Heather Cox Richardson
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And there was a really small note about a man who had died by suicide that night because his business had gone under and he was distraught and he couldn't face the fact that he was the only failure in this entire city, country, world, right, in his mind.
And that's always stuck in my mind because I just, you know, I kept saying to the little piece of paper, dude, hang on, hang on 12 more hours.
Because if you hang on 12 more hours, there's going to be a whole lot of people who are there with you and who might like to hear your perspective on things.
So every time it feels to me like, oh man, I'm not sure what we're facing in the morning.
I think of that poor man who, if he had just...
managed to hang on for 12 more hours would have realized that he was not a failure, that the system had failed and that together they could rebuild it.
You're far more charitable than I am.
I think the dude is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
I was trying to be nice.
So I'm going to push that further.
To me, the elephant, not only just in the room, but in the whole house and in the whole mansion, whatever, is that he is not mentally okay.
And, you know, we have Captain Ahab in the charge of the ship of state, which, you know, would be a lovely thing to dive into some other conversation.
But he, um, no, I think it's more than he doesn't care because certainly we have had presidents in the past who had an ideology in their head and acted according to that ideology, even as the country began to burn down around them.
I mean, just don't even start me on Benjamin Harrison, but we could get into Calvin Coolidge, for example.
But in this case, the man does not know if he's a foot or horseback.
And so, you know, things are changing every second.
And the more destruction he causes, the more he is inclined to lash out and cause more destruction.
So watching that and what that has gotten us into with the destruction of world trade and with the destruction of our security alliances and with the destruction of our allies and with the support โ the fact we're supporting oligarchs, especially petro-oligarchs around the world.
I mean what he has done is he has really slashed into ribbons the post-World War II order that has brought us peace and prosperity for 80 freaking years.
So โ