Is there any contemporary topic that doesn’t incite frenzy?


If there is, it rests in quiet give-and-take civility.


I tried to think of topics that did not engender frenzy. “Can’t be rights of any sort,” I thought. “Can’t be any social issue; can’t be any technological issue; can’t be any environmental issue.” Holy Cow! We’re steeped in frenzy because there are no issues that have calm supporters involved either directly or indirectly to exude civility.


And I tried to imagine a world without frenzy. Drew a blank there. Everywhere my mind went, it saw frenzy in some degree of intensity. Politics? Legislation? Rules for or against a right? You can complete the list—if it is, in fact, possible to reach a finite number of topics. But the topics that cause frenzy are infinite like fractions: Between any two whole numbers lie a half, a quarter, an eighth, a sixteenth, a thrity-second, a sixty-fourth, a one-twenty-eighth, a two-fifty-sixth, and so on in one of Gregor Cantor’s infinities. If the “main issue” isn’t the issue, then some sub-issue is the issue. Clean air seems like a reasonable goal, but then someone says clean air is free of all carcinogens. Then someone introduces the notion of carbon free air as a goal, and that implies no anthropogenic carbon which further implies “green energy” that means eliminating everything from asphalt roads to car tires to cars to the freedom to travel or air condition or cut grass or grow food. Somewhere “out there” is a frenetic mind beating a very loud drum in its interior, the manifestation of which lies in social media and occasional riots, in frenetic pundits and in rabid fandom or idol worship.


It occurred to me that one reason for frenzy is a lack of definition and a dearth of specifics. Most frenzy derives from generalities that support personal or group identities. The frenzy is the animal backed into a corner by a perceived threat. Initial defense turns to wild offense. The turning reveals a mind incapable of finding options. The frenzied mind feels the adjacent walls but fails to see the open space before it. Two walls make an inescapable box for such a mind.


Of course, as finite beings, we find finding a way out difficult. We don’t have time to wait for prolonged rational exchanges among opponents. We take the short cut; we opt for frenzy.


“But that’s other people,” you argue. “Not I.”


Then you appear to be a model of reason, a person who has the patience to seek details both about the subject at hand and about the opponent who proclaims a different position from yours. For that, I praise you.


The “finite” condition that drives frenzy is, however, hard for most people to circumnavigate. Innately impatient, most of us want resolution, want action, now. We know the clock is running. Waiting for the next generation to solve a perceived problem is not an option. It seems that we live backed into corners blinded by frenzy that makes us incapable of seeing any open space.

The Athenian Senate invites Socrates to defend his position. This elenchus ensues.


Senator: We accuse you of racism and every social phobia. You undermine the agenda of the people.


Socrates: And why is that?


Senator: Well, for one thing, you won’t drink the wine that Anheuserias is making because each boukáli [μπουκάλι] is shaped like Hermaphrodite. Furthermore, the Senate charges you with preaching falsity on the Acropolis.


Socrates: What falsity.


Senator: The complete denial of protandry and protogyny.


Socrates: I don’t believe I have denied such processes, and I have asked no one to stop drinking Anheuserias’ wine. He is free to make wine and bottle wine as he sees fit. His consumers are free to drink his wine or some other Athenians’ wines.


Senator: We have witnesses who have heard you say that Anheurserias made a very big miscalculation by shaping its bottles like Mulvaneous.


Socrates: Of that I am guilty.


Senator: And for that we condemn you as anti…


Socrates: Anti what?


Senator: Well, you go against the will of the people. You go against an accepted culture. You go against a whole class of humans, the hermaphrodites and those who have protandry and protogyny.


Socrates: I have never condemned, defamed, or otherwise complained about any natural protandry or protogyny. I have simply questioned artificial protandry and protogyny, especially when the people involved are too inexperienced to know the ramifications of the procedures.


Senator: But your statements about Anheurserias’ wine and the shape of bottles…


Socrates: What has been the result?


Senator: Of…


Socrates: I see the stalls of the sellers in the streets. They no longer carry Anheuserias’ wines. It is they, not I, who have acted against Anheurserias. And for that only Anheurserias has him-herself to blame. Did he not know that Athenians drank his wine because they simply liked to open a bottle and drink for their personal pleasure? Did he not know that in drinking, his customers wanted to think what they wanted to think about? But then Anheurserias decided to make his customers think about what he wanted them to think. He wanted to force an association with Mulvaneous who might be a popular character in some amphitheaters, where wearing the mask and performing as Mulvaneous believes performances should proceed occur. But even Aristophanes has failed to incorporate the character into his plays, even though Aristophanes has parodied me. Bold Aristophanes, willing to parody me, a philosopher, but unwilling to parody Mulvaneous or Anheurserias. is Aristophanes incapable of writing humor when someone like Mulvaneous is involved? Is the playwright afraid of being called before this illustrious body to be condemned by it for writing a parody of Mulvaneous? Why hasn’t the Senate called in Aristophanes for being anti-philosopher? Is it because I am not a member of a declared protected group? And why aren't philosophers members of a protected group? Their only purpose is to seek truth and understanding. Is it because the Senate has selective outrage driven by the fashionable topic that, in turn, is driven by the loudest voices? Has Mulvaneous some special influence over the Senate?

Senator: There’s no denying that you are anti-protandry and anti protogyny.


Socrates: No, there is. I oppose forced protandry and protogyny. I have seen natural protandry and protogyny. Clownfish are sequential hermaphrodites. So are the Asian Sheepshead Wrasse, the Mangrove Rivals, the Black Sea Bass, the Broad-Barred Goby, and for Zeus’ sake, even the strangely named Damselfish which can engage in filial cannibalism. Should I therefore, according to your ideas, favor cannibalism because a sequential hermaphrodite species is cannibalistic? Do I need to accept its ways? Have I no choice in my own preferences?


Senator: Uh…


Socrates: And so the former drinkers of Anheurserias’ wine also have preferences, none of them influenced by me. They do not drink wine because of a social mandate, just as they did not wear garlic when the great plague hit Athens during the recent war with Sparta. They do what they do because they have a choice to do what they do, and they do not want a private entity like Anheurserias Wine Company, as large as that company is, to dictate what they think. Thus, I did say that Anheurserias made a mistake in shaping bottles like Mulvaneous. I will not deny that, but it is a matter of common sense that is demonstrable by the decline in Anheurserias' sales. Isn't that a demonstration of the truth in my statement?


Senator: Nevertheless, it is the opinion of this body that you are condemned to death. You have a choice of poison to drink.


Socrates: Okay. I’ll drink hemlock, but not mixed in a glass of Anheurserias’ wine.

At the store, clerk and customer talk:


Clerk: That’ll be $27.98.


Cust: Here are thirty.


Clerk: I can’t make change for that.


Cust: Why not?


Clerk: Well, for one thing, that’s Monopoly money. It’s not real.


Cust: Of course it is, why, I just bought Boardwalk with it.


Clerk: But that’s in a game. The money works there.


Cust: And it should work here.


Clerk: No, we have an official currency in this country. And it’s not game money.


Cust: And just what would that currency be if not Monopoly money?


Clerk: We’ve switched to Yuans and Euros to satisfy the Chinese, Brazilians, and the French.


Cust: What?!!!!


Clerk: Yes, just happened recently. I know. Tough to learn a new currency and to figure the exchange rate, but other countries have done it in the past, so why not the USA? Think of the Pound and the Deutsche Mark.


Cust: But we have a monopoly. Shouldn’t our Monopoly money be universal?


Clerk: We did have a monopoly. Gave it away over the years to China. “Made in China”; see, it’s right there on the bottom of the things you bought. Go ahead. Go through the entire store. Find something that America has a monopoly on.


Cust: Well, I didn’t…


Clerk: Yep. You’re Monopoly money isn’t the favored currency anymore. What did you think would happen when you taxed businesses out of the country for decades and decades?


Cust: But businesses should pay their fair share.


Clerk: Of what? People go into business to make wealth. Great wealth comes from monopoly. And wealth systems have changed throughout history. Think not? Roman coins are in museums. By convention, we accept paper money, but that’s by convention. Even some Caribbean island countries are thinking of going off the dollar. They can read the “Made in China” on the bottom of the goods they import. Geez, Americans don’t even want to sell their own oil, coal, and natural gas. How can a country that has a potential monopoly on fossil fuels not bother to sell them? We could flood the market. We could monopolize the fossil fuel industry; we have about a century’s worth of natural gas in addition to all that oil and coal. *


Cust: What am I going to do with this Monopoly money?

Clerk: Put it away in the Monopoly box. The game’s missing too many pieces after years of disuse. Do you even have all those little houses and hotels? Do you have all the cards? What do you do, take it out every long once in awhile to play for an hour’s diversion? Has anyone ever finished a complete Monopoly game? I know that after someone takes Boardwalk and Park Place, I’m leaving the game, and right now it seems that China has both properties and is acquiring more.


Cust: I guess I hadn’t thought of that. Do you take credit?


Clerk: Who issued the card?


Cust: Uh…I guess I hadn’t noticed all these Chinese characters in the fine print on the back of the card. Do you take gold? I have this filling…




*Total potential recoverable reserves of natural gas equal more than 2,000 trillion cubic feet. Current recoverable reserves equal 473.3 trillion cubic feet. The country has the world’s largest coal reserves at 250 billion tonnes (long tons), or just under a quarter of the world’s total reserves. Right now, the US crude oil reserves equal 44.4 billion barrels.

One of the fundamental problems that scientists face in tracing the origin of life is encapsulation. As a self-conscious bag of water, organic molecules, minerals, and symbiotic life-forms like bacteria, you certainly recognize the importance of a skin that holds all of your physical components together, including those just mentioned unicellular hitchhikers. Gee, even a pin-prick that breaks your encapsulation is dangerous; we can’t let what’s inside randomly flow outside. And we take every precaution, save for intentional body piercing, to keep that outer layer intact.


In short, a membrane that encloses organic molecules is essential to life as we know it.


It seems that the materials for life, famously described in Carl Sagan’s oft-repeated phrase “star stuff,” have from early on in the universe lain all about awaiting (teleologically speaking) encapsulation: Organic molecules are ubiquitous. They appear in carbonaceous chondrites—carbon-containing meteorites that have collided with Earth—and they lie in interstellar clouds as far away as TMC-1 at a distance of 400 light-years and even farther in a distant quasar at 11 billion light-years. * As of this writing, however and regardless of how abundant that “stuff” is, it is apparently encapsulated in only one isolated place: Earth. All those abundant organic molecules floating around “out there” are, as far as we can tell, un-encapsulated and not even close to being self-conscious, self-replicating self-protecting beings. But we’re still looking optimistically because we find hard to believe the notion that in the abundance of organic molecules life formed in only one place.   


How the stuff of life—those organic molecules and amino acids—became encapsulated has been the driver of many experiments, starting with the famous 1952 Miller-Urey trials that involved the constituents of the presumed early-Earth atmosphere. In that experiment the scientists subjected methane, water vapor, ammonia, and molecular hydrogen to electrical sparks (a source of energy). Many such experiments have demonstrated that the organic constituents of life do form abiotically, but they have not uncovered a definitive mechanism for their encapsulation that can be tagged with a “Eureka moment.” That failure to artificially encapsulate in the lab (some attempts have been marginally successful **) a self-replicating life-form in the manner that seems some 3.8 billion years ago—give or take a week—to have naturally led to YOU is a good argument for how special you are—even though you might have had self doubts during your teen years that your personal encapsulation was special as you fretted over a blemish on your encapsulating surface.


As commonsense tells us, having a protective skin isn’t just necessary for keeping things in. It’s essential to keep unwanted things out, especially in a universe of dangerous and even lethal penetrators, such as viruses, bacteria, and bullets. Unfortunately, our protective layer isn’t a foolproof guarantee against a breach. The assault on skin has a counterpart in the assault on Self. As a conscious aggregation of star stuff, you have more than your physical components to guard. Like the body, your  Self is frequently under attack by non-material “penetrators” that can be as pernicious as viruses, bacteria, and bullets. The weapons of society, such as ostracism, defamation, and insult mark the current Age of Hate and Anger, an age of vicious attacks from both known and unknown agents. Whereas the Self has always had to defend against gossip and defamation from nearby “penetrators,” it now has to defend against attacks from afar that arrive unexpectedly like an incoming cyber-asteroid. The “skin” of the Self is under almost constant siege.


There is an obvious way to keep such penetrators outside the encapsulated Self. Isolation. No interaction with any being outside the Self. But in a world of about eight billion other bags of organics and inorganics driven by necessary interactions, total isolation is difficult to achieve. One can stay off social media, but not off going into public at some time. Clouds of organics intent on malice enshroud much of the planet and threaten the protective skin of every Self. Interactions with those who would penetrate that skin are ultimately unavoidable. Just as bumping into another enclosed body can bruise the skin, so bumping into another Self can bruise the Ego so deeply that it bruises the Id, where like mold in an old basement the bruise can turn into a growing obsession. Grudges or insecurity result. Being thin-skinned is hazardous. If one penetrator pricks the thin-skinned Self, that Self weakens. Yet, although Self might be porous, it doesn’t have to be permeable to all penetrators.


There is no single defense mechanism against a universe of potential penetrators. That’s the first lesson a Self needs to consider. The second lesson is that the Self doesn’t need to constantly tend to its walls of defense. A tiny pinprick here or there isn’t necessarily a wide breach. That which lies on the inside can coagulate over the wound until time heals the membrane. Every Self already has the encapsulated ability for automatic healing.     


If isolation is impossible on a world filled with other encapsulated organics that inevitably run into one another or aim to pierce Self’s secure membrane, then what can the individual encapsulated organic do for protection?


Consider:


Maybe some simple advice applies. We wash off that which can harm us. That which comprises most of what we are—water—is an actual external protectant against what we are not. When attacks from penetrators that we cannot ward off occur to our secure Self, we need a cleansing as well as a healing. An Ego so bruised that the wound runs as deep as the Id requires some aid, not a simple bandage of trendy self-awareness fad. That aid could be daily meditation. It could be a wider perspective. The teen sees only the pimple, the adult sees the entire face and its expression.


Getting a perspective on the Self’s position in the Cosmos is an effective defense. Perspective provides an undeniable protection against a world of nonmaterial penetrators. It can start with a simple recognition: Organics are ubiquitous in the Cosmos; encapsulated conscious organics are ubiquitous on Earth. Those organics “out there” simply reveal that the “stuff” of life is inescapably present and part of “what is.” Those encapsulated organics nearby are inescapably present and part of “what is” here. Whereas the Self seeks to encapsulate, it is, in fact, a rather porous entity and at least partially permeable. But it doesn’t have to be permeable to all attacks. It can choose to ward off the pin pricks and backstabs by focusing on what’s inside in the context of all that is outside.


As usual, I give you this point of departure without having the wisdom to give you more. May your encapsulating membrane protect you against all would-be penetrators.    


*https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspas.2022.787567/full Michel Guélin and Jose Cernicharo (2022) Organic Molecules in Interstellar Space: Latest Advances


**Supramolecular chemists have dealt with the issue of molecular self-assembly and molecular folding. Biochemists have also worked on encapsulating organic molecules. The list of publications both directly and indirectly relevant to the subject of encapsulation is gigantic. If you want to pursue the subject, you could find many starting points. The Miller-Urey experiment has been altered and repeated since the 1950s but even earlier Haldane and Oparin suggested in the 1920s that UV light could have acted as an energy source for the encapsulation. The work on encapsulation continues in many directions, including Dappe’s “Encapsulation of organic molecules in carbon nanotubes: role of the van der Waals interactions.” J Phys D Appl Phys 2014;47:083001.

Late Medieval Merchant: Vfares! Vfares! Come buy my Vfares.
Gutenberg: [walking by] What are you selling?
Medieval Merchant: Lots of stuff. Imports, mostly. Here are the finest silks from China, imported over the Silk Road. Here are the finest spices, also imported over the Silk Road. And here are little letters carved in fvood. Look, you can use them to make an impression over and over again. They call it fvoodblock printing. Seems they’ve been using it for generations. It’s going to revolutionize the vfay veee communicate.
Gutenberg: Hmnnn. Let me see that letter. Hmnnn. You know, I think I’ll take it. vfrap it up for me. How much?
Medieval Merchant: Five guilders.
Gutenberg: No, I want to pay double that; I’ll give you 10 guilders.
Medieval Merchant: All right by me. Ten it is. Vfill that be cash?
Gutenberg: [turning to call over his friends] Hey, Hans Riffe, Andreas Dritzehn, and Andreas Heilmann, look at this. You guys have any loose guilders on you? I’m short, and I vfant to buy this fvooden thing.
Hans Riffe, Andreas Dritzehn, and Andreas Heilmann: Vfhat is it?
Gutenberg: I think it’s something that can bring in a profit. I haff an idea.
Hans Riffe, Andreas Dritzehn, and Andreas Heilmann: [discussing and then saying] Veee can come up with six among us.
Gutenberg: Great. [turning to merchant] Here’s your ten.
Hans Riffe, Andreas Dritzehn, and Andreas Heilmann: [walking away with Gutenberg after the purchase] Why vassss that merchant guy so happy?
Gutenberg: No idea. I think because he didn’t know vfhat he had. Can you imagine? He vfanted five guilders, but I talked him into selling it for ten.
Andreas Dritzehn: Vfhat!? You borrowed money from us because you paid more for a piece of fvood than the asking price? A piece of fvood. Haven’t you looked around? Veee have trees in Europe. Look at the trees. Veee have countless trees. Maybe more than veee can ever use if all veee want is blocks of fvood.
Gutenberg: But this came from a distant land. I know it will become useful with a little ingenuity.
Hans Riffe, Andreas Dritzehn, and Andreas Heilmann: I think veee need some sort of agreement. If you’re going to make money from our investment, veee vfant in on it.
Gutenberg: Okay. But let me fvork on this thing for awhile. I’ll get back to you.
Hans Riffe: [departing their friend] Vfhat do you think he’s up to? Overpaying for a piece of fvood just because it comes from a foreign land! Vfhat’s wrong with us for lending him the guilders?
Gutenberg: [thinking--play thinking music here: “I’m going to need more loans. I want to get more of these Chinese fvooden blocks. I have an idea I can put them in some kind of machine, dip them in ink, and press them on a piece of vellum”] Can you get me more of these?
Medieval Merchant: [thinking--play thinking music here: “I’ve found my mark. I’m going to make a fortune off this guy. Doesn’t he realize there’s fvood all around us. Heck, I’ll just take my shop’s post and lintels, cut them into blocks, and carve some letters in them. I’ll tell him that they came over the Silk Road or from Byzantium”] Sure, I can order more. Got a trader supposed to come in this month. He’ll probably have loads of them. [thinking--play thinking music here: “What a sucker”]
Gutenberg: Great. I’d use the local trees, but I vfant to save them. No sense in using the fvood growing around me vfhen I can pay more for foreign fvood. I’ll save Europe from deforestation. And the letters, vfell they come from China. Vfhat could go wrong?
Medieval Merchant: [thinking--play thinking music here: “Ifff this guy’s idea becomes popular, I fvill make a fortune; but doesn’t he realize that China fvill cut down its forests?”] Okay, see you next month.
Gutenberg: [proud of himself--play thinking music here: “I’m going to safe the planet and give the vforld a new vaay to communicate”] And remember, charge vfhatever you like. I’m not going to cut down any local forests.
Medieval Merchant: [thinking--play thinking music here: “Now all I need to do is to tell him the Chinese have cut down on making fvooden blocks, so there's a shortage, or that there's a holdup somewhere along the Silk Road with camels backed up for miles, and that the holdup is what is driving up the price"]




Casting Director Interview:


Reporter: What led you to choose Joe Biden as the lead for Gutenberg?
Casting Director: His credentials.
Reporter: Which are?
Casting Director: His diverse background, including his undergraduate degree in history and political science.
Reporter: So?
Casting Director: No, I needed little more than that. He’s bright. Told me he graduated in the top of his class.
Reporter: You know that’s been debunked.
Casting Director: Well, he used to drive a big rig.
Reporter: You know it was a school bus.
Casting Director: But he has three undergraduate degrees.
Reporter: No, just a double major from Delaware.
Casting Director: He went to law school on a scholarship.
Reporter: Actually, assistance based on financial need.
Casting Director: Graduated at the top of his law class.
Reporter: Not even in the top half. Number 76 out of 85 law students.
Casting Director: But look at his creative work, his speeches and his ability to clearly articulate ideas.
Reporter: Plagiarized some of his speeches. Words that came from the Kennedys, for example. Expressions from other politicians. Articulate? You mean that he was able to define America in one word: asnafuimnaffutifut-boo
Casting Director: His knowledge of foreign trade.
Reporter: You mean because he voted for NAFTA and supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership?
Casting Director: His knowledge about economics of global warming.
Reporter: You mean his making an energy independent country into one dependent on foreign sources of oil on the basis of advisors like John Kerry and maybe teen Greta Thunberg? You mean shutting down coal, oil, and natural gas while China, India, and other countries consume more? You mean by buying Russian, Venezuelan, and Saudi oil? You mean ensuring energy shortages on the basis of a hysteria over existential threats from a rise in temperature that very well could be caused by natural processes? You mean because he doesn’t understand the difference between causation and correlation or the history of Earth’s temperatures that have declined since the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum and that have risen and fallen with every glacial and interglacial epoch? Or do you mean that in Earth's history carbon dioxide is at one of its lowest levels and that its increase might mean a greener planet? 
Casting Director: Okay, frankly, I cast him in the lead because I got a little something from a Russian oligarch’s wife.

Scene: Architects’ offices in Kabul and Washington linked on Zoom call


Construction company CEO: Now we have to face legal action because you said the building was ready for occupancy.
Irresponsible project manager: It was. Or, at least, most of it was.
Construction company CEO: And what part of the construction wasn’t ready?
Irresponsible project manager: We hadn’t finished with the effluent systems.
Construction company CEO: You mean the sewage lines?
Irresponsible project manager: Uh…yes.
Construction company CEO: Have you seen the video that the plaintiffs took, sewage running through the lower floors, an old lady slipping and falling, cars ruined in the basement garage, much of our equipment lost, the elevator…Hell, we lost some of our construction crew. What am I supposed to say to their families? The building virtually burst, partially collapsed; we’ll probably never be able to repair it, and we are liable for any reconstruction and damage to neighboring buildings.
Irresponsible project manager: Well, we finished most of the construction. Not getting the sewage out was just an oversight.
Construction company CEO: On whose part?
Irresponsible project manager: Remember that you hired me after the contract had been signed and the construction had begun.
Construction company CEO: But you never said we needed an extension which any sensible person would have mentioned. Did you do any actual assessing? The contract allows for force majeure changes. Surely, you were aware that circumstances dictated a more thorough review of the construction’s progress and the possibility that the nearby sudden rise in crime had made immediate occupancy untenable for most, if not all, the residents. We promised them luxury accommodations in a safe building. That’s what a good manager does, assesses the actual circumstances. Yes, the company would have lost some money by prolonging the job, but now we’re in jeopardy of losing not only more money than we would have lost, but also of losing our reputation with the tenants who bought the condos and the townspeople who looked to the new construction with expectations of a center for the neighborhood’s revitalization, one that would bring in investors, new schools, shops…
Irresponsible project manager: My crew did the best it could. For the most part we handled the situation. You should be proud of the job we…
Construction company CEO: Handled? I’ll ask you again, have you seen the videos?
Irresponsible project manager: Under the circumstances, I think we did the best job we could do.
Construction company CEO: We’re going to be paying for your rush to completion for years to come. I don’t know whether the company can survive. I should fire you now.
Irresponsible project manager: But you should be proud of the work I did and the way I got the job done on time.
Construction company CEO: Proud? On time? Look at the reality. This was a disaster for the residents who thought the neighborhood was improving. You’re like the student who says, “But Teach, I got some of the answer right. Doesn’t that count? Shouldn’t I get an A for effort?”
[Irresponsible project manager turns and simply walks away under the direction of an aide]


Characters in this one-act play:


Construction company CEO is played by the American People
Irresponsible project (production) manager is underperformed by Joe Biden; understudy, also underperformed by Anthony Blinken
Crowd: Abdul, Manila, and Khadijah
People in architect’s office played by Lloyd Austin, Mark Milley, Afghani National security Advisor played by Hamdullah Mohib, Scott Miller * and **
Stuntmen and women: Falling to injury and death played by Ahmad, Sayed, Fatima, and Najibia.
Dead construction workers: played by actual US soldiers, now permanently on leave from life


Production:


Casting director: American electorate
Special effects run by people running alongside a military cargo plane
Camera operators: Anyone with a cell phone
Gaffer is Joe Biden
Boom operator/sound mixer: Abdul Rehman Al-Loghri an ISIS-K suicide bomber released from the Parwan prison at Bagram just days before the attack
Editors: Compliant left-leaning media
Scene location is Afghanistan’s Kabul Airport with alternate location at Bagram Airfield


*CNN report at https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/12/politics/austin-scott-miller-step-down-afghanistan/index.html


**NPR report at https://www.npr.org/2021/07/12/1015237287/top-u-s-commander-in-afghanistan-relinquished-post-scott-miller#:~:text=Gen.%20Scott%20Miller%20has%20served%20as%20America%27s%20top,Frank%20McKenzie%2C%20the%20head%20of%20U.S.%20Central%20Command

Let’s start with a bit of fashion news. Vogue will publish a photo spread of Stormy Daniels.


Have you noticed that the editors of Vogue somehow bypassed featuring the former model and now former First Lady Melanie Trump, save for the cover when she posed in her expensive ($100,000) wedding dress way back when…when Trump was a TV star and not a Republican candidate or President? Is my judgment way off, or is she not model material? “Sorry, babe, time to look for a real job, maybe something in the service industry.”


We all know that like fashion, beauty is a passing fancy. Chubby (Am I allowed to say that word?) women—scratch that; body-positive women—were en vogue when Peter Paul Rubens was looking around for models. But then, it was a time when plagues and food shortages made populations gaunt, slimness being a sign of sickness and infertility. Being body-positive was a sign of good health. Plumpiness was en vogue for that reason.


Fashion is a silly and fickle business as we all know. Here today, gone before midnight because a new view breaks with every dawn stitched across haute world. “You’re not wearing that, are you?” Or “Is THAT what you’re wearing?” Those are two questions no fashionable lady (Am I allowed to say that word?) wants to hear before making a public appearance. Dolts that men are, they ask, “Why can’t you wear the same dress you wore last year?” Every new party, every new event, requires a new dress, and not just a new dress, but a “fashionable dress,” one that bespeaks the times, from shoulder pads to bare shoulders, flared to straight, bare-back to bare—or almost bare—front.


As fickle as fashion, the editors at Vogue embrace another fashion: “We choose only models whose better side is the left.” In fact, ideology is virtually intubated into the bodies that grace the pages. Nothing looks good on a right arm, regardless of the arm, affixed to either a Rubens’ model or a former model associated with a conservative viewpoint.


Margaret Hungerford’s oft-repeated line, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” has been parodied in “Beauty is in the eye of the beer-holder” because alcohol clouds the beholding. But it isn’t just alcohol that does the clouding. It’s also ideology. Thus, a left-leaning woman (Am I allowed to say that word?) or one who is perceived to be left-leaning (like Melanie Trump in her pre-First Lady days) can grace the cover of a fashion magazine whereas a right-leaning woman can’t. And because ideological fashion, like haute couture, changes with peer pressure, Vogue, which is the model of fashion publications, keeps up with the ephemeral times. Call Vogue the ideological barometer that responds to the higher pressure of Left-leaning ideology. Want to know the dominant or apparently dominant ideology of a country? Check out the fashion pages in newspapers and magazines.


So, here we are in the spring of 2023, a time of violent tornadoes that alter lives, and Vogue has elected to run a spread on Stormy whose spread some destruction of her own across the political landscape. She’s a fashionable topic, but is so by virtue of being an anti-conservative topic, specifically by virtue of being an anti-Trump topic. The “model” for women (again, that word) is now an adult film star (sorry, actress), just as the temporary model for men was the convicted extortionist Michael Avenatti whose multiple appearances on a Left-leaning network made him fashionable in eyes that can behold beauty on the Left, but not on the Right.


These aren’t, however, strange times. Fashion always changes; ideology also changes with time. So, even though the ideology of the Left with its cancel culture appears to dominate the public consciousness at this moment, it will probably morph just as fashions change though there seems to be an inertia of thinking in the mainstream which currently a stream of consciousness with only one bank, the left one.


If Rubens were alive in the late twentieth century, he might have been on the lookout for the svelte; but as recent covers of many magazines attest, if he were alive in the twenty-first century, many of his models would look the same as they looked when he was painting Susanna and the Elders, Morning Toilet of Venus, Boreas Abducting Oreithyia, and The Three Graces. Plumpiness (Am I allowed to use that word?) was not en vogue in the century of Jane Fonda exercise tapes, nor was it en vogue at the beginning of this century. A law passed in France and now in effect attests to a change: France bans excessively thin models. The French fashion photographer now says, “Turn around; I need to see your bum, and, by the way, I also need by law to see your BMI?” The pendulum of fashion has swung. Rubens would be happy. Models don’t need to risk anorexia in France; but they do risk their livelihood when their ideology isn’t fashionable in America. And ideology is virtually all that matters.


The time when fashion magazines were fashion magazines and not political statements has come and gone. Maybe fashion magazines will someday return to their obsession with ephemeral designs, but for now they are manifestations of an ideology driven by incessant pressure to make fashion—and even beauty—secondary to haute ideology.


Yes, beauty is a judgment conditioned by culture as trends from chopines to lotus shoes to crakowes and from panniers to hobble skirts all reveal, but it now appears that the editors of Vogue are more concerned about what lies in the brains of models than in what covers their svelte or plump bodies. Body style is now irrelevant. Fashion isn’t fashionable unless it is worn by someone who thinks in the accepted fashion.


“Mrs. Roosevelt, what will you be wearing for our cover shoot of first ladies--sorry, first spouses?”

The rakish and brilliant Augustine of Hippo who became St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, began his philosophical inquires as a Zoroastrian, that is, as a believer in two deities, one Good, the other, Bad. He was apparently driven into the camp of Zarathustra by his need to explain evil, and having two gods warring for power or taking turns ruling the universe seemed to the young Augustine to make sense. Eventually, he rejected Zoroastrianism on the grounds that there could not be two infinite creators. That was part of his reasoning rejecting the philosophy of his youth and it probably underlay his reasoning for becoming a Christian—which led to his becoming one of the “Church Fathers.” The guy was a genius. In his writings he gave us a number of analogies, including one to explain the Trinitarian God of Christianity (De Trinitate), * and he laid out an explanation of Creation that was based on the Logos (Word), Nous (Mind), and Form (Ideal Form) that had roots in the philosophy of Plato.


“What,” Augustine asked himself, “did God create from nothing?” Augustine starts his reasoning where today’s physicists start theirs: With nothing. For the latter, a vacuum produces stuff. That is, something comes from nothing during quantum fluctuations. Don’t try, it’s impossible to visualize accurately because nothing is No Thing, and the quantum fluctuations occur on a scale so tiny that they can’t be magnified by a bathroom makeup mirror, light microscope, or even electron microscope. Anyway, the starting point of creation is “nothing” for both theologians and physicists.


Now one of the problems in any discussion that centers on God, creation, and things that exist, usually breaks into many discussions running simultaneously, covering topics like evolution, Creationism, those quantum fluctuations, Time with a capital T, and Space with a capital S. For Augustine, no act of creation by an infinite deity could occur during something like the Hexaemeron, or Six-Day Creation. If God, Augustine argues, is outside Time, then he doesn’t act “in time.” For Augustine, Creation had to be a—to use the physicists’ term—singularity. By comparison, although most physicists seem to accept the universe’s evolution from a singularity, they also believe in quantum fluctuations that produce “something from nothing,” even if what’s produced is virtual particles. [Of course, the foregoing begs the question about prayer. Augustine would accept the presence of God acting "in the universe."]


So, what Augustine argues for is a single act. But how, then, does the universe occur in all its expanding diversity? Here Augustine relies on his Neoplatonic approach. What God created was the possibility for forms to exist. Yeah, that’s definitely Platonic if you recall Plato’s idea of Ideals. [One can think of trees, but not an Ideal Tree, an ideal form of “Tree”]. So, the forms we see around us—and we are all manifestations of form—can and do change in a universe that operates “in time.” In this, Augustine foreshadowed Darwin by about 1,500 years (Augustine: b. 354; d. 430; Darwin: b. 1809; d. 1882). So, Augustine allows for evolution because it is the unfolding of an indefinite number of specific forms based on some ideal; it is the unfolding of possible forms. The notion isn’t foreign to you because you recognize the differences among trees; yet, you label them all “trees.” So also, you know dogs as though you know some Ideal Dog. As many professors of Philosophy 101 might say, “You really can’t imagine the Ideal Tree, only individual trees.”


Now we know that all biological forms have connections to some progenitor, some initial life-form or common ancestor that through time developed and evolved. We also know that not all Ideals can lead to all possible manifestations. There won’t be a clam running in the Kentucky Derby. The forms clams can take fall within a range of sizes and shapes all bounded by the two valves we commonly call shells, but none of those future evolved bivalves will run for the roses past onlooking ladies in wide-brimmed hats. Nevertheless, clams are, in fact, related to organisms with “legs”: the cephalopods and pelecypods belong to the phylum Mollusks, a group that might include 200,000 species. The point is that I might be able to imagine a possible, but not probable, form, such as a cold-blooded racehorse embraced by two interlocking shells, but chances of such a critter’s  evolving from either a bivalve or an Equus is nothing but the stuff of fairy tales. Yet, I will note the existence of the duckbilled, egg-laying platypus, one of the strangest life-forms on the planet and one that could easily be the stuff of fairy tales.


I tell you this because I recently saw a popular TV host claim he was an atheist and that there are 100 million atheists in the United States. I’m guessing they don’t gather in “sacred places,” unless one can call coffee shops “sacred.” Atheism is pretty much a loner condition, but that’s not to say that atheists aren’t among the most ethical and even moral people on the planet. Instances of Christian—and every other religion’s—hypocrisy abound, and wars fought by “religious people” have killed untold numbers of innocent people. But with regard to an atheist “religion” one has to ask why a group of like-minded would bother to gather if everything is disconnected except through nature—that is, through Darwinian evolution or Augustinian evolution—and not connected through some common practice, such as a ritual that expresses a belief? Do atheists have anything that resembles ritual, that is, a set of behaviors designed for public enactment? Yet, if ethical and moral action can be known more through human interaction outside a church, temple, mosque, or synagogue, than through practice of a ritual, then there is no reason for anyone to think atheists cannot be either ethical or moral.


So, where were we…Ah! Yes. Musing about…that Creation problem.


I’ll grant that in a universe destined by entropy for a cold ending, chaos is inevitable, the difference if you want an analog between vegetable soup and tomato soup, the former having identifiable constituents; the latter, a mix of indistinguishable constituents. The current “scientific belief” in an ever more expanding universe headed to become a cold dark “tomato soup” contrasts with the physicists notion of the quantum fluctuations which produce “something from nothing.” One might argue that in becoming a cold dark universe, the universe sets the stage for the vacuum that produces the universe.


Note that I have not argued from design. Nor have I argued from the notion of a “universe fine-tuned for life.” I’ve played a slot machine, so I know that randomness can produce a “winner.” And in the slot machine of this universe, it is possible that we are here and able to discuss this simply because the “three red sevens” on the wheels aligned.


That analogy also limps because the slot machine is already in existence and I’ve been talking about a universe “coming from nothing.” The nothing according to the physicists has constructed a something that is in fact in delicate balance, at least among the four fundamental forces. If gravity were stronger, then the expanding universe could not have formed. If electromagnetism were weaker or the weak force stronger, then no atoms could form. Yep, as the Gerry Rafferty/Stealers Wheel lyrics go,


    Clowns to the left of me
    Jokers to the right
    Here I am stuck in the middle with you.


We’re seemingly stuck here in the middle of a creation whose origin is an Either/Or. EITHER the world had a Creator who acted in a singularity and set in motion the possibility for “forms” to exist and evolve, including a form of the universe that is cold dark and a manifestation of entropy, OR the world had no Creator and not only created itself from a singularity but also continues to create itself from the vacuum that, in an ending contradiction, will become a vacuum that produces no new forms in a cold smooth soup.


I’m with Augustine. I favor the former over the latter even as I recognize the problems with that scenario. What do you think?


  

*I have no doubt (tongue in cheek) that my explanation here will satisfy the “experts,” but I’ll venture this about Augustine and analogs. To explain the Trinity, he argued from the human condition thus: I have a mind (the Father); it expresses itself (the Word, Logos, or the Son), and the relationship between mind and expression is Love (the Ghost or Spirit). Analogies “limp” as we know because they are mere comparisons, avatars of whatever. But interestingly (at least to me), Augustine ties his philosophy to his religion through the opening lines of the Gospel of John, evangelist who refers to Christ as “the Word.” Consistent with Augustine’s interpretation of the co-equal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, John says that “nothing was made that was not made through the Word.” That’s the expression “in the image of God” and notion Christians hold dear. Existence bears the stamp of the Creator through the Word or Logos. Let me add (as though you had a choice) that the Word in that analogy of the mind is intrinsic to the Mind. The mind cannot deny its existence, and because of that, expresses it (the Logos or Word). 

Have you seen The Mandalorian? It’s a Star Wars derivative. SciFi, the story centers on a warrior-class of helmeted people whose mantra or motto is “This is the way.” The members live by a strict code that requires them never to remove their helmets when someone else is present. [Yeah! I know. How do they get their hair cut or, for the men, shave, and for the women, shampoo and condition? Well, some things remain unsaid or un-acted, just as when I was a kid going to black-and-white movies for 75 cents—for a double feature, mind you—I never saw anyone go to the bathroom on film, a never-performed but always assumed process that the characters, whether human or alien, had to do sometime, and a process that seems to necessary in almost every film or TV series today almost as though directors think they have to make up for past omissions and hidden truths]


Wow! Sorry for that digression, but I’m wondering today, April 4, 2023, whether or not this isn’t a day to make up for past omissions. I certainly know that the Mandalorians’ mantra is key to the political world. We can watch the story unfold like some episodic fictional tale that removes us from the daily realities we cannot avoid like going to the bathroom, for instance. Today is the day that a former President will be arraigned in New York, destined to face a bevy of political opponents who seem obsessed with what has become “The Way.” They wear the armor of their party, and none appear to say, “Wait a minute! Is this truly 'our way'? No one removes the helmet. Rather, they chant, “This is The Way.”


In looking back, I can envision that I was naive at the time I saw those black-and-white movies with my cousins and friends on Saturday mornings. In the back of my mind I knew that the characters on screen had to go into the bathroom sometime, but seeing the bathroom, its apparatus, and the act of going to the bathroom was hidden like the unexplored recesses of a Mandalorian Cave. I realize now that the politicians then were much like the politicians now, some honest, some corrupt, but all of them at some time having to go “into the cave,” the recesses hidden from the public, where they could conduct business out of sight. Politicians intent on using the power of the government against the citizenry, mostly for their own gain, have always peopled the real political world. And though their faces were visible in public when I was a child just as politicians’ faces are now visible, what they and their minions did then, like what politicians now do, is helmeted, hidden from public view. Think of some Lois Lerner or Peter Strozk, both alleged to have worked behind the scenes in the caves of government agencies like the IRS and FBI for political purposes, carrying on a tradition much like the Armorer and Mandalorians’ leader who forges in the darkness of a cave the protective and impenetrable steel for the like-minded warriors. This is, after all, The Way. Today one party, tomorrow, the other. As in the sagas of Star Wars, the New Republic and the Empire vie for power, the pendulum of that power swinging ineluctably. This is The Way of both the fictional and the real universe. Those who follow today’s “way” will inevitably have to face those who follow tomorrow’s “way."


I suppose we could in all honesty say that such a “way” is normal in politics. Recall President Nixon’s using his political power and the unflinching loyalty of his minions to surreptitiously break into the Watergate offices of his political opponents. Recall Clinton’s IRS “coincidentally” auditing an ordinary guy who dared to ask a hard question at a town hall gathering. Recall Obama’s spying on a Fox news reporter his administration thought was adversarial, and, I’d ask you to recall the fictional “Russian collusion” that led to two impeachments, and note the clan-like loyalty of Democrats that seems so evident on this April 4. This is, after all, The Way.


And I’m reminded that like the Mandalorians’ adherence to a code that is centered on “The Way,” so during this April and the week of Easter, there are more than a billion people who also follow and adhere to “The Way.” Note the similarity to the Christian appellation for Christ as “The Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Yes, the Mandalorians have a religion, and it seems that the politicians also have a religion. Why else would the members of one party vote exclusively in one “way”? Why else would the followers of one party seem to rejoice in the triumph of arresting their political enemy, at least their supposed political enemy? This is, after all, The Way. No one dares to take off the helmet for fear of ostracism by the clan.


The problem with any “Way” is that there is always some opposing way. And no clan, no matter how armored it believes itself to be, is invulnerable. Those who follow today’s “Way” might find, as I suppose the fictional clan of Mandalore found in their having to leave their planet, that they are vulnerable to displacement and to direct attacks. As has occurred repeatedly in American politics, those thought to be dead have arisen again. This is, after all, the political way. So, today, apparently, behind their helmets the members of one clan rejoice in the triumph of their way, but tomorrow is another day. And that, I can assure you, is “The Way.”


This is the way.

Coffee shop conversation in a college town between student protestor (S) and senior citizen (SC):


SC: I don’t know what they teach in college nowadays, but I’ve heard there’s a trend to make gender issues an important topic.


S: It should be. In fact, the university offers a gender-studies curriculum.


SC: Hmnn. Are there jobs in that outside of university professorships and government watchdog agencies? Is there also a curriculum for agglutination?


S: Huh?


SC: Let me rephrase that. Is there a curriculum in, say, the psych department for human behavior based on human gregariousness?


S: [again] Huh?


SC: I’ll say it this way. I think human behavior can be reduced to four types of behavior: First, the affinity for and participation in mobs; second, the affinity for isolating or antipathy toward any large gathering—but not agoraphobia—and third and fourth, the two others would be a tendency toward either of those without any commitment, that is, agreeing with the behavior of either the first or second without participating beyond feeling for or thinking similarly. I am doing this off the cuff, and haven’t really thought it through, but it seems to me that we gregarious humans sometimes take our affinity for one another to the extremes of mob action or isolation.


S: Sorry, I’m lost.


SC: Take protests, student protests, specifically. What are today’s issues that drive people to protest? What concerns you? Free tuition? Gender? Rights of any kind? Socialism vs. capitalism?


S: I’d say I have concerns about those and…and…racism, police brutality, immigration, and fascism.


SC: Have you participated in any large gathering to protest?


S: Well, not to the point of breaking things. I did go watch a crowd gather to protest some guy who wanted to spread hate on campus, but I was more a viewer than a participant. I know enough not to get directly involved in any mob behavior.


SC: So, I would label you in either my third or fourth category. Did you agree with the protest even though you didn’t participate?


S: Yes.


SC: So, my third category. You played it safe, showed up, thought favorably about the agglutinating behavior and the issue that generated it, but just could’t quite commit to it.


S: Sometimes protesting is good. I’ve had enough history to know about the protests that brought down the Berlin Wall and the Libyan dictator what’s-his-name. I’m old enough to know about the Arab Spring and the George Floyd protests.


SC: Gaddafi?


S: Huh?


SC: The Libyan leader was Colonel Gaddafi—though why he didn’t label himself “general” is a mystery to me. Anyway, with regard to agglutinating behavior driven by a cause, I think of my own youth.
    When I was in school, we had some major protests on issues from Civil Rights to Vietnam to women’s rights to… I guess it was like so many times, a time of turmoil driven in part by a counterculture movement, counter, that is, to any social structure that developed after World War II and the Korean War. At one point during the Vietnam War the mob action peaked when students at Kent State were shot. Maybe you’ve heard the song by Neil Young. [sings] “Four dead in Ohio.” Shocked the nation. Student protests were common at the time. There were mob takeovers of university offices  Looking back, I’d say many of those protests accomplished nothing individually, but they seemed to add up and change the course of the country somewhat. Mostly, they did one job in particular: Show one generation’s frustration with elders—the people who ran the world. Did you ever hear Jack Weinberg’s expression “Don’t trust anyone over thirty”? By the way, he’s in his eighties now, and I just—sorry to digress—came upon his clarification and recent statement that “But I've become more accepting of fate as I get older.” *


S: [thinking: “These old timers sure wander; I need another refill”]


SC: I remember one protest on campus in particular. It was a group of my classmates, maybe about a dozen of them, all holding signs that read “Ban the Bomb.” I find it interesting that my generation is now “elders” who run the world filled with bombs.


S: You mean atomic bombs?


SC: Atomic. Atomic bombs. The Cold War was hot at the time of that protest. The Cuban Missile Crisis was still visible in the rearview mirror. And those other protests were on the horizon. The Vietnam War, at least for Americans, had yet to start on the grand scale that took 50,000 American lives and an unknown number of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and maybe Thais. The Civil Rights movement was gathering steam. But for my college contemporaries in front of the library that day, the bomb was the most pressing social issue before those other issues bubbled over the world’s melting pot.
    My generation grew up in towns with radiation shelters. We drilled on hiding under school desks or standing by walls in windowless halls. Aboveground testing in the desert was televised; I saw those tests on our black-and-white TV. I think I even rose early to see them, kind of a fireworks display for a kid, and maybe a promise of an atomic future with some Buck Rogers travel on sputtering sparkler-like rockets.
But as an old person, I digress.


S: [thinking: “How long, how many refills am I going to need here?”]


SC: Where was I? So, there they were outside the college library, my classmates walking back and forth with their anti-bomb signs—for about a couple of hours. Next day, no protestors. Quiet college campus. And, as they say, lo and behold, the bombs continued to proliferate. Futile protest in front of a college library.


S: But protests can change the world. Look at that Arab Spring. Colonel Gaddafi is gone. Police reform is in the back of every big-city resident’s mind. And my contemporaries have shut down fascist speakers.   


SC: Yes, protests can change things and disrupt societies. I mentioned the Berlin Wall. There’s no Soviet Union today though Putin is trying to re-establish it. But one of the reasons that most protests are futile is that social inertia is difficult to overcome—even with persistent protesting. Once a system is in play, it stays in play. When societies abruptly change, bad things can happen. Think 1917 in Russia, if you know your history.
    So, I’ll grant you that some radical changes do occur. Unfortunately, they aren’t all good. Libya went from being run by a dictator to being run amuck in regional and terrorist strongholds. And as far as that back-of-the-mind police reform goes, you can note that many cops have resigned or moved from big cities to towns, making the big cities less safe. Look at the surge in crime because of protests for reforms.


S: So, what’s your point?


SC: There will always be a reason for students to protest. Always be a reason for agglutinating behavior. Heck, think Spring Breakers on a beach. Some people just need to gather, to group, to be part of a crowd or mob. They can both belong and be anonymous in a mob. And students? Yours isn’t the first generation with protestors. Think France in 1832. Think of France in 2023. Lots of protestors. If you know your history—they still teach history at the college, don’t they?—you’ll remember that students were involved in the June Revolution in Paris in 1832 just as they are involved in today’s protests over issues like labor, retirement, and pensions. Like so many gatherings of young protestors, all protests involve people with different motives for protesting in the same crowd, and as TV on-the-street interviews reveal, many protestors don’t even know the reason for the protest they attend, especially those who take the protest as a chance to loot. Look at your protesting and agglutinating generation. Motives have been both defined and undefined. But that’s always the case in human agglutination.
    Anyway, as I said, there will always be a reason to protest or to gather, and protests always include agitators who lead the impressionable to violence and destruction for the sake of destruction. Heck, just look at the violence that follows a college team’s or professional team’s victory or loss; there’s an underlying penchant for mob action. It’s one of those four behaviors I mentioned. Every generation has its share of individuals with mob mentality, you know, the idea that in a mob everyone is an anonymous blob as unidentifiable as a mitochondrion in cell plasma, all mob identities obscured in numbers and by hoods and masks in a day of digital photography and CCTV.   


S: I’m still not following.


SC: Well, let’s look at what makes some of your contemporaries take to the streets to protest.


S: Like?


SC: Conservatives expressing conservative views. The people you referred to as fascists.


S: You mean like those crazy, Nazi MAGA people?


SC: If that’s what you want to call them.


S: They’re fascists.


SC: Meaning what?


S: They want to…uh…uh…spread their fascism.


SC: Remember what I just said about defining a motive for gathering?


S: This is a college town. We don’t need to hear their racist, fascist ideas. In fact, there’s a protest planned for tonight. I won’t go, but I know some who will be there.


SC: What are they protesting?


S: Some conservative fascist coming to speak.


SC: What makes the person a fascist?


S: Against shared restrooms. Against poor migrants. Against health care. Against recreational drugs. Against stopping climate change. Against…See, I know the reasons. Who wants to hear that fascist stuff?


SC: Not quite the bomb, eh?


S: What?


SC: Well, in that fruitless protest against the bomb I saw so long ago in front of a college library, the topic was banning weapons that could destroy all the Northern Hemisphere’s urbanites in a day and pollute the planet with radioactivity that could cause cancers for a few centuries just about everywhere, not to mention that nuclear winter scenario—talk about climate change! One day’s activity of nuclear holocaust and the world enters months or years of nuclear winter. Now there’s a threat that seems greater to me than the banning of biological men who desire to pee in a girls’ restroom.


S: Wait! Are you saying you’re one of those MAGA people?


SC: No. I’m saying that the battles of today though similar to the battles students have fought for at least a couple centuries, might not be focused on truths and important issues. Peeing is important, but peeing as men pee is different from peeing as women pee. Is gender-neutral peeing a cause worth supporting? What of the woman who is uncomfortable in such a circumstance, or in fear of going into a restroom where a potential rapist might be lurking? Sure, it seems to be a Puritanical view of sex to the “liberated,” but putting men in women’s prisons because the men identify as women has already resulted in pregnant female prisoners. What has “the cause” caused?
    The mob never knows because the mob isn’t the individual who suffers the unwanted attack and possible pregnancy. And that is the problem with all causes that generate mob protests. In their implementation they all have unintended ramifications. Those unintended consequences come from the shortsightedness on the part of young protestors. Without some historical info, they want what the next generation is sure to un-want.
    Again, think of that Jack Weinberg comment about being over thirty when he was young and about being “more accepting” now that he is “older.” Actually, I’m not focused on today’s issues because I know that all such issues are rather fleeting, as Weinberg’s old-age statement reveals. I’m more focused on those four categories of behavior in a gregarious species.   


S: What about the migrants? MAGA people are racists.


SC: Again, you focus on an issue from a shortsighted and simplified perspective. Those who aren’t sympathetic to the cause of illegal migrants might be living a reality that the protestors don’t know, such as the reality experienced by Americans living along the border or those affected by crimes perpetrated by and drugs pushed by illegals. Most Americans are descendants of migrants just one to three generations removed, and many don’t even know their full genetic heritage; heck, even anti-white Angela Davis, famous for her protesting, was discovered to be a descendant of a Mayflower ancestor. Look around this room. You can see the genetic differences we have brought to the American coffee shop, not to mention the cultural differences. Nothing wrong with migration in itself. Humans have been migrating for at least 60,000 years or more when they left Africa to populate the planet.


S: But you fascists are…racists.


SC: Whoa! What makes me a fascist? Some commonsense positions? Maybe a little caution because I've seen some realities that you have yet to see? In fact, many protests are fascist in that they are demands for conformity. Censoring ideological opposition is a dictatorial—thus fascist—behavior. It’s also been the modus operandi in Communist countries.


S: Most of your generation is against the issues my generation sees as important.


SC: I think you need to remember that my generation went through its own turmoil. Weinberg is the example.  And just as there are mixed motives in any group of protestors today, there were mixed motives in protestors then.
    But one principle I believe you miss is that just about every protestor thinks that freedom underlies all other motives, as long as it applies to the protestors’ freedoms. And that’s where your fascism—sorry, your contemporaries’ fascism comes into the picture. Protesting and shutting down anyone’s free speech might be the protestors’ right to be free, but it prohibits another from being free. By the way, have you noticed that generally all loud protests seem to come from a fascist Left and not a fascist Right even though fascism might be called a far-Right perspective? Remember the Tea Party protests? There were seven arrests during those protests, all for misdemeanors. Remember the Occupy Wall Street protests? Those protests led to more than 700 arrests, many for felonies. That’s not to say that there aren’t loud Rightists, not radical Rightists, but it is to say that generally, students trend toward the Left and do so not by reasoned discourse, but rather by shutting down those who might carry a different point of view. Of course, you will probably cite the January 6 riot at the Capitol. Fair enough, but that only reveals to me, since I now have seen videos of government agents inciting the mob, that some people are inclined toward participating in a mob action, often without thinking. Thus, the trend in students toward socialist, and ultimately fascist, ideals. And that, my young friend, puts them in my first category, the need to gather, to belong, to agglutinate. Generally, it boils that melting pot down to one question that drives individuals in the mob: “What are you going to give me?”


S: So, you think we are leaches?


SC: Some. And some of your contemporaries are just “rebels without a cause” to use the James Dean movie title. Angry or frustrated because you believe there should be more to…to, I guess, life, to everything. Promises engendered by “ideals” that have never proved to be effective. Think how African-Americans supported Obama only to find that it was under Trump that they began to prosper.


S: [ignoring the comment about Obama] Like what ideals?


SC: Equity.


S: Just as I thought. You’re probably one of those rich guys. You have cars, maybe two houses, money in the bank, respect in the community of Joneses, and a financially secure future.


SC: Hey, in my first job, I worked as a garbage man, then in followup jobs as a construction worker—slash ditch digger—slash janitor—slash almost every menial labor job I could find. So, unless you have put in the days of sweat I’ve put in, don’t be so fast to stereotype. You might look at those of us who have spent years getting to a tenuous level of financial security as “privileged,” but for most it’s been a life of scratch-and-save. But I’ll grant that I had an easier life than my parents who endured the Great Depression and WWII and then struggled as members of the upper lower class or just barely lower middle class. My story isn’t unique in that family history. But none of that past has any relationship to fascism, the term you throw around so loosely.


S: Still, you don’t want equity.


SC: Equal outcomes? You’ve never played competitive sports or games, have you? But you probably have a favorite team or player. Why?


S: Well…


SC: As many have pointed out, those of you who argue for equity really don’t want it. And those of your generation who protest for it fail to realize that your insistence on it is a reflection of what Mussolini tried in Italy. Go ahead, prove that you do want equity. Offer to give your better grades to a poorer student so that both of you have an equal outcome, your A balancing his F, and both of you getting a C.


S: That’s absurd.


SC: Really? What are you, some kind of wicked capitalist in favor of meritocracy?


S: You’re twisting…


SC: Look, we’re never going to fully agree. It’s a generational thing that you will discover when you are among the elderly, when you look back at the ups and downs of your life and the tradeoffs you had to make. Your contemporaries are future Weinbergs. In the meantime, be a little less judgmental and general in your causes. And give my four categories of behavior some thought the next time you see a student protest. In which of those four can you place yourself? Participant fully engaged? Peripheral ideological participant? Antagonist? Peripheral antagonist? Oh! I suppose I should make a fifth category: Indifferent?


* Galloway, Paul (1990-11-16). "Radical Redux". Chicago Tribune. Vol. Tempo/Section 5. pp. 1–2. Retrieved 2015-04-30. “I told him we had a saying in the movement that we don't trust anybody over 30. It was a way of telling the guy to back off, that nobody was pulling our strings.” A text version of this article is also online