Week 3, 2025 - The last week of Americana

Song of the week:

Thoughts

Over the last 10 to 15 years of my career I've travelled an enormous amount. It's fun, interesting, eye-opening but also strenuous. More strenuous today than it was 5 years ago because I have a young family to consider. My wife also travels a bit for work, and we've got decent balance based on rules we set ourselves (weekends count double, for example).

Last week we had our annual kickoff in $job. It was great, inspiring, exhausting and I came home on the 10 hour slog-of-a-flight with a chest infection. Luckily Monday is a US bank holiday, so I can take that one off to recoup and recover. Especially because 1 week later, I fly to NYC for a planning session.

As I was wandering around North Beach bars in SFO, a very random thought hit me with my Texan colleague. This is the last time we'll experience America the way it is today. Next week, Joe Biden departs the Oval Office and Donald Trump takes office. I remember 2016 being unsettling more than scary. There were checks & balances, systems in place and a general rule of law, even if the man himself wanted to do crazy things. Over four years we saw those checks & balances do a lot of work. A lot of very, very interesting books were released documenting a wild ride in the halls of American power.

We saw a wall being built across the Mexican border, children being caged like animals, covid-powered body pits in New York, and a general degradation of the American brand globally.

Let's take a step back. I love America. It's a mad place. It's much bigger than most people think, and as a result has filled with an enormous amount of culture & history, each piece unique to that plot of land. America is done a disservice by being called "America" much like it wouldn't be fair to call everyone in Europe simply European. Ireland has to have it's own identity to represent the Irish, their culture, their history, etc. separate to a Belgian, Frenchie or Polish.

I tend to subscribe to the meme of Bono being a bit of a pox. But he is right when he declares America to not be a place, but to be an 'idea'. Having been all over the continent, the culture, history and people in Nevada are extremely different to their neighbours in California. And that's so different to the people of NY, who are different to their neighbours in Massachusetts.

The governors of these states should be allowed to represent their states much like we do in Europe. We don't send Ursala von der Layen to St. Patrick's Day events in March.

My point is that there'll be a lot of doom & gloom in the coming years. The news cycles will be dominated by two total muppets. President Trump and first lady Elon. Their politics, ideologies and operating systems are grotesque. But there are a lot of checks and balances. There are a lot of people who have a big say in how their individual states, counties or cities operate. And while the election last year was a Democratic disaster, they have only themselves to blame. The status quo wouldn't be that good for America, either. Sometimes you need a lunatic to do lunatic things for a few years to rally everyone around some humanity. I, as you might imagine, remain optimistic. I am long on humans.

Another random thought on this. In 2016, it took months for Dublin airport to put a photo of Trump in the pre-clearance room. That could easily have been the time it takes to print the presidential photo. But my hope is that the empty frame was simply a small, calculated act of mild treason by the staff there. Little things like that make me think my optimism is well placed.

Photo of the week

(via flickr)

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Published on: 18th January, 2025

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