Rex Smith

My progressive friends are drawing some comfort from polls showing that Donald Trump’s popularity is dipping. He began this presidency with a higher approval rating than he ever had during his first term, but now Trump is even a lot less popular than Joe Biden was at this point in his term four years ago.

Americans love their caps. Even folks who aren’t big baseball fans wear caps that signal their fandom of one product or another, or of a particular team. We like you to know right upfront, as soon as you face us, who we are.

“Freedom is a fragile thing, and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction.”

There’s a silly Monty Python sketch from a half-century ago that some of you surely remember, and it spawned an enduring meme — though we didn’t have that name for it then. In the scene, a hapless character who is annoyed about being asked a lot of baffling questions complains, “I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition,” at which point a trio of red-caped cardinals bursts into the room, with one exclaiming, “No-o-o-body expects the Spanish Inquisition!”

Lately I’ve been noticing how many English words are portmanteaus – that is, words created by joining parts of two other words. You know, like “brunch,” which is a smooshing together of breakfast and lunch, or “blog,” which was created from “web” and “log.” There’s a lot of this in America: We get “sporks” at fast-food joints, and we go home to sit next to our “labradoodle” and multi-task by browsing our “email” while watching a “sitcom” or a “romcom” or maybe a “bromance.”

Those of us who work in journalism understand that when we tell people that we’re worried about what the Trump administration is doing to press freedom -- and particularly about the threat of changes to libel law -- we might sound like just another interest group pleading for our own privileges. Here in Albany, where I’m speaking just now, we see a lot of that, after all.

In this commentary last week, we discussed some notions of how to maintain our mental health in turbulent times for America. Not that I’m a psychologist, mind you – I’m just a journalist, who has come across some research that I consider worth passing along.

Being a guy, you know, I assumed for a long time that I was supposed to be able to fix things. For years, this led to lots of disappointment, especially early in our marriage, before my wife figured out that my skill set was limited to – well, punctuation, I guess. It took me longer than most folks to understand that it’s OK to not even try to be the fix-it guy – and that sometimes folks just want you to listen and care, not to tell them what to do. People are less eager to be confronted with an agenda than to be comforted with understanding, I finally learned.

I was always impressed with the many titles of Haile Selassie, who was the Emperor of Ethiopia for 45 years starting in 1930. I mean, he ruled! After all, who could withstand the power of a guy known as “Keeper of the Door,” and “King of Kings” and, especially, “Lion of the Tribe of Judah, His Imperial Majesty.” That’s a seriously fine job title.

I didn’t grow up in a wealthy family, and I mean no disrespect to those who did when I say that the qualities that matter in people – that is, the lessons that we hope our kids absorb – have nothing to do with earning power. People can get rich even if they are foolish or immoral or ignorant.