In 1729, the Anglo-Irish writer, Jonathan Swift, wrote an essay entitled A Modest Proposal. More precisely, the full title of his work was A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public.

Swift suggests a way for the impoverished Irish to ease their economic troubles … sell their children as food to rich gentlemen and ladies!

“A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout,” Swift suggests.

Of course, anyone who took a college course in English literature would know this essay is one of the finest examples of political satire ever written. Through seemingly well-reasoned hyperbole, Swift mocks the heartless attitudes of his time towards the poor, as well as British policy toward the Irish in general.

My guess is that if Swift wrote such an essay today, in the age of the Internet, more than half of those reading the piece would take it literally!

We as a nation we are losing the ability to separate fact from fiction… to think critically,  The art of satire is slowly dying, if it is not already dead.

Our educational system is broken when the ability to detect and appreciate satire, especially political satire, is gone.

My modest proposal for 2017, and beyond, is that we stop focusing so much on science and math for our kids at the expense of the humanities.

Yes, in times of economic stress such as these, studying history, philosophy and literature may seem like a big waste of time. But a liberal education is what molds us into well-rounded individuals able to navigate whatever comes our way.

Flexibility, creativity, critical thinking, logic and reason, along with strong communication skills, are at the core of a liberal arts education. With fake news and misinformation all around us, the ability for rational thought is needed now more than ever.

I can easily imagine a reader’s comment to Swift’s proposal in today’s age of social media:

“You are one sick dude. Don’t you have any regard for life? … especially your own kids? You should be hung!”

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It is almost universally agreed 2016 was a crappy year.

We recently suffered the deaths of Carrie Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, … only one day apart. This came on top of some really big music legends joining that big “nightshift” in the sky: George Michael, David Bowie, Prince, Glenn Frey, Maurice White, Keith Emerson, Leonard Cohen, Leon Russell and Greg Lake.

Yes, every year sees the names of many music superstars on the “check out” list. But so many, so young, so soon?

In world and national events, you had the following tragedies (in no particular order): Syria, Haiti, Zika, Orlando, Charlotte, Nice, Brussels, and Berlin.

But perhaps the biggest downer for most Americans, and all peace-loving people of the world, was the election of Donald J. Trump as president of the United States.

That the greatest nation on earth … Reagan’s “shining city on a hill,” could elect as their leader an infantile, narcissistic con man is too much for many to bear.

Yet as hard as it may be accepting the fact that a carnival barker was elected president of the United States on November 8^th, it is even scarier facing the reality that this same person will officially be elevated to our nation’s highest office on January 20, 2017.

When Donald J. Trump has the power to actually sign bills into law … bills that the Republican-controlled congress is salivating to get to his desk, that’s when the real scary part begins.

The Affordable Care Act? Fugetaboutit! Social Security and Medicare? Fugetaboutit! Environmental protection? Fugetaboutit! A woman’s right to choose? Fugetaboutit!

Yes, 2016 was a bad year. But 2017 could make crappy 2016 smell like roses in comparison.

It is distressing when, for many people, avoiding nuclear war would be a sign of success for the coming year.

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Like humans, the meanings of words also evolve.

Take, for example, the word “gay.” Up until the early 1960s, the word primarily meant “lighthearted and carefree.” In the 1930s, you had Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers starring in “The Gay Divorcée.” In 1962 you could find Sam Cooke singing about a New York place where “people are so gay, twistin’ the night away.”

Today the word is almost universally known to mean homosexual … especially men.

One could make a case for words changing their meaning ever since the first word was uttered.

The word “fact” has recently undergone a major shift. Thanks to years of conservative news outlets like Fox News, and more recently the Trump campaign, the word that once meant “something that has really occurred or is actually true” now means, “something you believe has really occurred or is actually true.”

The late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once famously said, “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”

How quaint. How so totally vintage!

Scottie Neil Hughes, the conservative CNN commentator and ardent Trump supporter, recently told radio host Diane Rehm, “There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts.”

And observation bears that out.

Donald Trump claims to have won the national popular vote. Fifty-two percent of Republicans say it’s a fact, according to one poll. Forty percent of Trump voters believe that to be true in another poll.

The reality is that the final vote count showed Hillary Clinton won almost three million more votes than Trump!

This is a fact in the old meaning of the word. It is knowable, provable and empirically true. But nearly half of Trump voters don’t buy it. Why? They believe Donald Trump over the crooked media which just makes up the numbers.

Hughes, in the same radio interview, went on to say, “And so one thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch, is that people that say facts are facts – they’re not really facts … Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth, or not the truth.”

Sorry, Sen. Moynihan, in our brave new Trumpian world, everyone is entitled to his or her own facts.

Come on now …is one to believe the corrupt media or the words of our new “Dear Leader?”

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At a time when the world is becoming increasingly dangerous, the United States elects its most erratic, temperamentally unstable president. When the leadership and steady hand of the world’s greatest power is needed most, Americans choose a loose cannon as their commander in chief.

There are many religious folks out there who are predicting, and praying for, the end of times. With Donald J. Trump’s tiny finger on the nuclear button, they just might get their wish.

This week was particularly alarming. With terrorist attacks in Berlin, Germany and Amman, Jordon, along with a political assassination in Turkey, it does seem that the world is fast going to hell in a hand basket.

Instead of a cool, calm and collected commander in chief, we are about to install an inexperienced, unpredictable, thin-skinned and intellectually incurious con artist as leader of the free world.

Donald Trump, with his consistent anti-Muslim rhetoric, has perhaps done more for ISIS recruitment than just about anyone. And who does he surround himself with? Like-minded advisers.

Trump’s choice as national security adviser, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, has been quoted as saying, “Fear of Muslims is rational.”

Giving the reins of power to a likeable but completely incompetent man didn’t work so well the last time around. No, George W. Bush did not blow up the world (some may dispute that). He just set the stage for a popular demagogue, who has a thing for nuclear weapons, to do so.

It is being said some Congressional Republicans are as fearful of the harm Trump might inflict on the world just as much as everyone else. But they will stick with him as long he allows them to fulfill their wettest dreams… more tax cuts for the wealthy, privatization of Medicare and Social Security, business deregulation, etc.

Once Trump stops playing ball with the legislators, however, they have enough dirt on the ethically compromised “billionaire” to impeach his butt.

But it might be too late. World War III might have already started.

As always, for Republicans, it is party over country… or even the world.

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Nearly one and a half months after their candidate’s defeat, Democrats are still in mourning. They’re in the dumps. They cannot understand how a Hillary victory that was seemingly in the bag ended up as one of the most shocking presidential losses in American history.

The Democratic Party will no doubt conduct a postmortem similar to the one carried out by Republicans after their 2012 loss.

Already there are different theories being floated for this devastating upset. Hillary did not campaign enough in the Rust Belt states. Hillary did not address the economic concerns of the angry white blue-collar male. Hillary forgot about rural America … and so on and so on.

Democrats, save your money.

There is one simple fact that led to your electoral demise. You nominated perhaps the most viscerally hated political candidate in your party’s history. Unfortunately, you got too hung up on the corresponding fact that Hillary was also the most experienced candidate in your party’s history.

For many voters, the 2016 election literally came down to choosing the lesser of two evils.

While many voters (especially evangelical) disliked the Republican candidate and correctly saw him as an immoral, narcissistic, pathological liar, he was not the devil incarnate, Hillary Clinton. With Trump the sinner, there was always the possibility of redemption. That could never have been the case for the Princess of Darkness.

After years of Clinton bashing by conservative media; after years of politically motivated investigations by Congress, there was nothing Hillary could have done, short of walking on water, which would have changed the minds of many Hillary-hating voters.

Yes, the FBI’s illegal actions weeks before the election, along with Russian interference favoring Trump, did not help Clinton’s chances. Nor did voter suppression in many Republican-controlled states.

The simple truth, as much as Democrats hate to admit it, is that voters did not so much vote for Trump as they voted against Hillary.

As one Wisconsin voter, who had previously voted for Obama, told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes at a town hall meeting held last week in Kenosha, “I voted for Trump because he is not Hillary.”

The Democratic Party should not complicate things. Instead, they should heed the wisdom found in the principle of Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation is usually the best.

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