Life becomes much simpler once you learn to only hear, see and remember the things you choose, the things that don’t challenge you, that help you put the world into tidy little boxes. The truth is what you need it to be, and the truth here is that a bunch of patriots had a swell time touring the Capitol. You didn’t see anything else because there was nothing else to see. And if you think you did, you didn’t.

The Supreme Court this fall will hear a case from Mississippi that bans most abortions after 15 weeks, except in cases of rape where the crime has been reported to police, or the life of the mother is in danger.

The ease with which way too many Americans deal with unpleasantness simply by dismissing it has spread so widely that it has earned a name. Cancel culture.

The Republican establishment may hate Donald Trump, but they would be hard-pressed to deny how effective his policies were, pre-COVID-19. The 74 million people who voted for him is a formidable number. Whatever some may think of his personality — and I deplore how he demeans others — no one can credibly deny he was more successful than any modern Republican president.

Justice? Slow and uncertain. But it appears some of the most hideous crimes against humanity committed in the last decade may be punished.

One seldom hears anyone talk about — much less sing about — the existential pain of being alive, the sheer exhaustion sometimes of simply being, in a world stained by sins of malice, abuse, selfishness and despair. But Gaye did. So this masterpiece — named the greatest album ever by Rolling Stone — doesn’t get old or become corroded with nostalgia because it is tethered not to time, but to that common brokenness and the shared humanity from which it springs.

Addressing families’ basic needs will create opportunities for parents and caregivers to succeed in the workforce, strengthening our communities, bolstering our economy, and reducing child poverty. Lifting children out of poverty today will, in turn, increase their opportunities, support their growth, and fortify Maine’s future workforce, leading to less child poverty tomorrow.

If Trump runs, he will, one assumes, blot out the sun. Everything will be about him — his record, his pronouncements, his animosities. Much of the conservative mass media will get on board, while the mainstream media — inadvertently aiding him, yet again — will be even more intensely hostile.

Companies confronted with “double extortion” — the unhappy reality of having to pay hackers to unlock a digital network and then pay them again to recover stolen data — should remember that a significant portion of ransom-payers never get their data back anyway.