Opinion

Facing History and Ourselves has a mission statement that seems not just sensible but indisputable. “To build a more just and equitable future,” it posits, “we must face our history in all its complexity.”

As tensions about raising the nation’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling build, the headline that should be flashing in front of every American is that our country is not working. Nothing is going to get fixed -- really fixed -- until we come clean about this basic, sad and distressing fact.

Dear Annie: After dating a guy who turned out to be a narcissist, my question is, how can I heal? I’ve tried everything, and I’ve even felt like I’m over it and I’m OK, but then I have my days. It’s like grieving.

There are moderates in the suburbs -- Democrats, Republicans and Independents -- who want Washington spending kept in check. They tend to be liberal on social issues but pained over the extremes of the woke. They have respect for various sexual identities but little interest in learning new pronouns. And they overwhelmingly want some access to abortion.

A Supreme Court Case Illustrates the Potential Costs of Making It Easier to Sue Social Media Platforms Over User-Generated Content Every day, people around the world post about 720,000 hours of new content on You-Tube -- 500 hours of video every minute. That enormous volume of material poses challenges for the platform, which aspires to enforce rules against certain kinds of content, and for its users, who cannot hope to navigate the site without help from YouTube’s algorithms, which facilitate searches and recommend videos based on personal viewing patterns.

Today is the 25th day of 2023 and the 36th day of winter. T ODAY’S HISTORY: In 1533, King Henry VIII of England secretly married Anne Boleyn.

Dear Readers: Many of you suggested treatments for “Pooped Out and Sad in the South,” which was the letter from the grandmother who was concerned about her grandson’s difficulties in having bowel movements. I hope some of these suggestions help other parents and grandparents who face similar problems with their children and grandchildren.

WASHINGTON -- Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba of Uganda has announced to the world via his Twitter account that he is offering Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, a dowry of 100 cows if she will marry him. Kainerugaba is the 48-yearold son of Uganda’s prime minister, and his Twitter account is taken very seriously, especially in Uganda. In other news, our president, Joe Biden, heard from his attorney general, Merrick Garland, that top-secret documents turned up in the president’s garage in Delaware, the one where he keeps his prized 1967 Chevrolet Corvette. The discovery was the third time classified documents have shown up in one of the president’s residences, and apparently people are beginning to wonder. Another batch of documents showed up over the weekend and next week is a whole new week. When will the document deluge abate?

I got a note from my son’s teacher saying he was not “meeting classroom expectations.” He’s in the first grade. The offense? Talking out of turn. My husband gave me that all-too-familiar look when I told him. You know, the look that means, “He gets it from you.”

What are “the major problems this country faces”? Writing in The Atlantic, New York Times columnist David Brooks leads off his list with “inequality, political polarization, social mistrust” before concluding with the inevitable “climate change.” Today’s “inequality,” he notes, is as “savage” as the inequality in the 1890s.