It is idiotic to claim that Trump won the last election, or that Covid vaccines are useless. But in the last year we have learned that you can’t force people to give up their idiocies. The harder you try, the more they stick to them, and the angrier they get.

And if this is how it plays out with matters where truth is as clear as sunlight, it’s only worse with more arguable situations like guns or abortions. I believe abortions should be available, at least in the early months, but I don’t believe that finding the right to them in the Constitution and then forcing it upon all 50 states has been good for the USA.

So what do we do? How can we find a positive direction in this dark time? I wish we could stop trying to force other people to share our views. As of today, I am beginning to take seriously a solution where the USA splits into pieces.

This change of my thinking entails a change in my view of the biggest event of US history, the Civil War. Lincoln was an extraordinary man, and yet, maybe we would have been better off without him and his determination to keep the nation together.

[7 January 2022]