There’s little doubt that migration has changed the world. After the human exit in the “out of Africa” scenario that saw our species populate all but Antarctica in mass migrations, people have settled and intruded upon previous settlers, overlaying culture upon culture. Today, that process takes place in three ways: 1) Physical movements of people like those of the last 60,000 years, 2) virtual migration through electronic media, and 3) temporary invasion, that is, tourism. Modern electronic interconnectedness can be just as effective a cultural influence as actual population movements. Bermuda makes the case for #2 and #3; Positano makes the case for #3. More on that later.


The Concept of Indigenous


Every place makes the case for #1. In fact, physical migration puts the idea of indigenous culture in question. How far back does one go to call a people indigenous? Modern Italians are not Romans just as Romans weren’t Etruscans or Greeks who lived on the “boot”  now called Italy.  But the anthropological concept off indigenous is certainly a favored one because the United States celebrates Indigenous Peoples’ Day on Columbus Day—the former originating in Berkeley in 1992, the latter a Federal holiday to mark the European intrusion on “Native Americans,” who had intruded on Clovis territory that the Clovis occupied in displacing peoples like those who inhabited the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Avella, PA, 16,000 years ago.


Nevertheless, the three migratory influences on culture have enriched as much as ditched indigenous lifestyle and values. If history is the guide, then another culture will at some unknown date either influence or replace your culture just as you or your ancestors settled in the family neighborhood. Polish Hill, Chinatown, “Dago” Heaven all replaced or intruded on the the lives of previous inhabitants. Where are the Monongahela villages today? Where are the Mound Builders of the eastern states? Certainly, those “indigenous people” did not give Moundsville, WV, its current name or build the state prison across the street from the impressive earthen mound.


Paradise Lost?


If I were as talented a poet as John Milton, I could pen a work on Culture Lost in a lengthy verse like the poet’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Unseated indigenous populations—if any group of people can be said to be truly indigenous—look back nostalgically on lost paradise, the homeland they and their immediate ancestors knew before it changed. “Lost,” however, would be the only poem I could write because, in the words of Thomas Wolfe, “You can’t go home again.” Every generation erases slightly the culture of the past and migrants erase more. Reclamation never restores what was lost or altered. At best a culture can only reminisce in annual fairs like Italian Festival, Polish Festival, Renaissance Festival, St. Patrick’s Day and the like. But in truth, that which is gone is gone. And though its founders thought to right some wrong in founding Indigenous Peoples’ Day, they haven’t united groups of peoples whose ancestry included those who warred with one another and who established their own loosely defined boundaries whose geography has been documented in territories variously named “Apache,” “Shawnee,” “Iroquois,” “Seminole,” “Huron,” and “Cherokee.”


Those festivals and days noted above are attempts to recapture lost culture, to preserve it through ensuing generations. Children, however, can move away, and those left behind inevitably die off. The analog is found in evolution. Species occupy trophic niches left empty by extinct species, wolves, for example, replacing Smilodons and dire wolves as the chief predators in a region. Look at any neighborhood’s history. The original houses remain, but their occupants are different. Polish Hill might not be dominated by people who have a Polish heritage. My own children have a diverse genetic makeup: Italian, Polish, Austrian, and Russian. The kids are as comfortable eating a meal of spaghetti as they are eating one of pirogies. And, of course, because of diverse cultural influences, tacos, shrimp fried rice, and vegetable soup. Very few cultures on an interconnected world are unitary, such is the mix made by #1, #2, and #3.     


Reliving Paradise Lost


Probably few of us born in modern times would be happy with ancient life. No toilet paper, for example. No soap. No ease of transportation. No high tech, no Starbucks. Just sayin’. Would you be happy in the Golden Age of Greece, in the city Pericles made great? Visitors in Athens probably give little thought to the ice cream they eat as they tour. What was Plato’s favorite flavor?


Yet, those from other cultures seek to experience what they believe was in that culture, usually a stereotype. Stand as a tourist on the Acropolis and dream of talking to Socrates and Plato. Walk among the pillars of Karnak or ride a camel around the pyramids. You’re there, but not really. What was is gone; its essence is no more though the trappings remain like the Old State House in St. George’s in Bermuda.


Bermuda (This Is That “Later” I mentioned Getting to at the End of the First Paragraph)


Ah! Paradise! Bermuda, that British place of men in shirts, ties, and sport jackets worn with Bermuda shorts, knee socks and shined shoes and women in dresses. Kind of quaint, really. And the beauty of the place! Frozen dunes, or should I say “indurated and lithified” dunes resting on a crater’s rim with a maximum elevation at Town Hill of 79 meters (217 feet) above sea level, all the landscape bearing pastel houses with white roofs that capture rainwater in a prudent architectural admission to the island’s isolation in the salty Gulf Stream. And cleanliness. No litter on the streets and roads—at least that’s how I remember Bermuda.


But change is inevitable. As surely as those lithified dunes will eventually resume their unconsolidated form under erosive forces of wind and water, so the culture will inevitably change, subsiding into history like the supporting volcano that will slowly subside on a moving ocean crust unable to support the mountain’s weight. As sure as most old people get shorter under gravity’s inexorable pull, so Bermuda’s base will slowly sink into the sea, a process that a rising sea level can enhance as it did after the end of the last eustatic low stand 105,000 years ago.


Paradise Remembered


It’s been decades since my wife and I visited the island that annually gets about five times more visitors than the native population, a population that was at the time of our visit as literate as any country’s people. Bermuda boasted a 99% literacy rate back then, a fact that I remember after seeing several people reading paperbacks on a bus as they traveled to work in Hamilton. There was those decades ago a formality I did not experience in the neighboring melting pot of cultures called the United States. It did, however, remind me of more formal times of my childhood and even of those years as a young professor whose college president insisted on faculty wearing jackets, dress pants, shirts, and ties. (His death coincided with a creeping informality adopted by my similarly aged colleagues—I was in my mid-twenties)


That rather formal culture on Bermuda also had a low crime rate as I remember the island, a rate marred mostly by domestic incidents. Murders? Few and rare. Violent muggings of tourists? Very rare, also. Don’t misunderstand. Bermudans are human beings and as such have always had the same vices and emotions as the rest of us, including the vices of those landlocked in America’s crime-ridden inner cities. And the island population had various genetic heritages with origins as widespread as the British Isles and African Congo. It’s also long been a port for merchants and smugglers and was significant on the trade route between Europe and America, especially during the Revolutionary and Civil wars. But it became charming enough and safe enough to become a popular gun-free tourist spot in the twentieth century.


But, alas! And double alas! Maybe the island is too close to the United States and too far from its formal tie to Britain and its own isolated past that dates to a time before the Mayflower that carried Stephen Hawkins, a guy who had been shipwrecked on the island in 1609 before returning to England and then making the voyage with the Pilgrims. The Old State House in St. George’s was built in 1620, the year they landed at Plymouth Rock. Other buildings also attest to a cultural history dating to the 17th century.


As my wife and I walked the narrow roads and visited Hamilton, I saw signs that foreshadowed a cultural change.


Catapults Banned!


At the beachside hotel nestled in one of Bermuda’s many coves, there was a dress code for dinner: Reasonable dress: Sport coats and collared shirts, Bermuda shorts or dress pants. and leather shoes for men and whatever the equivalent level of formality for women, maybe dress slacks or skirts and blouses or dresses, though if memory serves me, dresses and not slacks for women. I guess that’s what is called “casual formal” or “semi-formal”—Not for me to say, since, with rare exceptions, during my entire professional career after the death of that president who hired me, I wore running shoes, jeans, and a sport coat over a T-shirt in the lab or classroom and simply swapped the running shoes and sport coat for a sweatshirt and work boots for field trips to the mountains. Yeah, when it comes to fashion, I’m neither a trendsetter nor a business suit guy. But when in Rome…er, Bermuda, I knew to dress according to the code.


Okay, though I wouldn’t want to be characterized as a slob, I can’t deny my American heritage of informality and lower Middle Class attire (thus my use of the contractions in this sentence). I became aware of my normal informality at home in retrospect as the Bermudan dress code surfaced like the island in a sea of tourist slobs. During that trip to Bermuda I saw my slobby compatriots who seemed to favor Myrtle Beach and Ocean City beachwear arrive at restaurants seemingly intent on undermining a formal culture by their dress. The contrast with Bermudans was noticeable.


And I began to think, “As the world becomes more interconnected, local codes of behavior and even local mores undergo entropy.” Fashion smooths out like the Cosmic Microwave Background, now everywhere—and I mean EVERYWHERE—at 2.7K with differences in density measured only in ten to 100 parts per million. The world was not only becoming One, it was becoming an American One in thought, fashion, and behavior. “In a couple of decades,” I told my wife, “Bermuda will be radically different. I’m happy we came to see it before it changes.”     


It wasn’t just the tourists, or even just American tourists, that led me to the conjecture. I noted a youth shouldering a boom box—it was a time even before the storied Walkman and quality Bose headphones. The speakers vibrated American rap music, not obnoxiously loud, mind you, but noticeably intrusive on the scale of the island’s formality. And in the hotel, one of the few TV stations originated in Chicago; another, in Detroit. The nightly reports showed crime after crime after crime after crime in inner cities in the midst of decline. And I thought, “Of all the stations to import, why these? Why not a BBC station to the exclusion of one so different in culture?” But the ubiquitous American culture seems unstoppably intrusive on the planet. My thought intensified, “Bermuda will change.” Migrants, visitors, and electronic connectedness will effect that change.


I think I might have been prescient. Bermuda has, I believe, become more Americanized, and not in the best sense of Americanization (whatever that might be). No, the worst or, in part, the less formal part. We tourists and our culture and this country’s standards of social interaction, like people getting into fights in Disney World, have eroded Bermuda’s culture. And now, as I read online, the UK government issues this warning: “Bermuda has a moderate level of crime. There have been serious incidents, including the use of weapons.”


Weapons in Bermuda? Guns, as I indicated, were banned when I was there. The newspapers reported a few domestic disturbances, none involving firearms. But now other weapons seem to be a problem for Bermuda. I have read the list of banned items. Tourists are advised not to enter the island with air pistols, catapults, ammunition, or empty magazines. Catapults! CATAPULTS! What! Is this a Monty Python movie set? I assume that the restriction includes all forms of catapults, including trebuchets of any dimensions.


“Dear, have you finished packing for our trip to Bermuda? Remember, they don’t allow trebuchets or drugs. So, leave them at home. Possession can lead to prison sentences up to 25 years.”


“But, Gladys, you know I never travel without my trebuchet. It’s not on the TSA agents’ minds when people go through airport security, though they do a double-take when they see the large rock I carry for a counterbalance weight. No, they’re more concerned about my belt buckle and Uncle Tom’s artificial knee than my trebuchet.”


Maybe “catapult” means slingshot. I’m not sure.


Positano


Have you seen Positano? Really picturesque! Nestled—or rammed—against a rugged coast and cliffs, the place attracts tourists by the boatloads, kind of an Italian version of Santorini with narrow streets and little room to accommodate the tourist trade. So, this headline in the NY Post caught my eye: ‘Entitled’ American slammed for trashing ‘overpriced’ seaside Italian town — and ‘loud’ US tourists: ‘Girl, you f–ked up bad’ an article reporting on the brouhaha over a travel “influencer’s criticism of Positano. *


What caused the stir? Keri, the influencer who sat the heart of it, wrote, “There were just so many Americans,” she said. “It was, like, the people that weren’t well traveled, like, just loud and yelling down the tiny streets while repping their favorite football team.”


Yeah. American slobs everywhere, all eager to live for a day or a week in a place where they believe they’ll experience a lifestyle different from their own. But the Hawthorne Effect (the Observer Effect) always comes into play.


You know the effect. If people being observed know they are being observed—as people in touristy areas know—they’ll act as they think they should act. The observer changes the observed. And I assume that after millions have visited Bermuda and the Amalfi coast, they have effected a change, not necessarily for the worst, but that’s not out of the question.


Positano isn’t the quaint town it once was. It doesn’t even have the Amalfi culture it once had. It’s different because of #2 and #3, and I can’t say which is the greater influence. The world’s new found electronic interconnectedness definitely plays a part as it had played the same part the world over. I don’t know, for example, where you are. My site is visited 24/7. I can’t believe that all the wee hours of the morning readership is just East Coast. You could be in California, Hawaii, China, or Madagascar. And though you might think I haven’t had an influence on your life—good or bad—your returning for more than one of these 2,000+ essays tells me that in some small way, I have intruded on your life and, by extension, on those to whom you might have influenced on an issue I covered.


Don’t Get Me Wrong


I’m not haughtily saying I have changed the world or changed you—noticeably. But to quote Tennyson’s “Ulysses”: I am a part of all that I have met.”


Every traveler has in concert with other travelers the ability to change a destination whether by permanent relocation or by just visiting. No place has been exempt. No “indigenous” culture has been unaffected.


Think about that the next time you go on vacation. You will to some degree become a part of all you meet.




*Marissa Matozzo, April 11, 2025.

According to the FBI records for the past two years, crimes of hate derived from ethnic and religious differences made up about three-quarters of “hate crimes.” Separating the two categories of ethnicity and religion is a bit difficult in the instance of Judaism, since the ethnicity is intimately tied to the religion, whereas, for example, Christians like Catholics have only a superficial tie to ethnicity. That analysis is somewhat incomplete,  of course, because Muslims are not just Arabs, as the “national” religions of Indonesia, Turkey, Iran, and 220 million Indians attest. Yes, there are Turkish and Indonesian Christians, but Jews? That is on the whole a different story. Practicing or not, every Jew is labeled in the eyes of the antisemite as “Jewish” in both “race” and religion.


The recent rise of antisemitism on college campuses has framed all Jews, even American Jews who have never visited the Middle East, as Israelis or Israeli sympathizers and, thus, complicit in the college mobs’ eyes in the fictional genocide of Palestinians. And that “genocide” is demonstrably fictional. The IDF has struggled to eliminate Hamas operatives because they hide among Palestinians and use them as shields, actions that appear to be of no concern to the rioting college students who, for whatever reason, align themselves with torturers, rapists, and murderers, including those guilty of infanticide.


In fact, there are Jews who empathize with the Palestinians and who argue against the continued actions of the IDF in Gaza. That puts Israel between the rock and hard spot. Defend against terrorists or allow terrorists to wreak havoc on Israel? Continue unabated until Hamas is totally eliminated or by ceasing operations try to elicit favor from people already imbued with antisemitism? For centuries Jews have had to sail between Charybdis and Scylla.


For any American college student protesting either side of the issue I simply ask, “What is your solution in light that you have no skin in the game?


And isn’t that really the issue in all American anti-Israeli protests? As I keep saying in these blog entries, what isn’t personal is virtually meaningless. October Seventh is meaningless to the protesting co-ed in a black-and-white head scarf if she hasn’t been tortured, raped, or imprisoned. No protesting American college woman has been subjected indignities by Hamas. No alphabet person has tried to walk as an openly gay person on the streets of a Muslim city. And probably no American Columbia student has seen loved ones slaughtered or lived under the threat of a random rocket exploding nearby.


Roots of Hate    


From what does antisemitism arise? Surely, all those young people on college campuses exhibiting hatred for Jews today have not suffered a personal offense at the hands of a Jew. Surely, the Jews aren’t, as is taught to children in Gaza, the source of the world’s evil and the reason the common Palestinian lives in total dependency on the whims of well-fed Hamas leaders who spend financial aid on weapons and not on infrastructure other than tunnels. In Gaza lies the perfect example of dissimulation not unlike other historic examples, such as in Hitler’s Germany and Franco’s Spain. I’ll add that in mentioning history, I emphasize the influence of the past on today’s antisemitism.


How is it that such a small fraction of the world’s population during any generation should become the scapegoat for so many evils over the course of thousands of years, especially in light (or darkness, depending upon perspective) of all those actual evils perpetrated by gentiles on others during ethnic conflicts or national movements? Does the answer lie in the death of Christ? The Assyrians, Egyptians, Philistines, and Babylonians might have been precursors of modern antisemites, but none of them could ascribe their hatred to the death of Christ, since all lived in BC time and all were acting on territorial imperatives and hegemony.


But when that one mob in Jerusalem chanted about 2,000 years ago: “Crucify Him, Crucify Him,” they set in motion an enculturation that has lasted till today. From that moment on generations of Christians of different denominations held the Jews accountable for Christ’s death and continue to do so today in spite of the absolution of Jews during the Third Session of the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican. The Council proclaimed, “The Jewish people should never be presented as one rejected, cursed or guilty of Deicide. What happened to Christ in His passion cannot be attributed to the whole people then alive, much less to those of today.” (Just wondering: Is there a parallel in blaming 21st-century Caucasian Americans for slavery?)


What of Arabs in the vicinity of Israel and Iranians geographically separated from Israel, all of who have no emotional link to the death of Christ? From whence does their hatred arise? With regard to Iranians’ hate, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh, writing in the Wall Street Journal, place the roots of Iranian antisemitism in the writings of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the guy who took over after the fall of the Shah. * Khomeini wrote in his book Islamic Government, “From the very beginning, the historical movement of Islam had to contend with the Jews, for it was they who first established anti-Islamic propaganda and engaged in various stratagems, and as you can see, this activity continues down to the present.” The thought is now embedded in the minds of Iranians’ current leaders, probably some of them unfamiliar with the exact passage, such is the nature of enculturation and scapegoating.


But what of the affluent, coddled students at Columbia, none, my sound guess is, familiar with Khomeini’s writings and many who probably couldn’t find Gaza on a map? Could one ascribe the students’ actions to unfettered immaturity? College students—young people in general—have often rioted over a school’s basketball or football victory, running through the streets and destroying randomly property in college towns. As I think about the sentence I just wrote, I’m not dismissing that unfettered immaturity that is also evident on beaches during spring break. Apparently, any reason is reason to join a mob, any reason is sufficient to scapegoat.   


About That Mob Yelling, “Crucify Him”


Imagine having one moment in your life that others might use to pigeonhole your entire life, then transpose that to a moment in the history of a people that others have used and still use to label them. The simulation of Jew as evil through history is a dissimulation that has resulted in deaths, exile, and persecution. The twentieth century’s Holocaust was a culmination of historical antisemitism that included the expulsion of Jews from Spain, for example. After a millennium and a half of coexistence with other “Spaniards” (e.g., Visigoths) on the Iberian Peninsula, the Jewish population was forced out by a decree of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. About one thousand five hundred years of off-and-on violence, but essentially a coexistence marred by infrequent but still lethal waves of antisemitism, such as the 1366 and 1391 pogroms, all that Jewish presence in Spain abruptly ended with the Alhambra Decree in 1492. Under Ferdinand and Isabella Jews who did not convert to Christianity had to leave.


Well, that’s one way to eliminate antisemitism, and the same thinking applies to antisemites who want Israelis to leave Israel. That outcome seems to be what students at Columbia want in the Middle East and by extension applicable to Jews in New York through virtual pogroms (i.e., hate crimes) and exiles of fellow students and esteemed faculty members currently on the campus.


Antisemitism as a Form of Anti-intellectualism


If I were asked what defines an intellectual, I would offer that an intellectual is one who can distinguish between the general and the specific. Intellectuals can deal in generalities as long as they know the flaw in inductive reasoning. A slight or offense by one Jew does not translate into a fault of all Jews. The supposedly bright students who have threatened fellow Jewish students don’t seem to be as bright as they pretend. No act of another, not even the act of calling for a Deicide, is the fault of someone else separated not only by space, but also by time.


The Ostriches on the Quad


Apparently, antisemitism has—hopefully, “had”— its practitioners in Columbia’s administration and faculty. These “adults” feigning intellectual superiority and objectivity seem never to have had anyone confront them for their beliefs and biased characterization or generalizing of Jews. Did no one see a problem existed? Maybe those who had subtle or overt inklings of bias on campus buried their heads rather than speak out. Why upset the proverbial apple cart, especially if one had yet to attain tenure? But maybe antisemitism crept stealthily into Columbia’s society over decades so that few noticed its gradual entrenchment.


Anecdotal Analogy Warning: Dive, Dive, Dive


I am in the midst of cataract surgery, the right eye having been through the process earlier this week, the left eye to be dealt with next week. Why do I mention this? After the right eye’s procedure, I saw a different world than I had seen: Colors were brighter, more intense, especially the blues and yellows. Closing the repaired right eye, I saw a different world through the left eye. A duller world. Next week, I’ll see the same through both eyes, I assume. The point is that over the years I had no way of knowing that my world was becoming duller, less vivid. I wasn’t seeing what you probably see if your eyes are healthy. I wasn’t purposefully ignoring the diminished sight because I didn’t know I had diminished sight. The fading was gradual.


Is that what happened at Columbia? Antisemitism gradually pulled the shade over the window of insight. Faculty members, some of them Jews, worked on committees and performed research with antisemites without seeing their prejudice. If that is the case, then they are analogs of my eyes beclouded by cataracts. And if the Jewish faculty members did recognize the insidious nature of antisemitism on campus, were they ostriches out of cowardice?


History tells me that just as Spanish Jews experienced pogroms and exiles, so future Jews will undergo further persecution at the hands of those who have no full understanding of the origin of their hate. But simple acquiescence isn’t really a good option. The Holocaust teaches us that in modern times real genocidal acts are possible. Jews can’t like Christ on the Cross say, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” In these modern times, death is easy and victims of hate can be whole populations. Acts of self defense are not only moral, they are justifiable on the most basic level of survival.


*https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-real-reason-iran-hates-israel-anti-semitism-gaza-4f7ad96e

At Starbucks, a conservative (C) and a liberal (L) talk.


C: See The Times today?


L: No, why do you ask?


C: Seems it’s really good at reporting history, better at it, in fact, than in reporting “news,” as the word newspaper implies. Got a story about Hunter Biden. Says he was colluding with the State Department to get the Tuscany Region to facilitate Burisma’s business dealings. *


L: And?


C: You libs take the cake! “And?” You ask? First off, The Times is reporting on a story anyone with an ear had heard years ago, the story the Biden Administration quashed in every liberal newspaper and network. Second, if Trump’s son had colluded with the State Department to get a business deal, it would have been front page immediately and would have generated an impeachment. Unbelievable hypocrisy. Unbelievable collusion between the Gray Lady and a political party. Unbelievable gullibility on your part.


L: Trump’s a convicted felon.


C: That’s it. That’s all you got?


L: Now Trump is destroying democracy.


C: Is there a broken connection in your array of synapses? How is this story not important to you? How can you dismiss Biden’s years of corruption? And how can the “esteemed Gray Lady” be so thoroughly manipulated? It was in times past seen as a diligent seeker of truth though it has had liberal leanings for years and a few shocking scandals involving reporters making up stories.


L: Water under the bridge.


C: Nothing more? Not surprised.


*https://nypost.com/2025/04/04/opinion/nyt-is-finally-covering-the-bidens-scandals-years-too-late/

Happy? Why or why not? Could the answer be rooted in your acceptance or rejection of purpose, either cosmic purpose or personal? Allow me another route. Could an atheist or nihilist find happiness in a meaningless world? 


You know, if you ask either, you might get a “Yes,” but would that affirmation be the product of pride? “I’m not a happy person” might be tough to admit in public. Your response could be, “Geez, there’e no pleasing some people,” “Don’t be a stick in the mud,” or “Who cares? That’s your problem, and I don’t need to waste my time on your pessimism and self pity.”


Now, if you’re a happy nihilist, don’t take offense that I suggest happiness does not lie in your life path. And if you believe in unbelief or disbelief, likewise (Oxymoronic, I know).


Atheists, and nihilists—and some existentialists and one or two agnostics, too—aside, most people probably see a role for cause and purpose in their lives. Surely you know, if you have not done so yourself, people who frequently both “discover” meaning in events and actively seek meaning in their lives. Others just willy nilly ascribe it on assumption. The questions “Why did this have to happen?” and “Why do bad things happen to good people?” stem from this attachment to meaning and to a penchant to see the future’s impact on the present. As a corollary in recent decades, politicians have talked about their legacies, not historical legacies, but distant future legacies (“Generations will look back on what I’ve done for them”). The ultimate forms of this teleological approach to life lie in statements you have heard others make: “It was meant to be,” “It was a match made in heaven,”“If my time is up, well, my time is up,” and the cosmological “The universe is fine-tuned for life.” To go back to those I put aside at the beginning, I believe irony lies in nihilists making plans of any kind. Why bother if all will come to naught? Oh! I get it; there’s that comfort and pleasure fixed to the eternal present, or, “Hey, if this is all there is, I intend to make the most of it.”  


With both cause and purpose in mind, we make plans. We envision our futures and set up Great Expectations that only rarely become the realities we initially envisioned because intervening accidents and the cross purposes imposed by others thwart the perfect fulfillment of just about all we plan. In the circumstances when cross purposes others impose intervene, we might argue that they occur during accidental conjunctions of people on a planet with eight billion people. Someone sometime will buck heads with another and alter the course of a man with a plan.  


Guess Whom I Bumped into Today?


I think those chance meetings people have that changed their lives. “We dated briefly in high school and hadn’t seen each other in years, but c'est la vie, even though we both thought we were happily married…Well, here we are years later living in Florida, our first marriages distant memories.” Did chance bring them together? After all, in a time of great mobility that breeds the expression “small world,” chance meetings are not uncommon. Maybe you, like me, have walked through an airport and encountered a friend you haven’t seen for years. But was some Cosmic Destiny at work? One might think that for those who believe in a universe imbued with purpose, that such an accidental meetup isn’t as accidental as it might seem. 


Randomness bugs the most teleologically minded among us though all of us are driven to accept its inevitable, if infrequent, occurrence. For example, that fender bender that cost you your deductible seems to have been “accidental,” a misfortune that befell you through the physics of the Pauli Exclusion Principle that forbids two objects occupying the same space at the same time. Although Earth’s 148.3 million square kilometers of land surface seem to be space enough to accommodate all of us, it is still finite enough that a car accident is not particularly odd. You aren’t the only one misfortune befell in an  accident.


“Befell” is the appropriate word here because the word accidental derives from the Latin and before that the PIE root for “fall” (cadere, “to fall” in L. and kad, the PIE root for “fall”). With 298 million vehicles on the roads of the US, accidents occur daily, and though we can ascribe their cause to carelessness, inattention, driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and mechanical failure, they all conjure up the “forces” of randomness, chaos, and probability to which everyone is subject. “Had I left home just seconds earlier, I would not have been at that intersection where the person ran the red light.” In a random world, uninterrupted bliss in one’s life is only temporarily attainable as exemplified by 69-year-old Harry H. Bliss himself. The real estate dealer stepped off a trolley at West 74th St. and Central Park West on September 13, 1899—and before you ask, no, it was not Friday the Thirteenth, though that might have added a special meaning to this story—where he was hit and killed by an electric taxicab whose driver was exonerated because he had no malice aforethought. In 1899 the entire complement of vehicles in New York was just 8,000. What are the chances? Well, in the instance of Harry Bliss, pretty good. Was it just “his time to go”? 


Is the Universe Random?


You know the two sides of the argument: The universe either sprung—and still springs—from random fluctuations in “the vacuum” or it was “fine tuned” by intelligent design ascribed to a Creator whose methodology was a simple fiat or the unfolding of a singularity too small and too hot to imagine. If it is the product of a Creator, the universe is destined and you, the “universe conscious of itself,” are destined, hopefully for bliss, not in the same manner as Harry, but definitely to the same exhaustion of personal finite time and possibly the beginning for you of the Unending. 


If you accept life as a purposeless biochemical coalition of cells, bacteria, and viruses, then a personal end is merely a return to nothingness in an uncoupling of all those entities entropy plays havoc with your remains. In contrast, if you see life as teleological, then its ending is a transition to a “beyond” in a future made perfect (perfect in its meaning as “complete,” “accomplished,” “finished”). “My work is done here. Keep my legacy going.”


Are the Teleological also the Foolish?


It’s easy for us to scoff at or dismiss the assumptions and faiths of others. The motivation for doing so probably has something to do with both hubris and insecurity, the former driven by the Ego and the latter by the same Id that provides us with nightmares. Certainly, people have a tendency to hold onto their beliefs, most of which were attained through enculturation. Any contrary belief can appear as a threat to the Ego. With regard to security, each of us can shield the Ego by categorizing conflicting beliefs as nonsense. 


That which we can categorize is that which lends us a sense of personal security. When everything “out there” fits neatly into a framework, the world offers order and not confusion. Relegating others’ beliefs to superstition and anti-intellectualism could also be the product of history as members of any belief have shown themselves to be cruel, corrupt, or just downright evil in perpetrating harm to others. I think of those terrorists who cry out the name of their deity in suicidal attacks. Acts like the massacre of the 120 members of the Baker–Fancher wagon train in Utah by members of the Church of Latter Day Saints do justify for some a condemnation of Mormons and their faith for any hypocrisy overlying a sense of righteousness. But what religion houses perfect practitioners? Certainly, there’s reason to question the faith of clergy who ran tribunals during the Medieval Inquisition period in Europe.


To borrow from comedian Nate Bargatze, I might in paraphrase ask, “Sorry for my smirk, but did you just say you are a Big Foot expert? Have you also spent time looking for the Lock Ness Monster?” Or to put the questions in the context of religion, “What’s that you say? Some guy named Smith found golden tablets buried near Manchester, NY, after which his followers led by Brigham Young gathered a group and traveled to Utah, to found a church that has a great tabernacle choir composed of women living in bigamists’ families, and…Bang! A nineteenth century massacre in Utah.”


In the context of any logic, belief is easy to mock. But strangely, even logic presupposes, or rather, has underlying assumptions just as math can’t prove itself—as that famous Incompleteness Theorem of Kurt Gödel indicates. So, all of us, nihilists, atheists, believers, logicians, and mathematicians all rely on some belief. In the instance of smirking at Brigham Young and his entourage, the naysayer believes in a superior point of view characterized by suspicion and doubt toward other perspectives. All religions are subject to criticism by outsiders, just as by today’s scientific perspectives, the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle are subject to doubt or at least alternative views because both those ancients incorporated telos in their thought. Telos is the “end” to which an acorn of necessity strives to fulfill its destiny as an oak tree. Telos implies “purpose,” “goal.” It includes the notion of cause. 


So, I suppose anyone could smirk at another who thinks he is acorn-like, destined to fulfill a purpose in a universe of so much order we can look at the Periodic Table of Elements or the Linnaean system of binomial nomenclature and say, “So, the universe DOES make sense!” Both believers and nonbelievers can be happy in that knowledge.


A Fine-Tuned Universe Fine-Tuned Just for You   


The assumption called the Anthropic Principle underlies a purposeful universe. The Cosmos was fine-tuned for you because the probability, regardless to Hawking’s arguments against it, is mind-bogglingly low.  John Leslie points out in his Universes (1989) that even the slightest change in the strength of the four fundamental forces would make both the stars and life impossible. So, if you take the stars out of the cosmic equation, you also eliminate elements #4 through #92, meaning that with regard to the six elements (H,O,C,N,S,P) essential for life as we know it, the only remaining life element is hydrogen, not bad if you want all life-forms to look like the Hindenburg.


With regard to those fundamental force strengths, Leslie notes that gravity is 10^39 times weaker than electromagnetism. “Had it been only 10^33 times weaker, stars would be a billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster” (5). This is how he summarizes:


    “The force strengths and particle masses are distributed across enormous ranges. The nuclear strong force is (roughly) a hundred times stronger than electromagnetism, which is in turn then thousand times stronger than the nuclear weak force, which is itself some ten thousand billion billion billion times stronger than gravity” (6). *


Mind-boggling, right? All those numbers coincidentally arising either by chance or design just to provide a venue for you as you decide which foot goes in which shoe or whether you really need that cafe mocha with extra whip at a cost increasingly edging toward $6.00 for a Venti. Change those relative force strengths by only a little and you eliminate the universe you know (the one with the Venti). If you accept them as a “perfect balance for life,” do you think the equilibrium is purposeful, or do you believe the balance is accidental and only in retrospect do we from the human necessity of or affinity for finding patterns ascribe the balance to God?  What’s your take? Ask yourself, also, whether the Natural Laws have produced the physics of the cosmos or were simply imposed as our brains sought security in recognizable patterns.**


A Universe without Purpose


Again, one might ask “What’s the counterargument to suggest a mechanism for achieving without an intelligent agent the requisite balance of forces?” Well, an atheist could argue that if any one of those four forces came into existence before the others, its strength would determine the relative strengths of the other forces. And that is a reasonable argument given what we know. Of course, if things were different…They would be different. The argument depends, of course, on how that current balance of forces couldn’t be otherwise in this universe, which, of course, is a bit of a circular argument. And then there’s the “turtles all the way down explanation” I mentioned in a recent blog. After a talk on the universe, Bertrand Russell was approached by a woman who refuted his statements by telling him the world rested on a giant turtle. When Russell asked what the turtle stood on, she replied, “Why it’s turtles all the way down.” In that vein of reasoning, an atheist might argue for an eternal universe, or rather, for an eternal set of universes, each preceding the other in the manner of a Big Bang followed by a Big Crunch followed by a Big Bang followed by…”You get the thing,” as President Biden might say. So regressively, “It’s universes all the way down.” ***


In fact, Leslie’s argument for a universe with a purposeful start derives not on the absolute force strengths but rather on the ranges of those strengths: “Possibilities not straightforwardly countable can still be compared with respect to their ranges…an inexpert dart thrower gets little hope from the reflection that the infinite number of points inside a bulls-eye is no smaller than the infinite number outside…A Cicero who, flinging a great many letters in the air, then actually finds they have fallen so as to form the Annals of Ennius, cannot reasonably exclaim, ‘There’s nothing remarkable here since there were countless slightly different ways in which this could have happened’” (199).


Is it possible for those letters Cicero tossed to fall as a meaningful document, both grammar and syntax incorporated with correctness in paragraphs with unity, coherence, and emphasis sufficient to earn an A in Composition 101?


So, if the atheist says, “Well, if there are 1010^1115 possible universes, then the chances that one—the One we are in—is as it is for us, that is, fine-tuned for life as we know it. There’s also a chance letters tossed by Cicero fall to make a meaningful document in one of those other universes.There’s also a chance that an indefinite number of chimpanzees sitting each in front of a keyboard will in some duration have typed all of Shakespeare’s plays. There’s no need for purpose. No need for Telos, and no need for a teleological perspective. Yes, on Earth acorns do grow into oak trees if they are not by some squirrel interrupted in fulfilling their role, but in an alternative universe acorns might grow into babies or cars. Acorns do what they do on Earth because this universe randomly evolved that way. You do what you do…


And in 1010^1115 universes it is likely that everything about your life could be duplicated, meaning that even what you find meaningful is just a product of a randomness beyond your imagining. Your doppelgänger is out there somewhere right now wondering if you exist and think the same way. Your doppelgänger in another universe envisions a purpose you share. At least two universes in the multi-universe were fine-tuned for both of you.


Happy in a Purposeful World, Happy in a Random World


Back to the top, here: Are you happy? I guess you could reiterate what the Buddha said, “There is no path to happiness: happiness is the path.” Obviously, even in this universe, there are many paths, so whether or not you are on a path toward nowhere or somewhere is irrelevant if you want it to be irrelevant. If you contend the universe has order and meaning, then you have another question to answer: Does the order impose predestination. “Sure, you’re happy (or unhappy), but you don’t have a choice.” If you contend the universe is random, you might still hear the same statement because the balance of forces require the universe to be what it is. Your happiness originated in the Big Bang, in the collision of neighboring universes, or in the unfolding of a universe obeying certain laws and constants. Wow! Did I just accidentally make an argument for predestination? Well, if I did, it was for predestination WITHIN this universe, and not beyond this universe. Hakuna matata.




*Leslie, John. 1989. Universes.

**As a corollary: Is math derived or imposed? Is the Cosmos a mathematical construct? The “constants,” and numbers like 1/137, the “Planck length,” π, and the speed of light demand an answer to “Did the constants and laws exist before the universe?” “Did those constants and laws cause the universe to be as it is?”  Here's a summary of Nietzsche's take on teleology: "Since Nietzsche denies the presence of divine purpose in nature, he tries to explain the apparent teleology of living organisms and their evolutiono in terms of the will to power. So he writes:
         ...that becoming stronger brings with it arrangements which resemble a teleological design--: that the apparent ends are not intended but, as soon as the supremacy over a smaller power is established and the latter works as a function of the greater, an order of rank, of organization must awaken the semblance of an order of means and end.'" George A. Morgan. 1941. What Nietzsche Means. Boston. Harvard University Press, Harper Torchbook  edition, 1965 Harper & Row Publishers. pp. 81, 82.


***The WMAP image of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) suggests to some that our universe might have had a Harry H. Bliss-taxicab moment as it collided with another universe or was entangled in the fender of another universe in a wreck called the CMB or WMAP Cold Spot. From Wikipedia: A controversial claim by Laura Mersini-Houghton is that it [the Cold Spot] could be the imprint of another universe beyond our own, caused by quantum entanglement between universes before they were separated by cosmic inflation.[3] Laura Mersini-Houghton said, "Standard cosmology cannot explain such a giant cosmic hole" and made the hypothesis that the WMAP cold spot is "... the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own." If true, this provides the first empirical evidence for a parallel universe (though theoretical models of parallel universes existed previously).








  

Here’s the headline: Columbia grads tear up diplomas to protest school, Mahmoud Khalil arrest: ‘I’m not a proud alumni at all’—Chris Nessi. NY Post. March 30, 2025


Notice anything? Yes in this Age of Disnumbred Pronouns and Illogical Antecedents, when He can be They and She can be Them, Columbia graduate Amali Tower, made the statement Nessi quotes. Sometime, one might think, during the course of a four-year university education at a prestigious school, Amali should have come across the feminine version of alumnus, i.e., alumna. Maybe at her graduation in 2009? And maybe Amali Tower heard at sometime that alumni is the plural for men in particular and for all graduates in general and that alumnae is plural for female graduates. Doesn’t matter. Amali has just ripped up the diploma. Duh, dat dat dahhh daaa, daaa, da dat dahh dahhh.(You know the melody)


So, four years and who can add up how much money for room, board, and all those and items like books for an education all gone in a meaningless symbolic act. Why “meaningless” symbolic act? Well, if Amali needs to prove to a future employer that she graduated from a college, she need only pay a small fee for the school to make a duplicate. Heck. Columbia is so flush with endowment, the school might even print one free of charge. And bypassing paper documentation, there’e always email from the school’s office of records.


But show is all. So, a group of Columbia graduates ripped up their diplomas in a public show of support for a noncitizen who stirred up a campus with unrest, building takeover, harassment of Jewish students, disruption of classes, and general turmoil that included writing graffiti on those sacred ivy-covered campus walls.


I suppose that the diploma-rippers have sincere beliefs that their purpose is just and their actions justified. But I question the nature of an act so easily undone by necessity, that is, the necessity of proving that college education to an employer. And if those diploma-rippers have lifetime jobs that they’ll never abandon till retirement, then what’s the significance of the ripping. In a permanent job, one doesn’t have to prove that degree exists. That’s a fait accompli.


But, as I wrote above, the show is all. Which of the probably relatively wealthy Columbia diploma-rippers has pout money behind the act? Who among them has financially. Supported the Palestinians they say are in need?

It’s hard for me to understand
How others join to give a hand
To those protesting Elon’s brand
By vandalizing someone’s car
In protests now both near and far.
“Why he’s a fascist,” so they say,
“And Trump’s a tyrant, by the way.”


It seems they want the status quo
That gives the taxed both grief and woe
And causes them to work for naught
To pay for this or that whatnot.
And so they gather round the globe.
I ask, “Is each a technophobe?
“I thought the Left was for EVs,
“And all that tech they say relieves
“The Earth from warming fossil fuels.
“Alas, they seem to be such fools.”


The count is not complete just yet,
But 80 owners now regret
They bought a car to do their part
To change the world; it seemed quite smart.
But after raging Leftists burned
Some 80 cars because they spurned
What they once praised and did embrace,
The owners wonder where to drive
A Tesla that can just survive
The damage done in random acts
By vandals roaming in wild packs.


“Is burning cars a Liberal trait?”
I ask, “And what can drive destructive hate
“Toward Tesla owners and their cars?
“Is it the man who’s reached the stars?
“The guy who wants to go to Mars?”
“Or are the vandals willing pawns
“Of foreign actors and their cons?
“Or even puppets pulled by wire
“By libs who can’t relinquish ire
“They have because they’re losing cash,
”The taxes that filled up their cache?”

Whatever purpose they hold dear,
Their object seems to me quite clear;
The mob just wants the good to fear.

Boo hoo. Columbia is now hard pressed to eliminate antisemitism on campus. If the university doesn’t adopt a practical plan, Trump will withhold about $400 Million in federal money (actually, if you are a taxpayer, it’s your money).


Well, as you might guess, the school has scrambled to rectify antisemitism that was years in the making. Whether or not the new plans, which include increased numbers of campus police and more patrols added to investigative and disciplinary committees and tribunals, will satisfy Trump, the DOJ, and Jewish students and alumni remains to be seen.


So, what was at stake at Columbia? What were the 400 million dollars going to buy you? How about taming the climate crisis? You want that, don’t you? Or are you some MAGA dolt who thinks that climate change isn’t an existential crisis? (If you can understand what “existential climate crisis” means, that is, given your inability even to sign your X account “X”). But if I might assume you are interested in what Columbians have to say at your expense…


Taming the Climate Crisis?


Fortunately for those of us still trying to learn which side of an umbrella is up, the folks at Columbia Climate School, where they discuss “Climate, Earth, and Society” while drunk on latte, have produced a document online called a “State of the Planet.” Hold on, Buckaroo, you’re about to go on a wild ride at the academic rodeo.


A bunch of really bright people gathered for a symposium to discuss among other topics how AI might “tame the climate crisis.” * Among them was Adam Sobel, who said,“What’s happened now is that the AI [weather prediction] models—which essentially didn’t exist something like five years ago—have become as good by many metrics or even arguably better by some than the [traditional] physics-based models.” Let’s give that a think. How have those “metrics” worked for us so far? Remember all those IPCC predictions for 2020 made back in 2000? Which one of them has come true? Consider also the actual measurements fudged by “climatologists” who extrapolated (and still extrapolate) data from nonexistent weather stations and from weather stations under the dome of urban heat islands. Or consider proxy measurements that are not quantities that engender faith in their accuracy plus or minus a degree or three. And finally, consider the ass backward historical record that shows some carbon dioxide increases occurred after an increase in temperature.


Sitting on the stage with Sobel was Dustin Rubenstein, a self-proclaimed “behavioral ecologist” (? was my first thought), who said, We can use images to capture individual zebras—I think that was the first species because they have almost a barcode, like a fingerprint—and you can make really good population projections and follow those animals and see where they go, so to see what happens during droughts or periods of land use change ….” You followin’ this?


I think I get it. If you know how an individual zebra, errrr, person behaves, you can extrapolate how a population of zebras, errr, people will or might behave. Rubenstein (Is he a Jew at Columbia? Good for him. Good for Columbia, a seat of antisemitism. Maybe things aren’t as bad as…nah)—but in truth, I knew a Catholic priest named Father Goldberg, so, what’s in a name? as Juliet asks), as I was saying, Rubenstein goes on to say, “we can scale up from actual individual level variation and differences up to populations, up to ecosystems, and make much better projections of how organisms are going to respond to change.” That seems reasonable, but, I see two problems:


    1) We humans don’t always act in our self interest or even in the interest of our survival and
    2) The notion of a “crisis” isn’t a physical phenomenon.


Crisis is a human thing, a perception. One man’s crisis is another man’s transgenderism. That is, one country’s drought isn’t another country’s. Rain not falling on your umbrella is falling on someone else’s. Warmer temperatures might mean that farmers who plant hard red spring wheat might have to switch to planting hard red winter wheat. The timing of the harvest, not the quantity of wheat, might change. Crisis is a human thing. Crises are met with varying attitudes from indifference to panic. Want to tame the “climate crisis”?


Tame the people who have panicked over the past thirty years that the world is coming to an end because no matter what the people gathered at the last 29 conferences (COP 1-29) have said or proposed, they have no more control over climate change than the Vikings did as Greenland turned from warm to cooler temperatures and the Northern Hemisphere transitioned from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age.


Artificial Intelligence, even quantum AI, can run every simulation to arrive at a reasonable and practical solution, but as I have written before, some would-be Rodion Raskolnikov will screw things up simply because he believes he can. (Think of those who attack Tesla dealerships and vandalize owners’ Teslas to achieve—what? Didn't some of those Tesla owners buy their cars to save the planet? Aren't they being punished for their altruistic purchases?) You want a cooler world? Someone else wants a warmer world—thus all those old snowbirds living at The Villages in Florida. You want a carbon-free energy system? Someone else wants cheap energy derived from fossil fuels. Someone who owns millions of tons of coal wants to profit from that resource. Some country called China or India will buy and burn.


That $400 Million


I might be wrong in assuming that you and I paid for the symposium on taming the climate change crisis. But if we did pay with federally distributed taxes, what, Buckaroo, did we get for our bucks?



*News from the Columbia climate School: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2025/03/11/ai-climate-crisis-event/

Frankly, reader, I never knew there was a job for “futurist.” Sure, I knew that there were many secular prophets, prophecies, and “books of revelation,” but “futurism? Making money for suggesting possibilities?

​Suggesting probabilities makes sense because those are near term. But yes, there are actually people who make money “researching” the future. Is this the epitome of modern paradoxes? After all, the suffix re means “back” or “again.” How does one research that which has not happened? Would-be Nostradamuses take note. There’s a job for you in some university like Cambridge, the ivory tower that houses Richard Watson, a “futurist.”


The Complexity in Futurism Stems from the Complexity in Presentism


It’s intellectually dangerous to make predictions that are supposed to reach their fulfillment within a human lifetime. “Hey, didn’t you say we would all live in a single building in Dubai by now?” “Didn’t you predict that everyone would be dressed in exoskeletons to increase human strength ant-like? And didn’t you say we would see people living on Mars and in other dangerous places like American inner cities? What happened to those predictions?”


Same could be said in retrospect for Al Gore’s dire predictions about rising seas, dying polar bears, and unending droughts that have been inconveniently interrupted by atmospheric rivers. (Did you know there’s more water in Earth’s air than that contained in America’s rivers? Yep,  3.75 million-billion gallons—3.75 X 10^15 compared to 10^14 gallons. Never shy away from trivia, but don’t become a Cliff Claven, the Cheers character played by John Dezso Ratzenberger)


Anyway, Al Gore’s apocalypse did not occur as he predicted. Eustatic changes (sea level) have been millimeter size if accurately measured; most polar bear groups are flourishing, and recent snowfall and rains in California have inundated the droughty conditions that have occurred on and off in the American Southwest for centuries and even millennia. (Note that where cold ocean currents run off the western sides of continents, semiarid conditions prevail and that where mountains interrupt prevailing winds, deserts lie on their lee sides—the Mojave, Death Valley)


Gore and other climate alarmists made the mistake of predicting events that would occur in the lifetimes of the living. The mantra “only 8 to 12 years left because of climate change” intoned by people like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez  in 2019 puts the credibility of people in jeopardy. Let’s see, 2025 minus 2019…Holy Heat Wave! You realize you have only a half dozen years to put your affairs in order! (But then, in order for what or whom if everything will end? “Dear Children, I’d leave you stuff, but you won’t be around to enjoy it”)


So, there’s a social danger in predicting: History will scoff at failed prophets who said the world would end. I think of Harold Camping, the guy who had to revise his end of the world predictions more than once, his last big prediction being October, 2011. Camping had his own end of the world in 2013) Skirting social jeopardy, Watson, that Cambridge futurist I mentioned above, has laid out a “risk radar” and an “extinction timeline” that identify possibilities, such as those associated with current trends. He has also made an intricate mind map labeled “Mega Trends and Technologies 2017-2050: A Mind Map to
Stimulate Discussion about Current Events and Possible Trajectories.” *


Watson’s complex”Mega Trends” mind map has 16 categories of trends: Society, Work, Economy, Money, Food, Technology, Retail, Environment, Media, Transport, Politics, Energy, Education, Health, Security, and Values. You can peruse the map on your own (see link below), but I’ll point to some predictions here. In the last stages of development under “Work” is “First person fired by an algorithm.” In the category of “Politics” is “Open borders.” (Didn’t western countries just have those?) In “Education” the last stage is “Gamification.” (Hasn’t that happened already with no improvement in learning regardless of the number and types of games employed in classrooms and online courses?)


Your Predictions?


We plan; we adapt; we make new plans. Look at the old Soviet Union. The Soviets generated new five-year plans every three or four years.


Sometimes, we just wait for things to happen. Often we need to radically change plans because of new opportunities or roadblocks. On my car’s navigation screen the other day, this message popped up: “Emergency vehicle ahead.” Nope, I never encountered it. On a trip along I-95, I received the navigation warning “Accident ahead, take detour, the nav system directing me to some side roads. The accident? Never saw it as I traveled parallel to I-95. Went out of my way for nothing.


Life’s like that. Think of all those billions spent on climate change. Think of all those anxiety-driven people worried about climate change. They are half way to climate doom if they believe the alarmists’ mantra of 2019. And when they get to 2031 to find the world is pretty much as it has been for the last ten thousand years of Interglacial Period, then what? Still commit to spending a trillion or more dollars to fight climate change? Still blame climate change for that occasional category V hurricane? Still blame climate change for migration, forest fires, cold weather, warm weather, tornadoes, dengue fever, wars, droughts and floods, crime, plagues, animal extinction, plastic pollution, coral demise and reef proliferation…


It’s difficult enough for us to predict our own futures. As Robert Burns wrote in his poem “To a Mouse” and William Faulkner adopted for Of Mice and Men :


In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
          Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
          For promis’d joy!


Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
          On prospects drear!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,
          I guess an’ fear!


Thus, each of us can look back to see foiled plans. And each of us can hope without certainty for an ideal future now made even more uncertain by Artificial Intelligence that can enhance or disrupt our “best laid schemes.”


*University of Cambridge website. “This Cambridge Life” page: The futurist who'd like the future to slow down - just a …; Mega Trends and Technologies 2017-2050 - Infographics Archive ; https://www.infographicportal.com/risk-radar-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/

Let’s start with an American governor and recent VP candidate Tim Walz. At a recent gathering, he said, "Some of you know this. On the iPhone, they’ve got that little stock app. I added Tesla to it to give me a little boost during the day — $225 and dropping, And if you own one, we’re not blaming you. You can take dental floss and pull the Tesla thing off.” (Crowd: Yuk, Yuk, Yuk) The former football coach, caught criticizing an American company whose auto workers make an American car, danced back his comment, probably because of criticism, saying, "I was making a joke. These people have no sense of humor. They are the most literal people.” *


Really, “These people”? This from a member of the intolerant Left whose sense of humor is relegated to making fun of conservatives to the exclusion of Democrats. This from someone whose party cancels anyone who makes a remark about the Left.   


Walz didn’t stop with his hatred (envy?) of Tesla, a company whose stock downfall he seemed to relish while his own state’s employees’ pension fund owns 1.6 million Tesla shares. He added the typical Democrat mantra: If I were rich, I would…What, Tim? Feed the hungry, Tim? Buy everyone a house? Maybe as car? (But not a Tesla) Walz said, "Maybe it's just me. If I'm the richest man in the world, I'm like out on the streets handing out money. It'd be fun as hell just to help people out. Go help people out. Not this guy.” Seems Tim never learned that apothegm that about giving a man a fish or teaching a man to fish.


Walz seems to be unaware that since Johnson’s Great Society, the government has spent more than a trillion dollars in handouts without much effect. But Tim would—if he were rich—give away cash. Noble. Liberal. Democrat. Especially with someone else’s money.


It’s an argument my late dear Democrat dad used to make. Rich people have everything. The implication is that they should share their wealth. An argument that my late dear African-American and successful brother-in-law countered with, “When is the last time a poor man wrote you a check?” His point? Yes, the rich are sometimes inordinately wealthy, but many of them took risks, built businesses, and hired employees, providing them with livelihoods sufficient for them to live a Middle Class life, all being capable of feeding, clothing, and housing their families and sending children off to college. Well, maybe not to the extent of Tim Walz  who reportedly withdrew $135,000 from a pension fund to send his daughter to college. That’s a sizable junk of change to liquidate. Anyway, with my brother-in-law, I would say to my dad, “Wealth is relative. You don’t live in a mansion, but you do own a house, car, and have money for vacations. You are richer than most of the world’s population. Isn’t it possible that someone out there, seeing what you have, envies your wealth?” Of course, the argument fell on deaf (literally because he needed hearing aids) ears. He, bless his soul, hated Republicans and the business owners he said made up their base.


Walz’s audience laughed when he joked about Tesla’s falling stock. I would hazard that many of them or members of their families have pensions tied to Tesla and other large companies. And that makes me wonder whether the Democrat base, so hung up on hating the evil wealthy, has an inordinate number of fools, hypocrites, and dunces. That’s harsh, I know, and no doubt could be directed toward members of the Republican Party, also. But certain realities weigh heavily on Democrat values and policies. Apparently, it is all right for billionaires to support Democrats and for the disparity in wealth to have increased during the Biden years, but not okay for billionaires to support Republicans. It is all right for people to burn someone else’s property, to deface a dealership, and to smash someone’s car. Funny, right? Good humor for a late night talk show host like Jimmy Kimmel.


I didn’t want to write this blog. I suppose I allowed emotion to govern. In doing so, I reduced myself to the level of Tim Walz and others in his Party who have expressed joy in others’ downturns. But the hypocrisy on the left keeps inserting itself into the daily news that I foolishly peruse.


Is there a way to judge evenly the actions and value of Right and Left? The Left can’t stop bringing up the January 6 mob action. I’ll admit it was a mob, and like all mobs, it ran out of control. But what does the Left support? Riots and looting? Vandalism and support for murderers and torturers? Antisemitism? The Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua? Open borders and the free flow of fentanyl? Government waste and fraud? Allowing terrorists to threaten world shipping? A corrupt FBI and Justice Department that went after parents at school board meetings, Catholics who attended latin Masses, and pro-lifers who sang on sidewalks?


Yuk it up, Tim. And get that audience to hate even when their hatred is aimed at their own retirement funds. You’re a liberal, so whatever you do must of its very nature be better and smarter than what anyone on the Right does.    



*https://www.foxnews.com/politics/tim-walz-cheers-tesla-stock-tumble-mn-state-employees-pension-owns-over-1m-shares

"MANIC MICKEY: Urgent tourist warning as pics show Mickey Mouse pose with beaming fans--moments before launching horror knife rampage"--The Sun, Mar 20, 2025 

The incident occurred in Naples, Italy.
​Coffee shop in Naples: Napoletano (N) and Il tourista (T)

N: "Ti piace Napoli?” (How are you enjoying Naples?)


T: Traffic is challenging, but I love the city and people. And the Volcano! Wow! So close I wonder what might happen if it ever erupted.


N: In realtà… (Actually…)


T: I mean, look, it’s really close to the city.


N: Hai visitato le rovine? Sei stato a Pompei? (Have you seen the ruins? Pompei?)

​T: No, not yet. But I did see Mickey Mouse on the street. Got a picture with him. Didn’t cost much. I have one with me and Mickey in Disney World. I didn’t know Italians knew…


N: Lo sai che Topolino ha minacciato dei turisti con un coltello? (You know that Mickey Mouse threatened tourists with a knife.)


T: No, you mean…


N: Proprio come negli Stati Uniti, non si può mai dare nulla per scontato quando si è per strada in una grande città. Truffatori e persone pericolose sono ovunque, pronti ad approfittarsi degli innocenti. (Just like in the USA you can never assume anything when you are on the streets of a big city. Grifters and dangerous people are everywhere ready to prey on the innocent)


T: But street actors and impersonators are everywhere, Vegas, New Orleans…


N: Il nostro Topolino sembra essere un pericolo. Più pericoloso del Vesuvio. (Our Mickey Mouse seems to be a danger. More dangerous than Vesuvius)


T: You mean while I was getting a photo with Mickey Mouse with the volcano in the background, he could have stabbed me?


N: Si. (Yes)


T: Have they caught him?


N: Hanno la sua descrizione. Orecchie grandi su una testa da topo fuori misura. Niente coda. È stato visto l'ultima volta mentre correva dentro un buco tra le rovine (They have his description. Big ears on an oversize mouse head. No tail. Last seen running into a hole in the ruins)


T: Certainly, the police will catch him.


N: Forse. Non avete anche voi molti criminali che girano liberamente per le strade di New York? Maybe. (Don’t you have many criminals walking freely on the streets of NYC?)


T: Yes. We do. But we catch them first, and then allow them back on the street.


N: Niente carcere a lungo? (No long jail sentence?)


T: No, not even for repeat offenders.
___


Two comments.


First, as many Lifetime dramas reveal, appearances often mask evil (No, I don’t watch them from start to finish, but while she works in the kitchen, my lovely spouse sometimes turns Lifetime on rather than see depressing news stories endlessly repeated. I guess fictional stories of evil are more palatable than real stories) In a typical daytime drama, some “nice” guy or babysitter gloms onto an innocent person who discovers by the end of the movie that the appearance hides a monster—whom the innocent person ultimately kills during a struggle with a knife.  It’s a lesson about masks we try to pass onto younger generations with little effect. Even we adults are often fooled, as Bernie Madoff proved.


Second, we struggle with the limitations we impose on society. How much freedom do we tolerate? The question becomes a problem when our safety is a concern. Obviously, the politicians in New York whose policies allowed judges to release repeat offenders, have at least indirectly been complicit in ensuing victimization. So, enforcement is an issue, but usually only an issue for those additional victims of crime, victims that might have been safe with a perpetrator behind bars. The politicians and judges not personally affected go on their merry ways steeped in impractical ideologies. The judges who want to prevent the removal of dangerous criminal aliens from American soil fall into this category. They wold not, I’m sure, hold the same position if their wives and daughters were attacked by a Venezuelan gang.


I guess I have a third comment. The TDS media seem not to understand the dangers imposed on Americans by illegal alien criminals. They see characters dressed as an innocent Mickey Mouse. Those who understand human nature know the costume can hide a monster. I am not calling for pessimism, rather for practicality. Keep your head on a swivel.