Good morning on a hazy Sunday after a stormy night. I don't know if our town and surrounding area has had any damage but parts of Chicago certainly did. One hopeful indication was the weather report which showed not a single 90F day for the next ten days. I hope it remains that way.

I don't know about any one else but I watched Trump's performance in Alaska with a sinking feeling. Our alleged president never looked so much like a dummy to Putin the ventriloquist as he did then. I have let the thoughts percolate in my subconscious since then and that feeling of looking at an approaching crash has only intensified.

The major problem most societies the histories of which I have been reading faced was the problem of succession. The Roman Empire from 200-500CE experienced repeated episodes of ambitious generals who staged coups (sometimes successful) with the backing of an army. This added to the instability during a period of climatic uncertainty, economic stagnation, and threats from powerful enemies on the frontiers. During the Merovingian and Carolingian Frankish kingdoms in what is now France and part of Germany the kings always faced succession problems of having too many sons or too few. Given the infant mortality at the time the kings sons might not survive to inherit which opened up contests for succession among cousins and other relatives. If too many survived the kingdom would also be roiled by contending claims among the brothers.

It is easy to dismiss all that by saying that is the past and doesn't apply now. But there is another failure that has persisted into modern times: the incompetent successor. The history of monarchies from the Renaissance, Enlightenment and Modern period is litterd with examples. And can we say that democracies of any age have done any better? Someone quipped the MAGA movement is really about making America safe again for mediocre white christian males. Our current president and the majority of his minions is a superb example of that.

Actually, I just had another thought: Trump isn't totally incompetent. He is superbly competent in aggrandizing himself, in enriching himself and his sycophants, in seeking vengeance on whoever he feels has opposed him. In all that he is totally competent. Unfortunately that doesn't do anything positive for the 99.99% of the American people outside his concerns.

Richard Haas has some interesting comments on his AT HOME AND AWAY site.