to attack quite so sharply and eloquently, but we appreciate that someone can. “Yeah, what he said!”
Meanness as superiority: This is a subset of meanness by proxy. There’s perversity in enjoying the meanness of others, but at the same time taking pride in being one who would never say something like that because…we are better than that and would never be so mean. (Whatever the theological status of meanness, by the way, pride is definitely on all the lists of sins.)
Meanness as incompetent and faulty criticism: This is the explanation of meanness as sub-juvenile behavior. When little children aren’t sure why they hate somebody or something, or can’t articulate it, they revert to name-calling and indiscriminate meanness: “You’re a poo-poo head!” It’s a fantastic dream that one day, thanks to some spell, the most gratuitously mean would be magically forced to speak only such childish epithets.
Meanness unconditioned by a thought/speech barrier: The thought/speech barrier, the wall that should keep many thoughts from ever being spoken, is dissolving. Whether phenomena such as social media are causal, enabling, or merely symptomatic is beside the point. Thought moves from brain to mouth (or phone or keyboard) at the speed of synapse. Mean heart becomes mean words in a literal instant.
There is a genuine critical function, which can be exercised with thoughtfulness, care, and respect. That simple sentence, a foundation of a free, enlightened society, is looking particularly quaint, and seems for many to have lost its meaning.
Federal Agents Left Behind “Death Cards” After Capturing Immigrants ICE agents dropped customized ace of spades playing cards, recalling a practice by U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War.
Nick Turse The Intercept February 3 2026
The cars sat abandoned at the side of the road. Their engines idling, with hazard lights flashing, according to a witness who captured video of the incident on his phone. The occupants of the vehicles had been taken away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers late last month in what a local immigrant rights group calls “fake traffic stops.” During these encounters, ICE vehicles reportedly employ red and blue flashing lights to mimic those of local law enforcement agencies, duping people into pulling over.
When family members arrived on the scene in Eagle County, Colorado, their loved ones had already been disappeared by federal agents. But what they found inside the vehicles was disturbing: a customized ace of spades playing card — popularly known as a “death card” — that read “ICE Denver Field Office.”
“We are disgusted by ICE’s actions in Eagle County,” Alex Sánchez, president and CEO of that immigrant rights group, Voces Unidas, told The Intercept. “Leaving a racist death card behind after targeting Latino workers is an act of intimidation. This is not about public safety. It is about fear and control. It’s rooted in a very long history of racial violence.”
During the Vietnam War, U.S. troops regularly adorned Vietnamese corpses with “death cards” — either an ace of spades or a custom-printed business card claiming credit for their kills. A 1966 entry in the Congressional Record noted that due to supposed Vietnamese superstitions regarding the ace of spades, “the U.S. Playing Card Co. had been furnishing thousands of these cards free to U.S. servicemen in Vietnam who requested them.”…
The ace card has a long and macabre history. A British tax on playing cards, which specifically required purchasing aces of spades from the stamp office, resulted in the hanging of a serial forger of the “death card” in 1805. Legend has it that “Wild Bill” Hickok held the Dead Man’s Hand — aces and eights, including the ace of spades — when he was gunned down in Deadwood in Dakota Territory in 1876. In 1931, murdered Mafia boss Giuseppe Masseria was photographed with the ace of spades clutched in his hand. By that time, it was firmly entrenched in culture as the “death card.”
The U.S. use of death cards in Vietnam was immortalized in the 1979 film “Apocalypse Now” in a scene in which Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall, places unit-branded playing cards, reading “DEATH FROM ABOVE,” on the bodies of dead Vietnamese people. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency developed a set of playing cards to help troops identify the most-wanted members of the Iraqi government. President Saddam Hussein, who was eventually captured and executed, was the ace of spades.
Besides the horrible conduct of ICE, mention of Apocalypse Now (1979) inspires some thoughts. If you have seen the movie, see it again, and if not, see it now. It is not only a great movie and insight into the Vietnam War, but an insight into America.
The villain of the story is Colonel Kurtz, based on Kurtz in Josef Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. Colonel Kurtz has gone rogue and fled from the Vietnam War to Cambodia. There he leads natives who worship him almost as a god. The U.S. military command has sent Captain Willard to find him and eliminate him with extreme prejudice. Willard’s journey through the war and his encounter with Kurtz is the story of Apocalypse Now.
Kurtz’s dying words are the same in Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, words that echo today: “The horror! The horror!”
Han Shan (寒山, meaning “Cold Mountain”) was a legendary Tang Dynasty Chinese poet who lived sometime between the 7th-9th centuries CE. He’s one of the most beloved figures in Chinese Buddhist literature.
His historical existence is debated. He may have been a recluse living on Cold Mountain (Hanyan) near Tiantai in Zhejiang province, or a literary persona created by one or more Chan (Zen) Buddhist poets.
About 300 poems survive, written in colloquial language rather than formal literary Chinese. They blend Chan Buddhism, Daoism, and nature imagery with humor, social criticism, and spiritual insight.
Themes include mountain solitude, the foolishness of worldly pursuits, enlightenment, and the beauty of simple living. His work often ridicules conventional society and religious formalism. He embodies the archetype of the wandering, enlightened madman.
He is traditionally paired with his sidekick Shide (拾得, “Foundling”), another hermit-poet. They are depicted as eccentric, laughing sages.
He remains hugely popular in East Asia. He was brought to Western audiences by Gary Snyder’s translations.
Please read some poems by Cold Mountain. Following are three translations, all worthy, with those of Red Pine (Bill Porter) especially recommended.
The new year ends a year of sorrow spring finds everything fresh mountain flowers laugh with green water cliff trees dance with blue mist bees and butterflies seem so happy birds and fishes look lovelier still the joy of companionship never ends who can sleep past dawn
Cold Mountain (Hanshan), c. 9th century Translated by Red Pine (Bill Porter)
Why do I persist? Because Gene Sharp was a brilliant global strategist at actually moving nations from dictatorship to democracy. Because the list is the greatest ever of practical nonviolent actions big and small. Because much of America, which is well on a path to corrupt authoritarian rule, is either in denial or unable to figure out anything to effectively do about it. This is a list of things to do about it.
Will I be posting this list again, an eighth or ninth time? I suspect so. There are some capable and effective democracy leaders, but also many powerful authoritarian-friendly leaders and many well-meaning but inept and compromised leaders who are supposed to be fighting for democracy, but can’t seem to figure out how.
This is how.
198 Methods of Nonviolent Action
Formal Statements
Public Speeches
Letters of opposition or support
Declarations by organizations and institutions
Signed public statements
Declarations of indictment and intention
Group or mass petitions
Communications with a Wider Audience
Slogans, caricatures, and symbols
Banners, posters, displayed communications
Leaflets, pamphlets, and books
Newspapers and journals
Records, radio, and television
Skywriting and earthwriting Group Representations
Deputations
Mock awards
Group lobbying
Picketing
Mock elections
Symbolic Public Acts
Displays of flags and symbolic colors
Wearing of symbols
Prayer and worship
Delivering symbolic objects
Protest disrobings
Destruction of own property
Symbolic lights
Displays of portraits
Paint as protest
New signs and names
Symbolic sounds
Symbolic reclamations
Rude gestures
Pressures on Individuals
“Haunting” officials
Taunting officials
Fraternization
Vigils
Drama and Music
Humorous skits and pranks
Performances of plays and music
Singing
Processions
Marches
Parades
Religious processions
Pilgrimages
Motorcades
Honoring the Dead
Political mourning
Mock funerals
Demonstrative funerals
Homage at burial places
Public Assemblies
Assemblies of protest or support
Protest meetings
Camouflaged meetings of protest
Teach-ins
Withdrawal and Renunciation
Walk-outs
Silence
Renouncing honors
Turning one’s back
The Methods Of Social Noncooperation
Ostracism of Persons
Social boycott
Selective social boycott
Lysistratic nonaction
Excommunication
Interdict
Noncooperation with Social Events, Customs, and Institutions
Suspension of social and sports activities
Boycott of social affairs
Student strike
Social disobedience
Withdrawal from social institutions Withdrawal from the Social System
Stay-at-home
Total personal noncooperation
“Flight” of workers
Sanctuary
Collective disappearance
Protest emigration (hijrat)
The Methods of Economic Noncooperation: Economic Boycotts
Actions by Consumers
Consumers’ boycott
Nonconsumption of boycotted goods
Policy of austerity
Rent withholding
Refusal to rent
National consumers’ boycott
International consumers’ boycott
Action by Workers and Producers
Workmen’s boycott
Producers’ boycott
Action by Middlemen
Suppliers’ and handlers’ boycott
Action by Owners and Management
Traders’ boycott
Refusal to let or sell property
Lockout
Refusal of industrial assistance
Merchants’ “general strike”
Action by Holders of Financial Resources
Withdrawal of bank deposits
Refusal to pay fees, dues, and assessments
Refusal to pay debts or interest
Severance of funds and credit
Revenue refusal
Refusal of a government’s money
Action by Governments
Domestic embargo
Blacklisting of traders
International sellers’ embargo
International buyers’ embargo
International trade embargo
The Methods Of Economic Noncooperation: The Strike
Symbolic Strikes
Protest strike
Quickie walkout (lightning strike)
Agricultural Strikes
Peasant strike
Farm Workers’ strike
Strikes by Special Groups
Refusal of impressed labor
Prisoners’ strike
Craft strike
Professional strike
Ordinary Industrial Strikes
Establishment strike
Industry strike
Sympathetic strike
Restricted Strikes
Detailed strike
Bumper strike
Slowdown strike
Working-to-rule strike
Reporting “sick” (sick-in)
Strike by resignation
Limited strike
Selective strike
Multi-Industry Strikes
Generalized strike
General strike
Combination of Strikes and Economic Closures
Hartal
Economic shutdown
The Methods Of Political Noncooperation
Rejection of Authority
Withholding or withdrawal of allegiance
Refusal of public support
Literature and speeches advocating resistance
Citizens’ Noncooperation with Government
Boycott of legislative bodies
Boycott of elections
Boycott of government employment and positions
Boycott of government depts., agencies, and other bodies
Withdrawal from government educational institutions
Boycott of government-supported organizations
Refusal of assistance to enforcement agents
Removal of own signs and placemarks
Refusal to accept appointed officials
Refusal to dissolve existing institutions
Citizens’ Alternatives to Obedience
Reluctant and slow compliance
Nonobedience in absence of direct supervision
Popular nonobedience
Disguised disobedience
Refusal of an assemblage or meeting to disperse
Sitdown
Noncooperation with conscription and deportation
Hiding, escape, and false identities
Civil disobedience of “illegitimate” laws
Action by Government Personnel
Selective refusal of assistance by government aides
Blocking of lines of command and information
Stalling and obstruction
General administrative noncooperation
Judicial noncooperation
Deliberate inefficiency and selective noncooperation by enforcement agents
Mutiny
Domestic Governmental Action
Quasi-legal evasions and delays
Noncooperation by constituent governmental units
International Governmental Action
Changes in diplomatic and other representations
Delay and cancellation of diplomatic events
Withholding of diplomatic recognition
Severance of diplomatic relations
Withdrawal from international organizations
Refusal of membership in international bodies
Expulsion from international organizations
The Methods Of Nonviolent Intervention
Psychological Intervention
Self-exposure to the elements
The fast a) Fast of moral pressure b) Hunger strike c) Satyagrahic fast
I am waiting for my case to come up and I am waiting for a rebirth of wonder and I am waiting for someone to really discover America and wail and I am waiting for the discovery of a new symbolic western frontier and I am waiting for the American Eagle to really spread its wings and straighten up and fly right and I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety to drop dead and I am waiting for the war to be fought which will make the world safe for anarchy and I am waiting for the final withering away of all governments and I am perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Second Coming and I am waiting for a religious revival to sweep thru the state of Arizona and I am waiting for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored and I am waiting for them to prove that God is really American and I am waiting to see God on television piped onto church altars if only they can find the right channel to tune in on and I am waiting for the Last Supper to be served again with a strange new appetizer and I am perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for my number to be called and I am waiting for the Salvation Army to take over and I am waiting for the meek to be blessed and inherit the earth without taxes and I am waiting for forests and animals to reclaim the earth as theirs and I am waiting for a way to be devised to destroy all nationalisms without killing anybody and I am waiting for linnets and planets to fall like rain and I am waiting for lovers and weepers to lie down together again in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed and I am anxiously waiting for the secret of eternal life to be discovered by an obscure general practitioner and I am waiting for the storms of life to be over and I am waiting to set sail for happiness and I am waiting for a reconstructed Mayflower to reach America with its picture story and tv rights sold in advance to the natives and I am waiting for the lost music to sound again in the Lost Continent in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting for the day that maketh all things clear and I am awaiting retribution for what America did to Tom Sawyer and I am waiting for Alice in Wonderland to retransmit to me her total dream of innocence and I am waiting for Childe Roland to come to the final darkest tower and I am waiting for Aphrodite to grow live arms at a final disarmament conference in a new rebirth of wonder
I am waiting to get some intimations of immortality by recollecting my early childhood and I am waiting for the green mornings to come again youth’s dumb green fields come back again and I am waiting for some strains of unpremeditated art to shake my typewriter and I am waiting to write the great indelible poem and I am waiting for the last long careless rapture and I am perpetually waiting for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn to catch each other up at last and embrace and I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder
An unreliable narrator is a storyteller whose credibility is compromised, leading readers to question or doubt the accuracy of their account. This narrative technique creates a gap between what the narrator tells us and what actually happened.
Common types include:
Mentally unstable narrators who may be delusional or mentally ill (e.g., the narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart”)
Naïve narrators who lack the experience or knowledge to fully understand events (e.g., a child narrator)
Biased narrators who deliberately manipulate the truth for self-serving reasons
Narrators with impaired perception due to intoxication, trauma, or memory issues
The unreliability often becomes apparent through inconsistencies in their story, contradictions between their words and actions, or clues that reveal their misperceptions. This technique engages readers more actively, as they must piece together the truth themselves.
Classic examples include Humbert Humbert in “Lolita,” the narrator in Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl,” and Nick Carraway in “The Great Gatsby” (to a subtler degree).
Discussing Trump’s latest perfidy, the closing down of the Kennedy Center, I maintain that this may have been on his mind for a while. Someone else suggested that those in the know indicated it was his instant petulant reaction to the Melania movie fiasco there, when few of his sycophants showed up for the premiere. I replied that we couldn’t really know, because what people around him say is presumptively false, just as his own words are.
That leads to the broader issue of the unreliable narrator. It is common in storytelling and sometimes in the real world. But in America today, we have never had so many people with amplified voices say so many things that are manifestly untrue.
Maybe, as the above description says, this unreliability actively engages us to piece together the truth for ourselves. Regarding the shutting down of the Kennedy Center, spontaneous or planned? When we try to piece it together, we might say that it may matter to journalists and historians, but citizens like us might simply conclude that either way, something is terribly, horribly wrong.
Which brings us back to narrators, reliable, and increasingly among the loud, corrupt and powerful who lead us, totally unreliable. Who do you trust in Lolita, for example, a story told by a pedophile?
Our religious traditions often ask us to act on faith, believing that which can’t be absolutely demonstrated or proven to our satisfaction. For theistic religions, God is at the top of that list, with many other beliefs following.
In Buddhism there is a belief in rebirth:
rebirth. The belief that one is reborn after death. Belief in rebirth is a corollary of the doctrine of karma, which holds that a person experiences the good or bad fruits of moral action at a later date. Rebirth is one of the ‘givens’ of Buddhist thought and since its truth is universally assumed it is rarely asserted or defended as a dogma. Some contemporary Buddhists have suggested that belief in rebirth is not an essential part of Buddhist teachings, but the notion is deeply ingrained in the tradition and the ancient texts.
In closing, Jackson points to a familiar Western resolution. The argument of 17th-century mathematician Blaise Pascal—sometimes called Pascal’s wager—is that by believing in God you risk nothing significant but could gain everything.
This leads Jackson to this:
I myself would argue without ambivalence for what I call “As-If Agnosticism.” My stance is agnostic because, like Hayes and Batchelor (and many others), I do not find traditional descriptions of karma and rebirth literally credible, nor am I fully persuaded by arguments in their favor, whether rational, empirical, or faith-based; on the other hand, I cannot rule out the possibility that such descriptions (or something akin to them) may in fact be true. The universe, after all, is surpassingly strange. In the spirit of Wallace Stevens’s famous statement that “we believe without belief, beyond belief,” I propose that we live as if such descriptions were true. I am not suggesting we simply take up wishful thinking: if only there were past and future lives, if only karma works the ways tradition says it does, if only glorious and perfect buddhahood awaited us all at the end of the rainbow. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But as Buddhists have argued for millennia, Western humanists have claimed for centuries, and scientists have recently begun to recognize, the world is actually built far more on our ideas, aspirations, and speculations—the As-If—than we suppose, and the solid foundations we presume to lie beneath us—the “As-Is”—are much more difficult to find than we assume. It’s not, therefore, that by living as if certain doctrines were true we really are in flight from some bedrock, objective reality, because that reality—though it certainly imposes limitations on us, most notably at the time of death—turns out to be far more a matter of convention and far less “just the way things are” than we had thought. Freed from the illusion of perfect objectivity, therefore, why not think and live as if Buddhism were true? In doing so, we empower ourselves to enter, as fully as is possible in a skeptical age, into the ongoing, ever-changing life of the Dharma, adopting Buddhist ideals, telling Buddhist stories, articulating Buddhist doctrines, performing Buddhist rituals, and embodying Buddhist ethics in ways that make meaning for ourselves, provide a measure of comfort to others, and perhaps contribute in some small way to the betterment of the imperfect and imperiled world in which we all live.
Let the final word belong not to me, however, but to the Buddha, who in the Rohitassa Sutta (Discourse about Rohitassa) recounts a previous life as a seer named Rohatissa, “possessing magical potency, able to travel through the sky…[with] speed like that of a light arrow easily shot by a firm-bowed archer.” Conceiving the wish to find the ends of the earth, he traveled for a hundred years as fast as the wind, yet “died along the way without having reached the end of the world.” There is no “end” to the geographic world, explains the Buddha, but that is not, in any case, the end-of-the-world we should be seeking. Rather, we must seek the place “where one is not born, does not grow old and die, does not pass away and get reborn.” And where is the end of the world in this deeper sense—nirvāṇa—to be found? “It is,” he says, “in this fathom-long body endowed with perception and mind that I proclaim (1) the world, (2) the origin of the world, (3) the cessation of the world, and (4) the way leading to the cessation of the world.” As a result, “…the wise one, the world-knower, who has reached the world’s end and lived the spiritual life, having known the world’s end, at peace, does not desire this world or another.”
“As if” is powerful. There is also a powerful caveat. If you believe “as if” something is true, though you may still doubt it, it is essential that the belief do good for others—not just for yoursel. While Pascal says believing in the unprovable you “could gain everything”, it is others who should ultimately gain everything from your belief, not just you. If the belief brings other harm, better to not believe and act “as if.”
Neon lights, a Nobel prize When a mirror speaks, the reflection lies
In 1988 the band Living Colour released their first album Vivid and the hit single Cult of Personality, which went on to win a Grammy.
It isn’t often that a track remains so relevant so many years later. But cults of personality have been around as long as leaders have been around, which is forever. Like now. Besides being a great song and performance (incendiary guitar by Vernon Reid), it is eerily notable that it specifically includes reference to “Neon lights, a Nobel prize”.
Living Colour is still playing, and was featured on Jimmy Kimmel last October.
Cult of Personality
And during the few moments that we have left We want to talk right down to earth In a language that everybody here can easily understand
Look in my eyes What do you see? The cult of personality
I know your anger, I know your dreams I’ve been everything you want to be Oh, I’m the cult of personality
Like Mussolini and Kennedy I’m the cult of personality The cult of personality The cult of personality
Neon lights, a Nobel prize When a mirror speaks, the reflection lies You won’t have to follow me Only you can set me free
I sell the things you need to be I’m the smiling face on your TV Oh, I’m the cult of personality
I exploit you, still you love me I tell you, one and one makes three Oh, I’m the cult of personality
Like Joseph Stalin and Gandhi I’m the cult of personality The cult of personality The cult of personality
Neon lights, a Nobel prize When a leader speaks, that leader dies You won’t have to follow me Only you can set you free
You gave me fortune, you gave me fame You gave me power in your god’s name I’m every person you need to be Oh, I’m the cult of personality
Bob Schwartz 