I’m No Angel

Last week, Shohei Ohtani, who is known for doing the impossible, did something that seemed impossible, even for him. In the first game of a double-header, he threw an 111 pitch, one-hit shutout as a pitcher. In the second game of the double-header, Ohtani hit two home runs. He’s one of the best pitchers in baseball and he’s threatening the home run record set by Aaron Judge just last year. This is all a long way of saying that it makes sense that a lot of people suddenly believe in Ohtani’s team, the Los Angeles Angels. But even Ohtani can’t make his Angels compete with the broader category of angels. The devil is in the details, but according to a recent AP poll, about 7 in 10 U.S. adults say they believe in angels. To put that number into perspective, it’s “about on par with belief in heaven and the power of prayer, but bested by belief in God or a higher power (79%). Fewer U.S. adults believe in the devil or Satan (56%), astrology (34%), reincarnation (34%), and that physical things can have spiritual energies, such as plants, rivers or crystals (42%).” (Full disclosure: After the performance of my internet startup portofolio over the past couple of years, I’m not even sure I believe in angel investors anymore.) With the spiritual energy of crystals and astrology both drawing the belief of more than a third of Americans, let’s look at the belief in reality among recently polled members of Trump’s base. “Zero percent — not a single one of the 319 respondents in this MAGA category — said he had committed serious federal crimes. A mere 2 percent said he ‘did something wrong’ in his handling of classified documents.” Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing angel dust.