This has been a gory week for Mankind, what with  an on-going existential war in Ukraine and a newly minted existential war in the Middle East. And a mournful week for this Blogger; a Russian American, lets call him Gleb, died.  He knew this Blogger from the    old, swashbuckling days; he had driven this Blogger to CHECKPOINT CHARLIE, so that this Blogger could be picked, up by East German tourist guides and escorted out of freedom into Communist dominated East Berlin. He had a long pre-death; during most of it, he lamented the state of America, not the state of the American economy, nor the state of the SAG/AFTRA strike, but the literal state of American thinking. He thought American thinking had devolved into an infantile, delusional paralysis, living out episodes of SESAME STREET, with all the realistic American thinkers driven into premature exile. Gleb was a devout Russian Orthodox, with Sister Elizabeth Romanov as his patron saint. Elizabeth had joined a...