Moving forward from our Christmas and New Year’s Eves’ “musical” posts, we’re returning to the focus of our December 18, 2024 post: modernity and cultural givens in the U.S. in 2025 and beyond. As always we’re not just reporting on news (the New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans, the truck explosion in Las Vegas, the reelection of Mike Johnson as Speaker of the House, etc.), but we’re considering such news in the context of the nation’s collective shadow, which is characterized by ignorance, arrogance, fear, bigotry, violence, greed, excess, bullying, and untrustworthiness, at the very least.
Notes and Sources:
The similarities and differences among these three men warrant much more attention than they get here. The first two events seem to have been enacted with the intention to kill others. The third, in Las Vegas, was a suicide, and the choice of vehicle seems to have been made with the intention of limiting unintended casualties by someone whose training would have allowed him to make that choice. All three men were described as “good” and “intelligent” by those who knew them. Each was born in the U.S. and seems to have deteriorated in his own way for his own reasons.
Luke Kemp, “Existential Risks: The Biggest Threats to Life as We Know It,” Nate Hagens’ The Great Simplification Podcast, #153, December 4, 2024, https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/153-luke-kemp
This list includes only human-initiated threats. Natural threats like “asteroids, comets, super volcanoes, or just large scale volcanic eruptions, though rare, are real. See note 2.
Luke Kemp, “Existential Risks…” See note 2. For more on 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, etc. increases in global mean temperature (GMT) see the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s 2023 report: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-cycle/. Headline statements from the longer report are available here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/resources/spm-headline-statements/
These numbers were are based on CDC updates as of June 2022. They may be slightly different today.
“Many” is the operative word here. Some are qualified.
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