Sunshine and Olly

by Jonathan Blaustein

Good morning, everyone.

I’m not writing today because I want to, so much as I have to. It’s been a common refrain, in my 16 years of blogging, because creativity is an expressive act.

Expression releases energy from the body and mind. 

It’s why artists make art: for the alchemical process through which stress, and negative energy can be transformed into something beautiful. (Or at least beneficial.)

The theme of today’s blog is Enough Already.





Last I wrote here, I told you about my new job at a local newspaper in Taos. 

Since this is my place to be honest, it was easily the worst job I’ve ever had. (And I worked at Foot Locker, and in the packing department of a farm market, washing spinach all day.)

I quit the paper not long after my last post, just beyond the 4th of July, so I’ve been out about as long as I was in.

Despite the fact I’ve spoken truth to power as a blogger for so long, and have never shied away from sharing details... this time, I don’t much feel like it. 

The short version is I was hired into a managerial position, and placed as a junior reporter and full time photographer. (At a low salary I only accepted b/c it was supposed to be a managerial position.) The workload was 7 days a week, (or at least impossible in 40 hours,) and I found my boss to be one of the most unpleasant people I’ve encountered. 

When I brought those inconsistencies to the attention of the HR department, and said I planned to quit if they did not address my concerns, I was told to feel-free to leave, as it was a take-it-or-leave-it situation.

I was losing weight, couldn’t sleep well, my heart was racing all the time, because of the stress.

And none of the good work I did for them mattered, once I spoke out of turn. 

It was nuts. 

So I left.

Enough Already. 





Enough Already to Israel too. 

This is the third time since Israel’s war with Hamas I’ve felt the need to use this platform, (such as it is,) to comment directly on the policies of a foreign nation. 

I’m an American, and my grandparents were born here. (Some great-grandparents too.)

I may not pass JD Vance’s test of having Civil War ancestors, but the USA is my country. 

Growing up in synagogue as an American Jew, I was also taught that because I could become a citizen of Israel, because it was the Jewish country, that it was a part of my heritage as well. 

But is it?

I visited when I was 17, during the first Gulf War, and made some great memories.

That connection, though, now makes me a target, anywhere in the world, because Israel has gone off the rails to the degree it’s starving Gaza. 

I should not have to write the words that mass starvation, in front of the global media, is evil and counterproductive.

There is no good to be found in this policy, and the extreme Israeli right wing does not speak for me. 

They speak for themselves.

In their own country.

A country the rest of the world now despises. (Even more than they used to hate The Jews?)

Israel: Wake the fuck up. 

Stop the starvation campaign now. 

Enough Already!





Finally, I want to reserve one section of this article for America. 

Yes, us. US. 

Abe Lincoln told us, more than 150 years ago, that a house divided against itself cannot stand. 

Divide and conquer works, as a strategy. 

Everyone knows this. 

Yet Americans can’t stop demonizing the other side, and fighting against the opposite party, even if it guarantees we’re less formidable in our geo-political battle with China and Russia. 

Not everyone who believes differently than you is a terrible person. 

In a 50/50 country, where one side has clearly won the war of ideas, (for now) by dominating the 2024 election cycle, and running the Supreme Court, I think it’s time we all accept that this country has had two major parties that take turns running shit.

And for vast chunks of time, there were points of consensus. A national identity formed. We survived the Civil War, and over time, addressed many (but not all) of our founding flaws.

I grew up loving America, and once I learned the dark history in high school and college, I didn’t move away. 

I didn’t give up. 

And neither did the tens of millions of people who’ve moved to this country since I was born in 1974.

At some point, the USA is going to fall seriously behind China, and our living standards are going to drop even further than they already have. 

We’re guaranteed to lose Cold War II, (David Brooks’s term,) unless Americans grow the fuck up and realize we have to find a way to live and work together. 

It’s a split country, and Democrats will get power back at some point.

We had Obama, whom we all loved, and these guys have Trump, whom they worship. 

I promise you, finding points of connection, and trying to sew a nation back together will do far more towards improving job markets, and nuclear security, than will continuing to obsess about the other side while the horse hooves grow ever closer on the horizon.

Enough Already.