Yes, the best wine is the one I’m drinking now and the best day is the one I’m living now and the best movie ever is the one I’m watching now, but the best time of my life is already long past. Of course, pretty much everything in my life is long past, even if I can still buy green bananas.

I was reminiscing the other day and it occurred to me that the best years of our lives go by without us realizing we’re at our apex. We’re too busy with the day-to-day, the striving, the deadlines and detritus, so we miss the moments we should savor the most.

I’m enjoying my life now, looking forward to what comes next, planning for the future, even as I look over my shoulder every so often for the Reaper’s hoodie…and all is right with the world, more or less. I wouldn’t want to go back and relive my childhood or high school or college or pretty much any other time of life…but there is one period I think I’d leap through time to experience all over again and that’s my 40s.

It goes without saying that this doesn’t apply to everyone, but I’ll say it anyway to avoid hate mail and legal action. For a huge number of us, especially the people who decide to raise kids, the fifth decade is the absolute best and for many reasons:

1. We’re still in our physical prime, more or less. We’re not as fast as we were at 22, but our knees still bend without creaking and we can remember most of our passwords. We can drink too much and stay out too late and recover from it by noon, maybe two, and we can still do that sex thing without a stunt double.
   
   
2. We’re mentally sharp, almost as sharp as we were in our 20s, and we’ve picked up enough insights and life hacks to seem even smarter than when we were younger. We still remember our childhoods and our teens and some of those nights in college that are best forgotten. And, if we have kids, we still know more than they do, so they think we’re smart. They’ll figure it out eventually, but not yet.
   
   
3. Speaking of kids, for many/most of us, they’re out of diapers and not yet in street gangs, so we can get at least a bit of enjoyment from parenthood. Yeah, we’ll spend way too much time in the audience at the school gym, watching an unwatchable performance, and we’ll cheer them on a bit too aggressively when they’re on the ball field, but they’ll be staging a non-stop display of mental, physical and emotional development that’s a miracle not to be missed.
   
   
4. At work, we’ve figured out what we’ll be doing for a living and, just maybe, we’ll have advanced enough to consider it a career. Even if we aren’t the CEO yet, we aren’t handing out the folders and doing coffee runs, either. We’ll probably be complaining about the work ethic of the next generation, which means we’ve truly arrived.
   
   
5. Financially, we’re finally making enough money to pay the bills and afford a vacation or two with the family. We might not be set for retirement yet, but we’re heading into our prime earning years and we have the opportunity to tee ourselves up for financial security later.
   
   

Yep, those are the best years of our lives and, also yep, most of us don’t know it until we’re looking back later. Caught up in work and soccer games and the uncertainties of existence, we strut and fret through our 40s as if there was some prize at the end of the decade. There isn’t, though, because this decade is the prize. Some things will get better after this and some things worse, but somewhere in these years we’ll have our stars in alignment.

Don’t panic if you’ve hit 50 and you forgot to savor the past ten years. There’s plenty to look forward to and no urgent need to jump off the roof. If you’re still in your 20s or 30s, though, make a note to savor every moment when your golden decade arrives. Trust me, it will be gone in a blink.

Yeah, you thought the best days were when you got your first real six-string, but you were wrong. Feel free to argue, though, right after clicking here to subscribe.

Quotidian miracles, the Ticketmaster Tax, and the inflation that wasn’t are all on our list of gripes this week. And how are you doing?

• They're really bad at math...I read recently that everything is about money. No matter what the topic, follow the money and you’ll understand what’s going on. I felt so much smarter, but then I read that everything is about race and then I read it’s all about gender and then I read that it’s all about sex, which isn’t the same as gender and turns out to be a much more scintillating topic overall. You’d think that making everything binary—other than gender, of course—would make life simpler, but it’s not working out so far.
• Even worse at math...So, I just finished reading another article about 10% inflation in the United States and, as always, the reality was much different from the hype. Inflation over the past twelve months has been 3%, not 10%. In fact, the 12-month total peaked at 9 percent—not 10—back in June of 2022 and it’s been dropping like a stone for 18 months—1½ years—since then. We’re really not good at this whole math thing, are we?
• Also bad at cause and effect...So, I just finished reading another article about former Harvard chief Claudine Gay and I’m pretty tired of all the articles about former Harvard chief Claudine Gay. I know, it’s a big surprise that it was her enemies and not her friends who brought her down. I know, it’s a big surprise that there are double standards that helped her and hurt her in her career. Still, the immortal words of Tony Baretta are as true today as they were in 1975: “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.” Moving on now.
• We had a miraculous dinner the other night...The food was good, everyone got along, we had a nice conversation…it was so natural that it would be easy to miss how wonderful it was. We pay so much attention to the setbacks in life and too little to the incessant joys in our existence. Maybe we’d all be happier if we noticed them more and savored those moments more and, maybe, found a way to revisit those quotidian miracles more often.
• Speaking of joy in life...remember back in the long-ago when we knew someone who complained non-stop and we learned how to tune them out? When did we decide it was a better idea to hang on their every word and share their latest umbrage with everyone we know? Are we having fun yet?
• The biggest business influencer...is not Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Jerry Powell or even Oprah. Nope, it’s Ticketmaster, the long-hated purveyor of tickets that end up costing more than twice their face value after all the fees have been tacked on. The Ticketmaster Tax is rampant in hotel resort fees and airline baggage fees and restaurant service charges that bump up the price of dinner in the name of fighting inflation. And now I can’t even buy a drink without a special upcharge. I’ve been charged extra for having my drink straight up and I’ve been charged extra for having my drink on the rocks, so I decided I would just give in last week and I ordered my drink neat. And…no surprise…they charged me an extra two bucks. Sobriety is looking better all the time.  
• At least IKEA includes instructions...A relative of mine has been dealing with a complex issue that requires more than one specialist and each expert has weighed in on their part of the process. They haven’t come up with a plan for syncing all the treatments, though, so we’ve finally encountered something harder to assemble than a package from IKEA.
  
• And a reprieve for the elderly...An old friend lamented that he could remember more details from when he was 17 than he could from the prior week, but I assured him it’s totally normal. After we’ve memorized all the facts about the War of 1812 and subjunctive clauses in high school, there’s no space left for us to store anything when we’re 60.

Even more random thoughts are coming your way in just two or three weeks from now, but only if you click here to subscribe.

 

Every legal scholar on the planet is trying to guess how the Supreme Court will rule on Donald Trump’s eligibility for primary election ballots, but I have yet to see anyone ask the most fundamental question of all.

Why are state and local governments involved in primary elections in the first place?

Political parties are private businesses that have no force of law behind them, much like Amazon and the NFL. Governments don’t run the annual meetings for corporations or officiate at football games, so why are they sticking their noses in this particular corner of free enterprise? There's no basis for it in the Constitution and the Founders hated the idea of political parties as a divisive force.

Yes, political primaries were considered an improvement over the smoke-filled rooms of the late 19th Century, a mechanism to give citizens a chance to take control from the corrupt power brokers among the corrupt politicians. Like many reforms, though, the whole idea looked good on paper, but…

Let’s face it, the primary system has not exactly earned a place on the calendar through merit. When it comes to the political parties, as a former president might say, they’re not sending their best. They‘re sending people with lots of problems. And those problematic people become our choice every November.

We all know the shortcomings of the primary system. A minority of a minority of voters determine the choices we’ll face, which leads to exactly the kind of extremism the Founders feared. Notably, that super-minority of partisans is well protected in many states that have closed primary systems of one sort or another. With gerrymandering the norm and not the exception, purity dominates and competence isn’t even an issue in many races.

The smoke-filled rooms and back-office horse trading are looking better all the time. The rule of party bosses delivered some heavy-duty clunkers, but its tough to imagine them doing worse than the system we’re using today.  Even if they screwed up just as badly, at least we’d save a few taxpayer dollars by making them pay for their own cigars and brandy.

Instead, all this craziness is backed by the government’s seal of approval. Whether it’s local or state, elected officials are happy to use taxpayer money to provide support, facilities, staff, and a whiff of legitimacy to the whole thing. No matter how militant a candidate is about government overreach, the idea of reimbursing anyone for the party’s rightful burden is off the table.

The Supreme Court can fix all of it, right now, taking a lesson from John Marshall’s brilliant maneuvering in Marbury v. Madison. When they hear the appeal of Colorado’s rejection of Trump as a candidate, they can simply rule that state-sponsored primaries are an unconstitutional encroachment on private business. Done and done.

Yes, the court will simply be punting until later this year if Trump is the Republican nominee and his eligibility is challenged in one state or another. That’s a different issue, though, because November’s elections will determine who takes office, not which person represents the brand.

If the Supreme Court takes the reasonable approach and cancels government support of primaries, the parties will need to do a bit of scrambling to work it out on their own. Like every other private business that has survived on subsidies, it’s time they learned how to do things for themselves.

My Lyft driver says he’s a man without a country. He immigrated from Algeria four years ago, so he can’t really think of himself as Algerian anymore, but he wasn’t born here and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever feel like he’s really an American.

I’m sure he’s not alone. Most of my five-minute chauffeurs are from somewhere else, if their accents and sense of geography are any guide, and it must be difficult to adapt to terra incognita. Fortunately, he had the perfect passenger to explain it all, offering these surefire insights for becoming so American you forget there are any other countries:

1. Forget there are any other countries. Yeah, more than 7 billion people are dumb enough to live someplace else, but if they were worth thinking about, they’d live here. Heck, there are two continents with 35 countries where people could call themselves “Americans,” but they don’t, because we’re the only ones who count.
2. Buy lots of guns. My Lyft driver doesn’t like guns and he didn’t want to buy any, but that’s why he’ll always be a loser. We’re only free because we have more guns than people and anyone who fails to buy at least five guns should find somewhere else to live. (Are there other places to live? See item 1.) 
3. Manage your anger. We’re angry about everything all the time and, honestly, we need to work harder at it. We need to manage our anger until it’s the size of a mushroom cloud, or else we should find someplace else to live. (Are there other places to live? See item 1.) 
4. Blame Everyone. Whether it’s some idiot who should find another place to live (See item 1.) or a waiter asking if you want fries with that, they're what’s wrong with America, wrong with the world, and we’d all be better off if they weren’t here.
   
5. Reject Blame. Nothing is my fault and I’m not responsible for anyone else’s problems. In fact, I’m the real victim here. Accepting blame is what people do when they’ve done something wrong and I am blameless, so it can’t apply to me.
   
6. Reject Copernicus. Everyone thought Earth was the center of the universe until Copernicus decided our planet revolves around the sun, but he was really stupid. Everyone should know the universe revolves around you and only you. Your problems are the most important, your needs the most urgent, and other people only exist to deliver your pizza. 
7. Know better. What’s the point of being the center of the universe if you aren’t the smartest guy in the room? Just kidding. You’re an American, so you absolutely are the smartest guy in the room, even if it includes other Americans, because you have access to that special news site that provides the REAL TRUTH and it’s been verified by a friend of a friend of your cousin’s barber.
8. Declare independence. We’re the land of rugged individualists, people who pull themselves up by the bootstraps, and we all live by the Code of the West. We expect drivers to watch out for us while we’re checking our texts and we want some underpaid tech in Bangalore to save us when we get hacked, but we’re tough and rugged and we don’t need nobody, never, no way, no how.
   
9. Do drugs. And by “drugs,” we’re not talking that crud you buy on the street at midnight from some dude with a runny nose. No, we mean good old American drugs, the kind Big Pharma developed so you won’t have to suffer from your bad decisions. Whether you sat on the couch and gained 50 pounds or you melted your liver with Malort, Mama Pfizer is here to make it all better.
10. COMPLAIN!!!! Wages are up, the stock market is up, inflation is down, interest rates have peaked, anybody who wants a job can get one, we’re outperforming everyone, including China, on almost every metric…and we are so damned miserable they need to set up a crisis hotline for every single one of us. More than 7 billion people look at us and wonder how we could be such whiny little babies and they ridicule us non-stop, and they’re absolutely correct, but See Item 1.
    

Turns out, it’s actually very easy to be a true American. Once you’re the center of the universe and the smartest guy in the room and you’ve got Big Pharma in your corner, everything kinda falls into place. Too bad my Lyft driver won’t benefit from all this incredible wisdom, though. I got out of the car after I’d only given him a few hints. He’ll never make it here, so I hope he’s smart enough to run back to Albania or Andorra or Aardvarkia or wherever he was from. I’d look it up, but I’m an American.

Next time you’re doing that rideshare thing, offer this great advice to the driver. They’ll be very grateful and want to click here to subscribe.