It's been a week, hasn't it?  Well, we can hope that the election is over, that Donald Trump is not permitted to run a coup by his GOP enablers, and that the United States will for now continue to exist as a constitutional republic.  (But if you needed more evidence that the GOP is deeply sick right now, the past week would provide it.)

But that's not what I'm looking at right now.  Right now I'm looking at...

It's been a week, hasn't it?  Well, we can hope that the election is over, that Donald Trump is not permitted to run a coup by his GOP enablers, and that the United States will for now continue to exist as a constitutional republic.  (But if you needed more evidence that the GOP is deeply sick right now, the past week would provide it.)

But that's not what I'm looking at right now.  Right now I'm looking at...

Interesting story on local VA politics.  Not totally off the wall. 

What this piece fails to talk about--and what it should talk about--is the...

A ton of us have been having this conversation, this piece by Tom Nichols captures some of it in a really troubling way:

Nearly half of the voters have seen Trump in all of his splendor—his infantile tirades, his disastrous and lethal policies, his contempt for democracy in all its forms—and they decided that they...

Hey all, just some distracting links at the top, and a couple political links at the bottom.  No big brain ideas.  

It's an important night.  A lot is at stake tomorrow, and in coming days.  I pray that we are shown mercy.  These are scary times.  But, as ever, we are the times.  All we can do is respond as best we can.

For now, some links:

I think...

It's not like it's 6 AM on Saturday morning and I've been up for two hours already.  It's not like that at all.  But since it seems like that, I might as well post.

The 2020 Electorate is different from...

Here's a fun story about the Dutch, who have been forced to ask themselves serious questions about why they were not able to avoid the COVID crisis.  This reminds me of...

Michelle Goldberg has a good column about this today.  Trump has indeed occupied too much of our minds.  

Some of that has been very much to the good--a renewed awareness (and use of the category) of white supremacy, a deeper awareness of the complexities and often savagery of American history, the recognition that a significant proportion of the population--say, 40%...

Bet you missed them!  Well, here you go.

John Cavadini, one of the best scholars of Augustine writing today, on Rowan Williams, one of the most Augustinian theologians writing today. ...

We’ve long been captive to the GNP as a way of measuring how well societies are doing, but it’s worth noting that that is merely an economic measure. 

Other more fine grained approaches are possible.  In Bhutan there’s the “Gross National Happiness” index, and there are others like unto that. 

Recently we’ve seen the development of the annual World Happiness Report...