Cogito Ergo Some?

I've boiled down what I know to "something seems to be experiencing something." The first something is me, or my mind, or my soul, or my ego, or my consciousness, or whatever. The second something is everything else that I seem to be experiencing: all of it.

Except that I am not actually a THING, a static noun, I am a verb, a motion, a wave; and all that goes double-plus for what I seem to be experiencing. It is a multitude of things that are not things, breaking off, coming together, interacting in infinitely predictable yet also infinitely novel ways.

Another problem with the idea of boiling it down to two somethings (or two some-not-a-things) is that there is actually only one thing. And, of course, that it is not a thing at all per se.

Plus: the very use of the verb "to be" is always suspect, hard as it is to avoid. (See?)

So... I don't actually know ANYTHING, do I?

Two Americas

America was founded by religious nuts looking to get away from the religious nuts in their original countries. This double whammy of religious nut-ism has led to there being functionally two different Americas today: the one that was founded by religious nuts; and the one that was founded as an escape from the influence of religious nuts. Today these two Americas are often called "conservative" and "liberal."