Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
John Wood, Jr. is a national leader for Braver Angels, a former nominee for Congress, former Vice-Chairman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County, musical artist and a noted writer and speaker on issues of political and racial reconciliation.
He addresses the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?”
In the end, I commend my mother’s words to President Biden–words I myself should have paid more attention to—there are things in this world better left unsaid—at least for the moment.
The running joke in Capital City for the past four and a half years is that every week is infrastructure week. It’s agreed by both Republicans and Democrats that US infrastructure is in woeful condition.
Some things just seem to go together–Bogey and Bacall—for example. There are other things—voting rights legislation and the future of national climate policy—not so much.
Until trust and civility are restored, governing the nation will continue to be beyond anyone’s grasp. Talk about an unsustainable environment.
Are fossil fuels and clean energy alternatives equally attractive choices as Aristotle’s food and water, Al-Ghazali’s dates, or Buridan’s bales of hay?
We know what climate and clean energy policies by presidential order mean for the nation—a perpetual cycle of feast and famine that creates uncertainty in the marketplace and crowded court calendars.
In the final analysis, I believe the fate of Biden’s Job Plan will be left to the President and the American people to decide. Will they choose to build back to the future or the past? Only time will tell.
Under common law, uttering is when a person offers as genuine a forged instrument with the intent to defraud.
It may sound strange to suggest the fate of President Biden’s climate agenda will parallel that of Liz Cheney, Wyoming’s at-large Republican congressional representative, but hear me out.
Today, Americans have sorted ourselves into communities defined by geography, demography, ideology— and opportunities to communicate across those divides are exceedingly rare. But the shared trauma of flooding offers an opening.
Does nature represent eternity, ancestors, science, the present, the future, or a young earth? Is it to be revered, conserved, exploited, or sacrificed? A nation that identifies itself with nature begins to fall apart when it can no longer agree on what nature is.
