Thanks to @Maude, I've been dwelling all day on this photo and the concept of grifting - who does it and why.

storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod/media/282c1cb580df492580d9f4260899044d/2000.jpeg

This is from July 2021. It's Mike Flynn (a grifter), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Charlene Bollinger (another grifter), and Roger Stone (another grifter).

Given also this weekend's pictures with Elon Musk and Jared Kushner and Nailya Asker-Zade (Putin's Propagandist) at the World Cup Final...

1/2

It's little surprise to me that global democracy and the rule of law are in steep decline around the world.

It really bothers me that I have no fathomable clue how we return to those ideals that, more or less, have served us so well.

Perhaps this is just who we truly are as a people. I'm not naive: we haven't really had these ideals in our own country until Jim Crow 1.0 was legally dismantled (or replaced by Jim Crow 2.0).

It's extremely depressing.

Any glimmers of hope out there?