Il faut cultiver notre jardin

It's been a long, long time since I read Candide, and philosophy was never my strong suit, but this advice—tend your own garden, don't pay attention to your neighbors, stay out of politics, accept the world as it is and not as we want it to be—is so alluring today.

I am in shock. I want to retreat and lick my wounds and come out in a year or two. Or never. But I don't think I can do that. I'm afraid that it's going to get very very ugly. I might have the privilege of being able to ignore much of that ugliness. But I won't.

I can't.

Peruvian politics

Since I am talking about Lima again, here's a picture of the presidential palace. It's also known as the House of Pizarro, since it sits on the site of the first Government Palace, built by Pizarro. This building dates primarily from the 1920's.

It is the official residence of the president of Peru, and as such has seen a fair amount of turnover in its occupants. The current president (and first woman in the job), is Dina Boluarte. She was vice president under Pedro Castillo, who was impeached after attempting a coup. (Sound familiar, Americans?)

Castillo is now in the same prison on the outskirts of Lima as two other former presidents, Alberto Fujimori and Alejandro Toledo; I believe a few other former presidents are under house arrest elsewhere.

Yeah, that's the ticket!

Way back in what feels like another lifetime -- eleven whole months ago -- I got invited to the New Hampshire Democratic convention as a supporter of Elizabeth Warren. There were approximately 900 Democrats running for president then, and I saw almost all of them.

I honestly would never have predicted that it would come down to these two. Nobody thought Biden had a chance then, and some people were angry that he was even running, sucking money and attention away from the eventual nominee. He was the first candidate to speak at the convention, when people were still filing into the arena and he didn't generate much of a response. Harris was good, but I'd expected to be wowed by her and wasn't.

Now I am one of the millions who would enthusiastically crawl over broken glass to vote for these intelligent, empathetic, decent human beings and take our country back. Biden-Harris 2020!

Intoxicated and utterly unmotivated

Slate has created a Scalia insult generator, so you too can be the object of his scorn, even if you're not planning to gay-marry anyone and you already have health insurance.

It's been a bad week for apoplectics.

Inauguration Central

Jayne and I are safely settled at the Georgetown Holiday Inn, and are already caught up in inauguration fever. I'm having some technical difficulties getting pictures off my camera and on to my laptop, but thanks to the magic of Google images, I can share a picture of my first inauguration souvenir -- my very own Obama action figure.