What We Can Learn from Churchill and Buffett
I’m 80 years old and want to accomplish many things before I kick the bucket. The first is to have Ti Ti, my granddaughter from Myanmar, come to America and get her college education where I teach. I also want to care for Ginger, my 83-pound Irish Setter. She and I have done the dance with death several times, which also drives me. Lastly, I love teaching, especially art history. I was a teaching assistant while still in college, and often during the last couple of decades, I have taught art history.
I was researching something Winston Churchill said, “When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.” My right brain seems to pick up various things while googling. I came across this painting with Churchill’s quote as the painting’s title.
Even though I taught art history, I can’t accurately label the artistic period of this painting. It is somewhat similar to Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, a German Expressionist. Regardless, I immediately connected with the painting. It moved me emotionally.
Allow me to explain. America is experiencing a great deal of jabbering from the MAGA minions. Donald the Dumb, Kevin McCarthy, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, ad infinitum.
Warren Buffett had another version of that same mindset. “If you want to soar like an eagle in life, you can’t be flocking with the turkeys.”
However, Biden is an 80-year-old president and an eagle who has soared with humor and guts. Biden caught the Republications off guard and had them agree to keep Medicare and Social Security during his State of the Union speech.
Biden, the eagle, took off from Andrews Air Force Base at 4:00 a.m. on February 19th and flew to Warsaw, Poland, after refueling in Germany. Then Biden took a train from Warsaw at 9:37 p.m. on Sunday. His train trip to Kyiv was a five-hundred-mile ride, which took ten hours.
Before boarding the train to Kyiv
Biden again soared while visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. This photo is of President Zelensky and President Biden walking next to a mural of saints at St. Michaels Golden-Domed Cathedral. Biden and Zelensky exemplify what Lincoln called “the better angels.”
Zelenskyy, his wife, and Biden in front of the Mariinskyi Palace
Another photo of “the better angels”
The MAGA minions need to remember Gilgamesh and his quest to find immortality. Gilgamesh realized that immortality was impossible. However, he lives on in the hearts and minds of millions in the five millennia since he was the ruler of Uruk, a Sumerian city-state ca. 2800-2500 BCE. The minions will be remembered long after they leave this life as jabbering parrots.
This is an aside. I worry about the people in Ukraine precisely like I am concerned about my family in Myanmar. Both countries are suffering due to wars.
Visit the On Seeing the Light page to read more about this topic.
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Visit the Best and Worst of Times page to read more about this topic.
Visit the Ti Ti page to read more about this topic.
Visit the Gilgamesh page to read more about this topic.
Visit the Mentors and Me page to read more about this topic.
Visit the Donald the Dumb page to read more about this topic.
Visit the Stupid is as Stupid Does page to read more about this topic.
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Visit the Ukraine page to read more about this topic.
02/22/23