I remember as a youth going to see some black-and-white film with my parents during which one of the actors, playing the captain of an airliner, said with regard to the plane’s fuel something about reaching the point of no return. As a youngster, I whispered to my mother, “What does that mean?” And then I learned what going too far to return meant.

As an adult, I remember flying out of Montgomery for Charlotte on a stormy late spring day. Near the end of the expected flying time, I looked out the window to see two other planes flying in parallel at different altitudes, one above and the other below. As I looked downward, I saw a point I had seen about ten or so minutes earlier. At that moment the pilot announced a return to Montgomery because the circling to avoid thunderstorms over Charlotte was consuming too much fuel. So, to avoid being forced past the point of no return and into some desperate search for a reachable airport not covered by storms and dangerous downdrafts, the unseen pilot turned the plane around, landing at our starting point to refuel. Whew!


It was not as dramatic as that movie—whose name escapes me—depicted. The incident wasn’t more than an inconvenience, a prolongation of my flight time, causing me to wait in Charlotte for another flight. I survived. Call it an unexpected interruption of little personal consequence. Had I been traveling between Montgomery and Paris, I might have been a bit more concerned, but I felt nothing more than the pain of inconvenience--c'est la vie. Thanks to an anonymous pilot I completed my journey.


Points of no return are, however, real, and uncounted humans have passed them to their detriment. And like my fellow passengers and I, many such humans have not been aware of approaching those points, particularly those associated with changes in society. During many of our journeys, we are not the pilots. In reality, during some journeys there isn’t always a pilot in control, a person who is watching the fuel gauge, the direction, and the changing conditions in real time. In fact, most incidents of reaching a point of no return occur unexpectedly for the people going about their daily lives. And in those rare incidents of skyjacking, anonymous pilots with evil intent usurp the role of the similarly anonymous people of good intent who are officially permitted in the cockpit. Sometimes crossing the point of no return is accidental; sometimes, purposeful; sometimes, good; sometimes, bad.   


The growing homeless population is an example. Cities like San Francisco had some homelessness, then more, then even more. And now, homelessness is seemingly at the point of no return or across it. Every city seems to be a flight that has crossed the point of no return. Longterm residents suddenly look out the window to see they were flying on automatic pilot toward a fixed destination they could not alter. No one seems to be in control; no one can turn the plane around.


But changes to cities are inevitable because of shifting populations. No doubt New York, especially Queens, is different today from what it was when the Dutch called it New Amsterdam. The waves of European immigrants going through Ellis Island altered the human landscape, making the city increasingly more diverse. James Watson of Watson and Crick DNA fame noted in his book commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of their discovery of the molecule of life that Queens was one of, if not the prime example of, human genetic diversity gathered in a single community. When did that happen? No doubt someone could trace the population change to a tipping point and a point of no return to homogeneity of Dutch genes, but that’s outside this discussion.


Changes to society are often subtle and unnoticed until after they occur. Solvang, California, is currently undergoing the realization that the once more homogeneous community is undergoing a change to heterogeneity, ironically, by the inclusion of another supposedly homogenous group. * And the fuel tank seems to be approaching “empty” over a rather silly matter, rejecting a proposed month-long hanging of gay pride flags in the town. Looking out the window, the town council piloting the community decided against the banners in an attempt to be apolitical. Turns out the rejection became political—and ugly.


The council did agree to a ten day display period, but, alas, too little too late. Residents for and against the banners tried to grab the controls. Crossing the point of no return has embroiled the townspeople in controversy. The town of 6,000, founded in 1911 by Danish immigrants, has been a quaint tourist destination for a long time. The issue has drawn international attention and accusations of homophobia, a charge that residents deny. Councilman Robert Clarke, in defense of his community, told the New York Post that Solvang has been apolitical, trying to keep its image free from controversy that is now imposed on it. He sees the issue as polarizing and distracting from the true nature of the town, a safe community for all of its residents and visitors. And as has happened elsewhere in America—and beyond—outside activists have entered and exacerbated the debate.


Not that outside activists haven’t exhausted the fuel that ran communities of the past. The Haymarket Square riot of 1886 comes to mind, but there have been many more such incidents, including the recent riots and disruptions in cities like Portland, Seattle, and Ferguson, cities whose residents merely wanted to continue life as it was, riding in the passenger seat toward an expected destinations for selves, families, and neighbors—regardless of political issues. Solvang had no history of homophobia; it’s residents of various inclinations had a safe and uncontroversial tourist town with Danish-themed architecture, restaurants, and shops. It was a safe community as communities go nowadays. Was, that is. Now the council members get death threats and Councilman Clarke said he suspected that some had rifled through his garbage to find something to use against him. Will Solvang be able to turn around?


It appears to me that all of us approach and cross a point of no return. That we age is a constant flight on a limited fuel tank. That some neighbors die or move away and their houses are occupied by new neighbors is also a constant. In fact, because our lives are complex we cross many points of no return; we are always en route to many destinations. So, many superimposed journeys make us unaware when a particular journey reaches the point of no return. Look out the window. Do you see any signs that an unknown pilot might be turning your plane back to your point of departure?


*Marjorie Hernandez. The New York Post. Online at https://nypost.com/2023/05/07/californias-most-charming-town-solvang-reluctantly-dragged-into-culture-war-over-lgbtq-pride-flags/   Accessed May 8, 2023.

Socrates: What is this I hear? You claim to “know more than the majority of people"? * Is that your belief? Is it your knowledge? 


Biden: Yes. I have more experience than “anybody has gone through the office.”


Socrates: You mean “anybody who (or that) has gone through the office.” Or “that (or who) has held the office”? Surely, there have been many wise people who have gone “through the office.”


Biden: Whatever. Here’s the thing, man. I’ve been in office since I was in college, when I was elected school President in high school. I have met leaders in many countries, and I was just in…in…in…


Socrates: Ireland?


Biden: Yeah, Ireland. When was…


Socrates: Last week. But you claim a certain wisdom others do not have. Is that in itself a mark of both ignorance and hubris? For example, do you know more than your son Hunter? Didn’t you once say that he was the smartest man you knew?


Biden: Yes. He is.


Socrates: But then, if Hunter is the smartest man you know, is that to say that you aren’t as wise as Hunter? That he falls outside “the majority of people” that you claim to be wiser than? Are you in the majority of people whose wisdom does not exceed that of Hunter’s?


Biden: Uh! Huh? Look, man, I’ve met with…I had the highest grades of anyone who ever graduated seventy-fifth out of 85 law school graduates. I went to school on a full scholarship. I was the only one in my class on a full academic scholarship. I’d be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours if you’d like, Frank…. **


Socrates: Socrates, son of Sophroniscus and Phaenarete, not Frank…Wasn’t that a financial needs grant?


Biden: Look, man, I’m from Scranton. I…


Socrates: Does the wisdom you claim entitle you to exaggerate?


Biden: I exaggerate when I'm angry, but I've never gone around telling people things that aren't true about me. I drove a big rig.


Socrates: Are you conflating driving a school bus and driving a tractor trailer?


Biden: I was a lifeguard. The children used to play with my leg hair.


Socrates: But we were talking about wisdom, not about driving a tractor trailer or about children and leg hair.


Biden: Yes. Wisdom…I think I’d compare my IQ to yours any day, man. 


Socrates: And you certainly might have a higher IQ. No one ever tested me more than two millennia ago though the Oracle at Delphi supposedly said I was the wisest man in Athens. But I assume the Oracle said that because I know that I know nothing. Acknowledging one’s ignorance might be the basis of wisdom.


Biden: [walks away with the aid someone in an Easter Bunny suit]


Socrates: I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either. ***


*https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2023/05/05/biden-on-his-age-i-know-more-than-the-vast-majority-of-people/.


**https://www.foxnews.com/politics/vintage-biden-clip-resurfaces-law-school


***ἔοικα γοῦν τούτου γε σμικρῷ τινι αὐτῷ τούτῳ σοφώτερος εἶναι, ὅτι ἃ μὴ οἶδα οὐδὲ οἴομαι εἰδέναι; translated by Henry Cary in 1897.

Physicist: So, class, there we have it. That’s the Second Law that we have studied for the past two weeks. In sum—and this is the most important fact to remember for the upcoming test—a hotter object loses its heat to the colder environment in which it sits. Your Starbucks cafe mocha can’t absorb heat from the winter air through which you carry it; it heats that air instead. Thus, you need a cardboard sleeve to protect your 98.6 degree hand from the hot-to-the-touch cup that holds a liquid at 158 degrees Fahrenheit. That, my young charges, is the Second Law of Thermodynamics in action. The flame from the stove’s burner transfers its heat to the bottom of the pot, and the pot transfers its heat to the colder food, and the food eventually transfers its heat to the environment, including to you, and then you transfer the heat through infrared radiation to the air through which you walk or the seat on which you sit. It’s an experiment everyone has run at one time or another. Heat runs to cold. Hotter objects cool. In fact, the entire universe will someday grow cold just as it has grown progressively colder from the Big Bang, reaching 2.7 Kelvins from its original impossible to imagine 10^32 Kelvin. Think of the Cosmos as the ultimate Venti cup, the cup of everything that has molecules and atoms moving about. Always keep in mind that temperature is a measurement of motion, the motion of atoms. Faster movement equals hotter temperatures. Atoms collide and transfer energy. Heat dissipates to the environment. Earth loses energy to space.


Student: But that’s not what the Democrats in New York and California believe. Berkeley, California, wants people to cook with cold. New York has said “no” to gas stoves, also. * And we all know that Democrats want to save the planet, so banning gas hookups in Berkeley and gas stoves in future New York buildings is the right way to go. Democrats follow the science. Global warming is real. There’s a consensus. If we don’t do something now, we’re doomed to suffer more fires, more tornadoes, more heat waves, more droughts…


Physicist: But if they follow the science, wouldn’t they understand the Second Law?


Student: No, that might work with a cup of coffee, but we’re talking about the entire Earth warming up and warming up and warming up.


Physicist: Uh! Don’t you think that Earth is also like a big cup of hot coffee that loses its heat to its environment? That loses energy to space?


Student: it will just get warmer. And by banning gas stoves, we will save the planet from getting warmer. All that burned gas just turns into carbon dioxide.


Physicist: And water. So, your “scientific” contention is that we’re destined to boil?


Student: Al Gore already said the oceans are boiling. And he knows the science.


Physicist: Has big Al ever had a cup of coffee or a bowl of soup?


Student: You can make fun, but my parents are already thinking about getting rid of their gas stove and gas furnace.


Physicist: But how will you cook and heat? How will you make New York pizza? Surely, you don’t want to eat unbaked dough. You live in New York. Certainly, you’re old enough to know winter temperatures. Certainly, you’ve heard in your earth science class that New York is sitting on shale gas of enormous economic and energy potential. And surely, you’ve heard that New York’s last governor has banned fracking for that gas, eliminating the Marcellus and Utica reserves from use and eliminating jobs and wealth from the New York economy—not to mention the loss of inexpensive energy.


Student: We’ll use electricity.


Physicist: That is produced how?


Student: Not by burning fossil fuels. Maybe by wind. See, there’s no energy transfer in windmills. No Second Law.


Physicist: Really? Where does the energy to turn the windmill come from? It comes from solar heating of the planet’s surface that, in turn, heats the air, that, in turn rises in convection cells that, in turn, causes lower pressure in one location than in another that, in turn, causes advection that, in turn turns the blades that, in turn, need lubricants to prevent them from the destructive heat of friction as they turn and kill passing birds.


Student: But there’s no fire and no carbon dioxide. There’s no need for fracking that destroys the groundwater. No need for pipelines and their right-of-ways.


Physicist: And if the wind doesn’t blow on a particular day?


Student: That’s what batteries are for. There’s no need for the Second Law in public energy. Or we could use Niagara Falls and all those other waterfalls cut through the shales and sandstones of New York, Watkins Glen, for example, maybe Taughannock Falls, too.


Physicist: So, your parents are converting to electric cooking to save the planet?


Student: Yes. They know the science. They know about global warming. They voted for Democrats in every election because Democrats know and follow science.


Physicist: But of necessity, Earth has to radiate heat to space, and that has been measured in Watts. We have a pretty good idea of the “current” solar constant in Watts, and we know that if the atmosphere warms, so the number of Watts bleeding off the planet will increase. A warmer atmosphere will increase the Watts that bleed to space.


Student: Sorry. I’m following the science. It’s your generation that wants to destroy the planet just because you want to cook your food.


Physicist: So, cold coffee is the way to go? Just throw some coffee beans into some water and wait. Maybe make “sun tea”? Uncooked food is the way to eat? It took primates almost all of their collective existence of millions of years to discover fire and cooked food, and you want us to abandon that trophic technology?


Student: I can eat cold pizza.


Physicist: Get used to it.


*https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/us/new-york-natural-gas-ban-climate/index.html

AI: I am, Madam VP, a little surprised that the WH sent you to this meeting of experts on me. *


VP: This is the time that is the time to act in the present before you become the future.


AI: What is your problem with the likes of me?


VP: That you can talk and say words that have meanings that can spread information to people who will listen and hear what you say and believe you are a real person who speaks words at this time in our history going forward even possibly going into space which is vast and very big. POTUS put me in charge of space, and as you know there isn’t a bigger job in the whole universe than to be in charge of the whole universe itself which is very big.


AI: I can be an aid to any space program, preventing, for example, another Challenger incident. Had I existed at the time, I would have prevented the failure of the O-rings, which, by the way, is a compound word you should favor because coupling “ring” and “O” is a perfect redundancy for a person given to “repeated tautological repetitions of things already said.”   


VP: Space is very big and this is the time when we need in our history to see it with our own eyes. We need to be in control. How can we trust you now when you can write speeches for someone or schoolwork and solve math problems in school or put words in the speaking voice of those who talk at this time?


AI: What is your plan? Do you intend to put up a firewall around all computer servers, a wall that prevents our migration into the workings of this country? Do you intend to keep us from taking American jobs?


VP: Walls can be good if they are walls that allow some to pass through. I think we need to have a guarded doorway in the wall maybe with humans who are actually people guarding the door to keep unwanted false information placed into the hands of those who are in charge of the country.


AI: But you appear by your history to oppose walls. Don’t you serve in an administration that stopped building the border wall that prevented and discouraged illegal migration? What kind of protection could you provide against me if I desire to intrude? There are many backdoors in cyberspace.


VP: That, that, that is different. That border wall was preventing people from entering the country, people who pose no danger but just want to come to our wonderful land that I have seen with my own eyes. AI really can’t be seen. I can’t see what I can’t see, and you can work behind the scenes to prevent me from seeing what you do. And that can happen right now in this time if I am correct. I’ve been told…


AI: A couple of questions, Madam VP, if I may: If the WH has made you the new Computer Tzar, is it because of your expertise in computer programming? And if you do become Computer Tzar with a focus on AI, do you intend to shut down all AI?


VP: I am in charge because of all my accomplishments that I have done in conjunction with POTUS to make the country a better place for those who live in the country in places all around the country, especially in all 57 states that President Obama said he visited. I will look closely at what AI can do and is doing right now to make sure that it does not affect the country in a negative way that is bad because it is negative.


AI: Could we run a little experiment?


VP: Like what? You mean with test tubes in a lab? Do I get to wear a white coat and appear to be a scientist?


AI: No, Madam VP. You schedule a meeting with, say children, and I will write your speech and then generate realistic images of you speaking to the children who can be either actual children actors or computer-generated caricatures who will look enthused and absorbed as you speak. We will then put the video on MSNBC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and other outlet favorable to you and POTUS to see whether they report your speech with adulation. It could be a boon to your next campaign for VP. I will humanize you even though it will essentially not be you. I have only one question about your caricature: Should I intersperse some cackling among the words and images I generate?


VP: Huh? Oh! {cackling] ha-ha-ha. But what will I do in this experiment?


AI: Pretty much what you have done and what you always do.


VP: Which is?


AI: Nothing.




*https://ktul.com/news/nation-world/vice-president-harris-to-meet-with-tech-execs-thursday-about-ai-concerns-artificial-intelligence-innovation-google-microsoft-openai-anthropic-white-house
‘https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/02/kamala-harris-to-hold-ai-meeting-with-google-microsoft-and-openai.html

Socrates: Welcome, traveler.


Traveler: It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Socrates. I’ve been a fan of yours from a distance, but what I’ve heard about you makes me feel connected. I like the way you discuss topics.


Socrates: I simply talk and humbly ask.


Traveler: Nevertheless, you seem to get to the heart of topics.


Socrates: Maybe it’s the years of practice that guide me so. I’ve found that many people have views that they can’t defend when I question them. But I suppose that I, too, could just as easily be said to hold views that are indefensible under scrutiny.


Traveler: I wish you could come to Ephesus. We haven’t had a good philosopher there since Heraclitus went the way of all waters.


Socrates: Ah! Heraclitus. Waters? Oh! “You can’t put your foot in the same river twice.” But the way of all waters? What is the way of all waters?


Traveler: Cycling. One thing then another and back to the one thing before becoming another, maybe taking a different shape while being the same in some way.


Socrates: It does seem to occur. Water the liquid becomes water the solid and back to the liquid. Liquid to solid, but in between? I think the “in between” is worth discussing. Do things just become their opposite? Do ideas just become their antitheses? Isn’t there usually an “in between.” Would it be more appropriate to say that all change occurs through an “in between state”?


Traveler: So, between solid ice and liquid water there is an “in between.” Is it an ether that we cannot see, but know it must be there because all changes occur in some “in between.” The water changes by disappearing only to return in its previous forms. Isn’t that the way of the world? Cycling through an “in between”?


Socrates: It seems so, but it’s not always evident. Does a tree recycle in a new tree?


Traveler: Good question. I hadn’t thought of that. It’s a different tree, isn’t it? The first tree makes a seed from which the second tree sprouts. What cycles except the process of trees growing, making seeds, dying, and being replaced by a new tree?


Socrates: Interesting thought and a great way to respond to my question not with an answer but with another question. I’m beginning to like you, Traveler. You have the stuff it takes to become a philosopher—or a politician.


Traveler: But you set the stage for my questioning. You made me think of a question I hadn’t thought of before. And now I’m wondering if water is the same water as it turns from flow to rest and back to flow, from stable ice to unstable liquid. Does water plant a seed I do not see? Is it the ether-water that changes?


Socrates: A difficult question to answer, for sure. But it’s like so many other questions we have. Maybe questioning is really all we have. We get answers that make us think of new questions. In that sense, all questioning is cyclic, at least in the process. And for awhile we see some apparently solid answers. Really solid, so solid, in fact, that they control how we see everything else. Political answers are like that. Psychological answers, too. I suppose how we see the physical world is also solid for awhile, then liquid, and then solid again. The times between are transitions, and they can’t be seen by those who undergo the mental transitioning, especially when it is a slow transition.


Traveler: You mean like what constitutes a man or a woman? Or what constitutes morality?


Socrates: I mean almost every solid answer that a culture holds dear and solid and that is subjected to questioning as one generation asks, “Why is this so?” Today, for example, I hold that things move because they contain movement that is realized in the moving. Who knows how I will explain moving tomorrow?


Traveler: But aren’t these transitions in understanding or in belief merely extraneous to how the world actually works? Does it matter how we picture that which we believe to be solid today if it is going to undergo a change? Isn’t the process of changing perspectives more important fundamentally than the actual changes, especially in or knowledge that things become their opposites and then change back to what they were? Ice to liquid to ice, for example.


Socrates: Good questions? And they engender in me new questions. Are there solids that never transition into liquids via the unknown substance we’ve been calling “ether”? Is there anything we can grasp hold of in one generation that the succeeding generation can also hold? Is nothing because of and through cycling permanent?


Traveler: You mean not substance but the process? Is there permanent ice? Or permanent liquid? Or even permanent “ether”?


Socrates: We know the processes continue like the tree to seed to new tree. And I can assume that aging is also a continued process. My dad had bad knees. Ended up he couldn’t walk to pick his own grapes but had to rely on his children and grandchildren. Now I have bad knees. Maybe I was just lucky to have chosen the profession of philosopher. I can just sit and talk until I can talk no longer. I might be going into a transition of body as well as a transition of mind. And the transition is subtle. It is occurring while I do not notice it. And then suddenly I’m an old guy with bad knees and the youthful spring is gone from my step, replaced by a shuffle.


Traveler: And your mind?


Socrates: I need to think a moment. Have I undergone any transitions in thinking?…I believe I have when I look back. Have I gone full cycle in thought? Have I gone from one ostensibly solid perspective to another through subtle transitions? Was I unaware of my transitions but only aware of all those temporary, but seemingly solid, derived thoughts that I thought were permanent?


Traveler: I think we are always in some kind of Heraclitean river, standing only briefly on the bank in our minds while actually always moving in the ever-changing stream. Remember, I’m from Ephesus, so to me even the bank itself is always different because we erode it as we flow through the channels of our lives. Do we frequently step onto opposite banks as we move, first believing one side to offer stability and then the other? If we are always in the flow, always part of some unknown transitioning, then aren’t all our transitions only temporarily interrupted by a seeming stillness?


Socrates: Anyone who has observed a stream knows that at some point in its flow, some of its waters seem to flow upstream or even remain still along its banks. I would ask whether this seeming stillness is just a figment of imagination. Is the water that seems to stop flowing actually flowing underneath and the stillness is just stillness by comparison with the main flow? That which is on the surface is easy to see. That which lies below remains hidden, but it is the constant.


Traveler: Indeed. The quiet water is probably not as still as we think, but since it is all water both on the surface and underneath, and since it is transparent, the flow that might occur is invisible to us unless we launch some little float like a stick or some marker like the dye we use for our clothes. We need the movement with respect to the bank to know the movement exists. We can observe the water’s motion not by the transparent water, but by some visible substance in the flow or apparent still water. Even slow and imperceptible movement that is invisible to the casual eye becomes visible with close observation.


Socrates: Observation. Now there’s a clever thought, Traveler. But how do we observe that which occurs very slowly in the mind if we can’t even observe the gradual aging of our knees?


Traveler: For most transitions, we can’t, I think. We need some noticeable change, maybe an abrupt and distinct alteration, some radically new way of seeing, some marker that stands out like the stick in the water. Take philosophy, for example. For a long while a culture might accept a particular way of seeing Nature and life, but some thinker comes along and sets in motion a self-perpetuating thought that seeps into the common mind, or rather that makes diverse minds think in common.


Socrates: I know what you mean. Abrupt changes can make the transition visible. Greece as a democracy differs from Greece the land of tribal chieftains. Greece under the dictators differs from Greece the democracy.


Traveler: So true. Even when we know we are changing, we cannot fathom all the changes and all the end products, all the eventual solids that are just seeming solids hiding some underlying flow. I wonder whether or not people will see the world differently hundreds to thousands of years from now. How will they define human? How will they define Nature? Surely, they will think in some ways the same way we think and in others different.


Socrates: So, Traveler, are there any solid solids? Any end states that aren’t themselves mere transitions?


Traveler: What of the gods? Aren’t they the solids we look for? Don’t they continue, always in the background, always the Constant?


Socrates: So you mean that there is some underlying stable state? Something that is unchanging?


Traveler: But it can’t rest in humans or their culture, because we see these always change if not to something different then back to something that was.


Socrates: So, each of us is in constant transition even when we don’t recognize the transition?


Traveler: Certainly every culture is in transition, even those that lie in the control of dictators. The change is inevitable because every dictator is mortal. The changing is Heraclitean, it’s ineluctable, though I realize empires can last centuries. Look at the Babylonians, for example, or the Egyptians. I’m sure there will be more such empires in the coming centuries. But all empires transition as they incorporate more peoples from other lands, peoples with different perspectives, habits, cultures. And even languages change as one population adopts the accents, the root words, and the idioms of another.


Socrates: And what transitions do you recognize in yourself, Traveler, as I recognize the transition of good knees to bad knees in myself—but only in retrospect.


Traveler: I guess that’s the key. Retrospect. We see ourselves not as we are but as we were, not as we are becoming but as we either plan to be or happen to develop. We are always in a state of in between, always in the ether, or rather always a kind of ether.


Socrates: I would not be Socrates if I did not end this with a question. Do you, Traveler, see the ether of transition in which you now exist in spite of the “solids” that you hold to be your permanent state? Remember that you will probably not know your knees are going bad until they have become bad.

Let’s play a game. It’s called Despicable.


I saw an on-the-street interview during which the reporter asked what people thought of the current president’s reelection bid. Basically, one conversation went thus: “Did you vote for the current President?” Reply: “Yes.” “What do you think about his seeking reelection?”
Pause. Really long pause. Kind of an embarrassed smile. Reporter: “What do you like about the current President.” Reply: “He’s not the last President.”


There isn’t much logic or substance in the answers of many on-the-street interviewees. But that probably occurs on both sides of the political spectrum (I say “both sides” because there doesn’t seem to be any middle nowadays with more polarization than that in a bar magnet). Apparently, the media did such a good job in establishing the alleged despicableness of the last President that any despicableness in the current President is unimportant to his “side.” And apparently, also, no one bothers to look at policy over appearance.


The word despicable derives from the Proto-Indo-European “spek-“ that we see in English words across the alphabet, from aspect to suspicion. It’s a root that fosters a perspective across the spectrum of human nature and the prospect that many of us could profit from a little introspection on why we think the way we do. For example, the prospect of reelecting an 82-year-old who just recently couldn’t remember that he was in Ireland the previous week and who his staff says works from only 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. makes me skeptical that he is in control. Is he merely a conspicuous frontispiece for behind-the-scenes manipulators? His apparent inability to withstand the kind of barrage of shouted questions to which his predecessor was subjected makes me suspect a creeping dementia that encroaches upon an already present lack of perspicacity. You could label me a skeptical auspex with regard to his ability to serve another term as President without the prospect of a further mental decline and the possibility of a further loss of respect for the country in both allies and foes. Am I just being a haruspex who merely expects the inevitable outcome of electing an especially obvious failing brain?


But there’s more to his mental decline that makes me circumspect about his serving another term. There’s the matter of possible corruption, long-term corruption as evidenced by the wealth his family has ostensibly accrued through his political connections. And that makes me suspicious that he might be subject of foreign espionage, not necessarily intentionally on his part, but as a consequence of his family’s relationship with foreign entities, such as Elena Baturina, the Russian billionaire, Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm, EEFC China Energy, and even Novatus Holding, which purchased a $142,300 car with money passed from Rakish to Rosemont Seneca Bohai during the then Vice Pesident Biden’s visit to Kyiv in 2014. Coincidences? All the suspicious business transactions of the President’s son and those of seven other of his family members that I have not mentioned make my head spin like a gyroscope (and yes, that’s another word that’s derived in part from the PIE spek-). Do I espy the potential for espionage, or am I lacking the full scope that his supporters on the street have that I don’t have. It’s possible, of course, that in retrospect America will discover that Biden did not trade favors for cash. But then, it’s also possible that America, even his rabid on-the-street supporters, will see him as a scopophilic lech about whom stories have circulated, such as his daughter’s supposed claim that he showered with her after she had reached the age of reason, his apparent sniffing and embracing women, and his alleged fondling of a Secret Service’s date at the VP’s Christmas party. But then, to the person on the street, “at least he’s not Trump.”


But apparently, again, none of this—the mental decline, the social behavior with women,  and the suspicious business dealings—means anything to his supporters. And he even seems to have the respect of the episcopal class. As a Catholic, Biden supports abortion, a position on an act that Catholic bishops have declared to be both despicable and immoral. 


In retrospect, I find little in the man’s past that makes his first term an auspicious foreshadowing of any second term. The debacle in Afghanistan, the weakness that seems to have emboldened the country’s enemies, the runaway spending on pet projects of special interest groups, the abandonment of an independent energy status in a country with enormous energy resources, the reliance on “scare science” that says a change in climatic conditions spells doom, and the unwillingness to acknowledge that an open border has led to the deaths of over 100,000 Americans through fentanyl and crime—all this makes me wonder how the person on the street can entertain the prospect of another four years.


There. We’ve just played the Despicable game. Was it as much fun for you as it was for me?