Weekly Comments: World Cup Winners: Spain (and USA). Canadian Smoke. Trust in America.
#1319 July 19, 2026
COLUMBUS, Ohio: In the World Cup, Spain beat Argentina 1-0. Most fans were pulling for Messi and his Argentina teammates, but Spain’s defense held them scoreless, just as it did all but one of their opponents. Wow!
The other winner was the USA. No other country can host an event this big, in multiple cities, with excellent security. Fans from around the world were surprised at our hospitality, amazing choices in food and places to shop. We take this for granted, but they had been fed a negative view of America and Americans. We learned the Viking row and they enjoyed singing “Country Roads.” These fans are going home and bragging about us! That makes us a winner.
As a person who enjoys sports with scoring, I’m not thrilled to watch a defensive masterpiece that goes almost two hours with no goals. With that in mind, the most exciting game of the World Cup was yesterday. England beat France for third place, 6 to 4. That is not a typo. Ten goals! The TV announcers were overjoyed. After broadcasting matches with only one or two goals, often after 30 minutes of overtime, they were as excited as Gus Johnson announcing a 36 to 35 Michigan-Ohio State football game.
Smoke from forest fires in Canada drifted across the border. This resulted in all kinds of “air quality alerts” south of the Great Lakes and on to the East Coast. Here in Columbus, it lasted a couple of days before the wind shifted.
President Trump threatened Canada with an increased tariff to cover the lost revenue. I’m not clear what that means. Is Canada “selling” us the smoke? What will Trump add a 50% tariff on? Lumber?
Meanwhile Canada is taking swift action. The Parliament passed a law forbidding lightning strikes on their 900,000,000 acres of forest land. From now on, lightning in Canada will only be allowed to hit tall buildings, parked farm machinery, and American boats on the Canadian half of Lake Erie.
The smoke reminded old folks of the air sixty years ago in steel mill towns such as Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Gary, Indiana. Many of us had relatives who lived through the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s.
Of course, Canada can’t ban lightning. And they can’t clear the underbrush from a Billion acres of forest. And Mother Nature is in charge of wind direction. Concerning dust from tilled farm ground, we can help our farmers prevent 90% of dust storms today.
As part of our celebration of 250 years, I heard a person list possible one-word answers to the question, “What is the key to our success as a nation?” Of course, patriotism, liberty, and democracy were mentioned. Greg Gutfeld, mostly known for his comedy, said the word is “Trust.” We trust banks with our money. We trust Amazon and other businesses with our credit card, and that whatever we buy will satisfy us. We trust airlines to fly us to our destination safely, and usually on time. We trust our employer and we trust each other. Hand shake deals aren’t as common as they used to be, but you can’t get much more trusting than that.
My friend, David Horsager, wrote a book, “The Trust Edge.” He describes how to build trust, and how to keep it.
You can think of many examples where “trust” is taken for granted in the USA. We could name other countries where the key word would be “conniving” or “scheming” instead of trust.
Historic quotes by Will Rogers:
“Flew [to Cleveland] from Washington, in one hour and thirty minutes, piloted by Dave Ingalls, Assistant Secretary of the Navy. I ‘thumbed’ my way here, so I think that’s a record for speed for a hitch-hiker. This Ingalls is a very remarkable young man in more ways than flying. In fact, he is the only Republican I would trust my life with.” DT #1736, Feb. 16, 1932
“It’s surprising how little money we can get along on. Just everybody keep on trusting everybody else. Why it’s such a novelty to find that somebody will trust you that it’s changed our whole feeling toward human nature.” DT #2057, March 8, 1933