As I look at what we've all borne witness to in terms of the grotesque abuses of power over the past year, I keep wondering, if you'll pardon the cliché, if it's not possible to turn lemons into lemonade.

I've been thinking that we should look at this as a sort of stress test - something that has laid the flaws in our Constitutional republic out for us to examine - and use it as an opportunity to fine-tune what our forefathers envisioned.

As you're undoubtedly aware, on Sunday, December 21, CBS chose to kill a 60 Minutes segment 3 hours before airtime, apparently for political reasons, as it had already been fully vetted.

We've all been afraid of what would happen to this flagship show after the sale to the Ellisons, and I guess we now know.

On Monday - simply because it was the episode that had been sent to them, CBS' streaming partner in Canada, Global TV, streamed the episode with the segment that had been yanked in the U.S.. It has since been passed around quite a bit. (Note: This video includes the show's cold open.)

Care to watch it? Proceed... 

(...and why I can't seem to quit)

Oy... I really can't find the right words to describe what a cesspool I think social media has become.

I've been on Facebook for many years, and still spend far too much time on there (particularly now that I'm retired and fairly bored). I've always had a sort of love/hate relationship with it. I continue to love the way in which it enables you to reconnect and stay connected with old friends, as well as sometimes make a new one.

However, I find myself becoming more and more disillusioned with it. I've really come to resent the way in which their algorithm interprets my actions, and then inserts ads it thinks I may respond to. The sheer volume of these in my feed is becoming oppressive.

Oh well... I had hoped that by today (July 20), more people would have become horrified by what's happening to the country I love, but bluntly speaking, that's not happening.

I've never felt so hopeless in my life. I'm astonished at what tens of millions of people support, or at least, blithely accept.

I see another tens of millions of people who are trying to resist, but there's virtually no path to doing so beyond protests because there's no effective leadership or strategy within the resistance movement.