My mother always told me not to call people stupid, and I tried. However, the word exists for a reason, and we would lose our freedom without it. Stupid is stupid. Now, it seems, the politics of stupid is upon us in earnest. I am speaking, of course, of socialism. Socialism requires stupidity in order to flourish. By stupidity, I mean that socialism is spread by ignorance, but then willful ignorance graduates to stupid. Without stupidity, socialism cannot exist. And somebody has to say so, especially for the health of our industry. The problem with stupidity is that it costs.

First, let’s get the language right. Socialists will tell you that socialism has nothing bad about it. They say it blends the best points of communism and democracy, and everybody benefits. They also point out that its unbroken chain of failures is the fault of its implementation. They say it would work, but it has not been done right, yet, leaving the clear inference that they are the ones that can do it this time. A socialist is simply a communist that does not control the military, yet.

For the sake of a historical reference point, the 16^th Century political writer Niccolò Machiavelli said there are only two types of governance: a principality (under a principal leader, such as a monarchy, dictatorship, etc.) and a republic. As an aside, he also noted that once people live under a republic, they are almost impossible to control under a principality.

Socialism is a principality. The government controls the means of production and distributes the goods and services. You will hear socialism equated with capitalism as both being economic systems, but capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are held in the hands of the producers, hence compatible with democracy or republic. In socialism, the reins are in the hands of the government. Socialism is a tyranny, even if you can point to a benevolent one, and the U.S. is a republic, even if the president irks you badly. In fact, I am convinced that the main reason Nancy Pelosi hates Trump so badly is that he has never been drunk or stoned in his life, so to her he looks demented.

Socialism does not work in an educated, disciplined environment, so any socialist movement is recognizable by its focus on cutting down education and discipline. That is why it is so important in socialist systems to subvert education and replace it with indoctrination. They try to confuse language, as in capitalism/socialism above, and they distort discipline. You can see evidence of socialistic principles in the elevation of slang to the status of a language of commerce, for example, and you see our mass media advancing the confusion of language under the guise of political correctness, contemporary wisdom or just plain made-up words and constructs. Cool.

Taken to a sharper focus, look at what socialist movements historically have done to the educated classes once they have achieved power. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge killed almost everybody that had an education above high school. Mao did the same under his Cultural Revolution. Stalin is infamous for his killing of his top educators and generals, as well as vast millions of his less-established citizens. And Hitler – one of the left’s least-lauded socialists – killed off most of the professional military leadership of pre-war Germany and oppressed the country’s cultural elite. You can get a flavor of those antics by searching Dietrich Bonhoeffer. As with Hitler, all socialists attack religious institutions, which are clear, historical enclaves of education, history and discipline.

One clear hallmark of socialist tyrannies is their focus on and idolization of youth. No other cult on earth so often evokes youth as a virtue and tradition as an evil. The possible exception is radical Islam, but that’s a lecture for another day.

The point is, youth, for all its freshness and energy, is not known for wisdom and there is no culture in history that thrived by looking to its children for direction. Socialism preys on the young, the naïve, the uneducated, the underprivileged and the bitter.

Our media are notable for their youth, naïvete, poor university performance, lack of options and bitterness. I often remarked in grad school how oddly underachieving the bulk of the students were. Most seemed as if they did not have the wit, the family connections, the social resources or the cash to become lawyers or doctors, so they, as Mark Twain remarked, “fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.”

I don’t want to get personal, but there actually is a need for specific examples, so let’s mention Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Did you see last week that AOC has identified cauliflower as a vegetable given to “colonialism” and to be rejected? This kind of thing should never get past the eighth-grade playground. It is not worthy of discussion. It is, frankly, stupid.

Coincidentally, on May 27, after this column had been set, the Daily Wire, headlined: “NBC Polling Data Shows Sanders Voters Are ‘Low Information’ And Sanders Voters AREN’T Happy.”

According to the story, a Sunday NBC poll on Meet the Press was not flattering toward Sanders’ voters. “’The less you are paying attention, the more likely you are a Bernie Sanders supporter,’ (Host Chuck) Todd says, pointing to a Monmouth poll taken recently …. The implication, of course, is that Sanders voters are ‘low information.’”

I suppose it’s rude to note, but if NBC can see it ….

We have somehow allowed the media to flood us with insane, drug-infested fantasies about words under the blanket of blank-slate newspeak to the point that we are actually equating people in the bottom 1.8 percent of behavior with people in the top 1.8 percent of ability as being equivalent criteria for leadership.

The problem is, words have meaning, and by now we have allowed the ignorant-to-stupid use of words drive us into a social milieu that requires us to swing society as a whole to address the imagined grievances of the most pitiable fools.

Do you think Ilhan Omar is a proper representative of the values and goals of America? Don’t bother worrying about it. It’s rhetorical. But I was raised in the upper Midwest, and I can say with assurance that the people of Minneapolis owe Minnesota and the rest of the country an apology. A big one. Why they stuck us with that ideologue marionette is a question for the ages. I assume they thought they were being “correct” by being diverse, which is stupid. A republic attends to the needs of the majority.

Of course, I have no evidence other than party affiliation that Omar is a socialist. She could be something entirely different, but not. An agent of tyranny, for example.

The evidence is mounting that there was a bureaucratic attempt to take over our elected president. That remains to be seen. But to the extent that such a thing may have occurred, and to the extent that PC, “conventional wisdom,” naivete, coolness and anarchy have been exhausting our resources, we need to look closely at how those movements are articulated, how they are presented and how they are distributed, and we need to quit being stupid. None of the agents of dissention noted above could have risen above the 30^th percentile had the media not been on an agenda-driven pogrom against the very people that gave it life.

Socialism is not equality. Socialism is death.

Overstatement? I don’t think so. Not at all. In fact, I am ready to discuss any challenges right here, in print, from anybody that cares to respond. Deadline for submissions is June 11.

It’s hard to write a column on an Easter Sunday night such as this one, with hundreds of people dead and injured in Sri Lanka, the result of yet another “terrorist” assault.

I have grown unfond of the word terrorist. Coward and idiot are a better fit. I started tracking both the word and the deed back in the late ‘70s, when terrorism first came into common usage following attacks in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. The leaders back then were very open about their motives and objectives. As we know, they were intent on increasing the costs of protecting people and infrastructure in an attempt to collapse western economies. What we seem to recall less is that they said by attacking innocent civilians they could cause people to hate and fear Muslims to the point that there could be a global cataclysm — a war against Muslims in which all “moderate” Muslims would be forced to join out of self-defense. The goal was that out of the embers they could build their utopia.

It is hard to see how their strategy wouldn’t work, since we already have several examples including the recent killings at the mosques in New Zealand. The terrorists seem to have an unrestricted time line and an inexhaustible supply of idiots, so time is on their side. Sooner or  later, common folks will have to fight back. How many cultures, how many cities and how many governments can practice “tolerance” to the point that nobody can go to bed without a flak jacket?

To me, our current anti-terrorism protocols are insufficient, and, therefore, foolish. The test is simple. Will our various societies’ anti-terrorism protocols achieve the desired result? That is, will we be able to mitigate the terrorists out of existence? So far, making airports inaccessible has not seemed to diminish terrorist activity. They have moved on, and we are left holding the bag. It’s called shutting the barn door after the horse is gone.

If our protocols are not sufficient, we are facing a terrible truth: we are saying the current rate of innocent bloodshed is within allowable costs. We are willing to take the losses to maintain our position.

Don’t get ahead of me. I don’t have a solution. It is not my job to have a solution. However, it is my job to take an objective view of social/political/economic landscapes and shed some perspective. From this perspective, it appears there is no public discourse on how we can eliminate risk and cut costs in the field of terrorism, even while we have proven records of eliminating risk and cutting costs in business. Instead, we have turned over our politics and policies to a generation of lawyers, poli-sci majors and bureaucrats. Does that strike you as smart? I could be wrong, but I don’t think ignoring a war is a good way to win one.

I heard again on the news the other day that the Democrat party is once again courting the youth vote and is lobbying for the reduction of the voting age. If any 25-year-olds out there are reading this column, do you understand this is not a compliment? They are calling you stupid because you can be talked into policies that your elders have seen tried and failed so many times we can’t count them.

I don’t like calling people stupid, but sometimes there is simply no other word. For example, when a cop is in training, he or she can try multiple times to approach a suspected felon in a car. As a trainer, you can push him or her to try again, keep your hand on your gun, stay behind the person’s left shoulder, etc., and fail and try again. However, once the rookie is on the streets, there is only one chance to get it right. Training and performance, discipline and order are designed to overcome cowardice, intoxication and evil over the long run. Screw up, and you’re dead.

I saw the Mueller Report last Friday. Good Friday. In it, Mueller finds, “While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

Have we gone daft? I don’t really care what your position is on Mueller, Trump, Barr or whomever. But just THINK about what he said.

I have never robbed a bank. Trust me on this one. However, even if you and I know that I never robbed a bank, is there any cop out there, any district attorney or any prosecutor that would write a letter exonerating me? Or you?

The answer, of course, is no. No prosecutor will write a letter exonerating me or you from bank robbery. That is because it is not the job of the Executive Branch of government to exonerate. The executive’s job is to receive the report of a crime, investigate to discover evidence and form a case. That case is then reviewed and a decision is made to file charges or not file charges. THERE AIN’T NO FREAKING EXONERATION!!!

Exoneration is the role of the judiciary, assuming a case has been brought.

Of current concern, the Legislative Branch of government seems now to have had a taste of the exhilaration of prosecution, and is ready to legislate itself a badge and gun. It is not enough that the Mueller Report is only one in a series of investigations leading to a single conclusion, but it is not good enough. Now we need Jerry Nadler sitting askew some steed, looking prenatally inebriated, with a pearl-handled Colt 45 (gun, not malt liquor) in his right hand and a gavel in his left. This is how legislators can become administrators, as well.

Anyway, Trump is not exonerated by Mueller, and we can all thank God that is true.

Anybody with an eighth-grade education should know that the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government are designed to envy each others’ power and fight over it. Therefore, the current toss-up among the branches speaks to me of political health, not disease. That diagnosis, however, does not extend to the personalities that are trying to wield the power of their offices beyond the range for which they were intended.

Terrorism is a symptom of a political/social/economic system that has failed and become toxic. It seems to me theirs is a poor path to follow. Abusive use of force is along that path. Prosperity and freedom are the other way.

In case you missed it, Canada and the EU last week announced they immediately are not accepting any further certification of the Boeing 737 Max 8 or Max 9 jets from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). 

How does that make you feel? I grant there is ample reason to investigate Boeing and their software engineers, but this move signals that our allies have stopped trusting our government. Or is it that they mistrust our honesty, as if our bureaucratic infrastructure has become corrupt? 

This is not funny, as it comes immediately on the heels of the March 12 revelation by U.S. prosecutors that they have been investigating corruption in college admissions and have made arrests in the college testing apparatus, the college guidance apparatus and in college sports, with more to come. I wish I could say this came as a shock, but I taught several sections of Freshman Comp II back in the ՚70s, and I still recall the environment. Mental capacity was not a requirement if you played ball, were from Iran (this was before the fall of the Shah) or had a rich daddy. And, while I can understand that some people get assistance from diverse sources, it meant that the college degree was available for purchase without the commensurate ability to wield it. If you would like to see an analogy, search the internet for chimpanzee and AK47. The video you see is a hoax, but a funny one, and the fact remains that chimpanzees can be trained to use weapons, whereas those wielding an unearned certification cannot.

While I believe in waiting until the accused are proven guilty, I also have to accept that the determination of guilt is a function of the courts, but the determination of a problem is the function, in part, of the press, which essentially has ceased to function. So we press on. 

My job includes being a skeptic. I am supposed to both know enough about general matters and have the energy to look into such matters as they may bring themselves into focus. “Focus,” these days, seems to include “controversy.” So it goes. 

So let’s take a controversy in the media. Any controversy will work, but “climate change” has the potential to affect costs in our industry radically, so let’s look at it as a skeptic. That means just looking at facts. 

Fact 1: The idea of climate change as a political issue has been around for decades. Back in the ՚70s, it was presented as “global cooling” by the same groups of advocates as we currently see. Along the way it morphed into global warming and then the all-inclusive “climate change.” So it’s a political issue advocated by identifiable groups. 

Fact 2: The study of climate change is funded by many governments through research grants to universities. So there’s money. 

Fact 3: The academic community has been caught several times manipulating data. One of the most famous of such events began in 2009 and was named, unimaginatively, Climategate. There are arguments surrounding motives and actions on both parts, which are the subject of many internet-warrior conflagrations, and we can report on those as we like, but the fact remains that data was manipulated, for noble reasons or ill. 

Fact 4: While there is a clear geological record that shows Earth’s climate has changed back and forth substantially over time, most of that change has occurred in geological time. The last one started about 2.5 million (m) years ago.  

Subfact A: Scientists say the Huronian ice age (2.5 billion (b) years ago) was caused by the elimination of atmospheric methane, methane being the stuff of cow farts. Id est: eliminate cow farts and you get an ice age. 

Fact 5: Proponents of climate change as a political issue claim that climate change as a result of human intervention is “settled science.” As a linguist, I can assure you that science is not settled. If it’s settled, it’s not science.  

Fact 5a: Climate change as a function of human intervention is a political controversy with substantial opinion, credentialed and not credentialed, on both sides, as well as noted above, a lot of money available through governments. 

Those are facts. As noted, I recognize this is a controversial topic, and I recognize that you already have strongly held beliefs beyond the facts. For example, it is valid to speculate that we need to act because of what might happen if we do nothing, but as a skeptic, I have to allow your beliefs but point out that we don’t know what might happen. We can see what Alvin and Heidi Toffler said back in 1970 in Future Shock, or what Charles Reich said in 1970 in The Greening of America, but we can also see that their vision of the future did not come to pass. They didn’t even predict Beto, and he never learned about them in school. Even before Reich and Tofflers, Rachel Carson broke the barriers between fiction and fact with Silent Spring in 1962, a nice defense of which can be seen in the Jan/Feb 2008 issue of the International Socialist Review. 

But there are more facts. Facts about people as prophets. 

Fact 6: Fact 5 is important in geological time, since humans have believed since the beginning of historical time that their actions can affect the climate. In recent time, governments have seeded clouds. Before cloud seeding there were rain dances, water witching, observing insect behavior and prayers. All primitive cultures invoked supernatural powers and performed rituals to affect climate change. Sometimes, including in Judeo/Christian history, people offered up sacrifices and burnt offerings, and in primitive cultures climate change was affected by throwing virgins into volcanoes. Imagine where we’d be if they had not been proactive. 

Fact 7: We now have political candidates that want to affect climate change by throwing cows into volcanoes. 

There are many side-facts that bear on the current political climate. Some Democrats want to ban automobiles and cows. Beto O’Rourke believes in climate change. He also appears to believe in manipulating eternity. I believe that’s a fact, and not my opinion. Here’s why. The news last week asserts that Beto was so discomfited by his Texas senatorial loss to Ted Cruz that he went to New Mexico and ate dirt. It was special dirt, and he brought some home for his wife and family to eat because it had “rejuvenative powers.” Rejuvinate means to make young again, juvenate being from the same latin word as juvenile, and we will get to that.

Eating stuff for power is not a new idea. Popeye ate spinach. As an aside, it did not seem to advance him socially, but that’s another column. If you read the academic blatherings of 1968 writer and Ph.D. (sic) Carlos Castaneda, you will discover that eating jimson weed will let you fly. For more information on eating stuff for power, search the internet for Beto and turd. You will discover that a “verdant” (means green) baby turd can pass as an avocado to your wife. 

Let’s talk about drinking, instead. Ponce de Leon was a Spanish trust-fund baby back in 1493, who, legend has it, searched southern Florida for a rejuvenating fountain. He may have searched, or may have not. The point is, this rejuvenation idea by eating and drinking stuff is as old as throwing virgins into volcanoes. Rejuvenation, of course, is eternal life, a matter that has already been adjudicated. Old Ponce was killed by a poison arrow, dipped in plant matter (but not jimson weed) and flown at him by an indigenous person. Rejuvenation no longer being in his equation, we hope he was up on his rosaries. 

Which brings us back to education and training. Once was the time, long ago and far away, that education meant discipline based on facts, not superstition. People like Castenada pushed us along the road to fiction and fantasy, but, as I said, I was teaching English back then, and I can attest that identifiable groups had no affection for discipline or facts. They loved money, power and paper certificates for themselves. 

The unions came to prominence in that environment, and it evolved. It evolved to the point that today, the education of the ‘50s bears no resemblance, whatever, to the education of today. 

Part of education back then was “reading and writing and ՚rithmatic, taught to the tune of a hickory stick.” I can attest to that, too, since I earned a swat or two along the way. 

And education back then also focused on virtues. For those of you with good memories, can you recall what a virtue is? Virtues were once the basis of art. Ha! There’s an evolution, for you. The only plot line left in visual arts today is “pretty boy/pretty girl/blow-up bad guys/screw. The side plots involve flying without moving your butt, and moving your butt without thinking. Has anybody ever wondered what kind of “recreation” recreational pot is? Like, I mean, dude, do you achieve prowess with it? Win a pot championship? Compete against another team? Or is it just another made-up word for nothing? I wonder if anybody recreates with timed pot chess. 

Those, of course, are not facts, but musings. 

Today, we seem to have clear evidence that our educational systems are undisciplined sumps of superstition and ignorance. This is curious, since the advent of socialism requires an undisciplined sump of superstition and ignorance, and, voila!: half our new presidential candidates are lying about their indigenuity (I just made that word up), eating shit and promoting a final solution for cows. Ocasio-Cortez has an economics degree from Boston University (uh-oh), but seems to have economized on nothing but her class time. But you gotta admit; she has great teeth.¹ 

The sump is growing daily, though, and anybody that thinks we can pull out of this nose-dive whenever we grab the controls is wrong. It’s in the software. 

Meanwhile, our planes are falling out of the air, our allies don’t trust our our regulators and our most “compassionate” city governments are Chicago, Newark, San Francisco, Seattle and New York. Our universities are now staffed with the product of their own minds, and that product is verdant and smells. Can anybody that works for a living guess why academics don’t want their competence tested? Can anybody that has ever paid off a debt explain why student loan debt should exempt somebody from work until you and I pay it for them? 

For what it’s worth, I earned my degree, have the certifications to be a full professor in any university in North America, I used to teach there and I don’t. And that should say something. For example, it says I like reality. 

It seems to me, anybody that is not stoned, baffled and hateful has an uphill climb ahead, making sure those that are don’t “suffer.” From my perspective, it is better we that should feed them knowledge. I call it the Beto solution. Let them eat avocado. We can tell them it’s “smart food.” 

Did I hear somebody ask why we have a difficult time finding skilled workers? I may have an answer, but it lies in revolution. I think we have the best political system, but its application is failing. We need to revolt. More accurately, our representatives need to revolt against their usurper-handlers and answer to us. That’s what we hired them for. They need to quit staring stupidly at the rain dancers and arm themselves against the ensconced bureaucrats. We need competence among our educators. We need accountability among our law enforcement. We need the voices of the activists to be proportional to the number people that support them, not the funding they can accrue. And we need our media to abandon its carnival-barker belief that the world wants a freak show.  

Those are the jobs of our representatives. I don’t think this is a matter of political parties, although there is much to mock on both sides. However, the mockables are all products of our evolved educational system. They actually believe their stuff. I happen to agree with Elizabeth Warren that it’s time to break up the media and FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google). So what? It is also time to separate the mockables from the not. We can make two new parties: the Adult Party and the Party Party, comprising respective elements from the existing two. Then, the Adults Party can cut off the allowances, issue a caning and send the Party partiers to bed without supper. I am not averse to such treatment, believing I once benefitted from it, myself. 

It will cost. It always has. But wouldn’t it be nice if we were looking ahead to a time when the U.S. is seen as an emblem of honor and virtue, instead of just a fading memory? We need to pay the cost now or forever, and the parasite classes cannot be relied upon to supply even a token virgin. 

When a man stops believing in God, he doesn’t then believe in nothing; he believes anything. – G. K. Chesterton ¹