Shifting Identities

This article was written at two points in time. The first section was composed on November 7, 2024, the day after Trump’s second electoral victory. The second section was written a few days ago, approximately twelve months after Trump became president again.     PART ONE November 7, 2024, the day Trump won a second term. About nineteen years ago, two dear friends died in a small plane crash. It happened the day after we buried my father-in-law. For several weeks, I woke up wi

I’m passionate about education, more specifically, about learning. That’s why I was so surprised that Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s recent book, Abundance [1] only mentioned education three or four times in their entire exposé, so few times that “education” wasn’t included in the index.  Neither were these words: intelligence, learning, thinking, teaching, or schools.   Klein and Thompson offer a framework for America that focuses on what is needed by everyone: cheap clea

I’m just reading Jonathan Haidt’s Substack post on After Babel for December 18, 2025 [1] , and it reminded me of what so many people do when it comes to screens and children’s magnetic attraction to them: BLAME THE PARENTS.   As part of the “book tour” for my recent publication, Stuck in Our Screens: Setting Aside Social Drama and Restoring Human Connection, I’ve been doing book talks at local libraries. Without a doubt when the subject of youth and screens and all the probl

I’m not an alarmist when it comes to how adults express their concerns about young people. Every generation bemoans the state of youth as failing, flailing, lazy, inept, or morally vacuous once they themselves have advanced to the highest level of development defined as mature adulthood. Few remember their own struggles, missteps, thoughtless behaviors, or outright crimes. At certain times, this adult amnesia produces moral panics, full society-wide overreaction to what is wr