 Aloha, thanks for your consideration of the views expressed in this Think Tech commentary. This commentary is entitled You Can't Go Home Again. Trump always talks about making America great again, assuring us it was great at some point before. Not so clear, see the Stefan Ehrenreich article in The Washington Post on July 29. And lots of people talk about going back to the normal that was before, or maybe a new normal that will be reminiscent of the old normal but isn't. Again, not so clear. Exactly what was normal the last time we thought things were actually normal. Perhaps that means before Trump, and before Covid, and before the troubling deteriorations and threats we have in our world today. Some years ago, Jack Balkan, constitutional law professor in New Haven, appeared on Think Tech. In a discussion of what could be done to reverse the things that George W. Bush had been doing, Balkan provided some guidance. He imparted that everything counts. You may want to go back home, but you can't go home again. It's not like a yo-yo forward and back, but rather a journey that always moves ahead, a journey where everything that has happened is built into the future. Trump is built into the future. So is Covid, and like it or not. All of their implications and legacies, and all of the hard lessons and landmines they left, are all built into the future. We've been waiting to return to normal for six years at least, but the prospects of going back to the way it was, are not good. We know that many things will be permanently changed. Think of your own quality of life, and your daily and long-term priorities. We know that things will be different, but we don't know what the changes might be. In the complexity of what is happening in our world today, we can only make wild guesses. The quality of your family life and your local and national life has probably changed, and is likely to change a lot more, and may be very soon, and these changes will take us in directions far away from what we have hoped to return to. So get used to it. Appreciate that it will never be the same as before. Not better, and not as good as you may have wished, but if you can appreciate and examine this dynamic, you will recognize that you still have the benefit of being here on the planet, and that is a good thing. Even at a time where it is difficult or impossible to predict the future, we should be happy to be alive and have some possibility of improving things for ourselves and hopefully others. Cheer up, it could be worse, and maybe it will. Thanks for your consideration of the views expressed in this Think Tech commentary. Mahalo.