I’m sorry, but after hearing her latest word salad, I have to ask, “Is the Vice President of the United States of America an idiot, a cackling idiot?” Okay, wrong words. Offensive, right? Try, “Did the Vice President of the United States go to school? That’s better because the word idiot has fallen out of favor among psychologists, and it certainly breaks the rules of political correctness. Plus, asking whether or not she is an idiot is just a juvenile form of name calling (K is an idiot; K is an idiot; K is an idiot; K is…).


As she babbles her way through public appearances, VP Harris provides little evidence that she ever took courses in English. And what of philosophy or logic? Sorry, not seein’ it.


Making the transition from omnivore to carnivore has been somewhat of a challenge for me. Weaning myself off veggies and grains is difficult after years of eating them. For a while I was eating a large salad for supper more than once per week. Pasta and bread? Lived on them growing up and throughout my adulthood. Pizza, too, for it is the “perfect food” with grains (the crust), veggies (basil or oregano and garlic), fruit (tomato), protein (pepperoni or sausage), fat (olive oil), occasionally fish (anchovies), and, of course, dairy (cheese). What other foods encapsulate eating the food pyramid as pizza does?


I remember my maternal grandmother making bread, pasta, sauce, and meatballs. When I was a kid and before others sat to eat, she would sneak me a slice of her hearty loaf dipped in the spaghetti sauce with a warning not to tell my mother that she might have spoiled my appetite. She made me a spaghetti lover for life. But I don’t indulge as I used to indulge. Grains and sugar are off the menu except during some days of weakness. Potatoes, also. Salads are taboo. For a carnivore, meats are the diet. And butter, also. The result? I’ve lost about 15 pounds and feel pretty good.


Ever been to one of those fancy restaurants where the wait staff has to ask, “Are there any dietary restrictions?” (Translation for the fast-food customer: “You got any strange food allergy that’ll make you die at our table?”) Not in Harris’s restaurant. It doesn’t matter who is sitting in her restaurant, from kids to adults, from domestic to foreign dignitaries, and from women’s organizations to union leaders. There’s only one item on her restaurant’s menu: Word Salad. “Eat this, and give me a five-star rating on Yelp.”


And that’s what the liberal patrons of Harris’s Salad Restaurant give. They love those salads. They rate them five-star. On The View, Sunny Hostin, who went to Notre Dame’s law school, defended the Harris menu: "I would add that as a lawyer, you’re generally told when you’re speaking, that you speak in threes, because that’s what people remember.” Here’s one of those salad “threes”: "And so for years we have worked to expand investment in community banks because, you see, community banks specialize in providing loans and financial assistance to small business owners, in particular those in overlooked and underserved communities, including rural communities. And as the name suggests, community banks are in the community.”


Freshman (Sorry, “first-year”) Composition 101? Speech 101? English for Foreign Language Speakers? Maybe she enrolled, but she didn’t attend. It’s a bit more believable that she majored in culinary science, specializing in salads. Lectures 1 through 15: Take whatever, chop it up, throw it in a bowl, mix, and serve. Every Democrat will love it.


Sorry, Chef. I know the nation has only one restaurant at this time and that there’s no other chef save the “Big Guy,” who, when he remembers where he is and what he’s saying, also offers salad words (“America is a nation that can be defined in a single word: Asufutimaehaehfutbw,” “All men and women are created by…you know the, you know the deal,” and “COVID has taken this year more than 100 year…Look, the lives…think about it…”).


What’s worse than having an idiot for a salad chef? Having two idiots as salad chefs. Could anyone possibly imagine the two carrying on a conversation about the menu?


VPOTUS: And what about the salads that are served with vegetables mixed with vegetables that are greens that people grow in gardens and that are mixed with greens?


POTUS: You know the deal. Look. Salads are 100, uh…My father used to take me to the salad bar in Scranton, where we ate salads…No joke…and he told me…And when I worked as a truck driver on a big rig and sat beside the swimming pool where little girls would feel the hair on my legs…We didn’t have a choice when we pulled out of Afghanistan…Climate…Look the weather is killing us…electric cars….


I’m done eating out. I’m done with salads. I’m eating at home and going full carnivore.

In a succinct statement on the folly of recent liberal policies, the New York Post editorial board takes on a growing problem in the city: So-called tranq zombies with rotting flesh. The board believes with considerable justification that recent “harm reduction” policies have exacerbated the drug problem and put addicts on the path to self- and city-destruction. The editorial ends with, “Too bad we’re stuck with a political overclass so addicted to its own virtue-signaling its members are willing to let thousands die.” *


So, just while you are in the midst of worrying about you or your family and friends accidentally being exposed to fentanyl, you discover that xylazine is also a threat to the knowing and the ignorant. Both could be in anything as the Post editors say: “It’s found in a hideous 15% of all drugs tested by the DEA for the northeast, and more than 85% of the drugs containing tranq also contain another major killer: fentanyl.”


Let’s call it the Chamberlain Effect. Why? Recall that Neville Chamberlain had met with Hitler before the latter attacked England and then claimed that he had reached “peace in our time.” Appeasement doesn’t work. And neither do the “safe injection sites,” “free drug paraphernalia vending machines,” and “harm reduction” policies.


According to the Post, liberal politicians are more concerned about “stigmatizing” the addicts by requiring them to seek rehabilitation. And as almost every recent liberal social policy has done, so the “harm reduction” policies have engendered the opposite of what they intend. More than 3,000 New Yorkers died from drugs in a 12-month period ending in August 2022, and there appears to be no policy in place to prevent even more deaths in the coming years.


Common sense has given way to “virtue signaling.” No detrimental effects of policies that are evidently bad ideas seem to be enough to convince liberal politicians to change their views. They know there’s a problem; thus, the efforts to alter it by appeasement. They then refuse to alter those efforts lest they incur the wrath of vocal Leftists. And in the time following the inane policies with no evidence that they work as planned, the innocent suffer, the drug dealers make profits, and the major media outlets ignore the mounting deaths. The editors say that the “oh-so-compassionate Dems want [addicts] to keep taking more and more of their chosen poison until they die.”


As with the “open border policy” of the Biden Administration, the “open drug policy” of local and state officials will produce more of the same. One cannot ethically wish harm on these knowingly ignorant politicians, but anyone can wonder if they might keep their “virtual signaling” policies if a member of their circle of loved ones turns zombie-like because of tranq.


To answer what they might do, one needs only look at the liberal politicians response to an influx of illegal aliens. The tent cities, trashed hotels, and increased crime—including drug use and drunk kids—in “sanctuary cities” have Democrat leaders scrambling and spending more taxes on coping than on preventing. Remember that warning about the consequences of wishing? Seems that the liberal politicians are “getting what they asked for.”

Of course, one could ask how effective anti-drug policies have been in comparison. That answer is difficult to quantify for a simple reason: The human population keeps growing, so if there is a percentage of humanity that will always be comprised of bad actors, then the absolute number of bad actors has ballooned at the same time that the drug problems have become international problems. The interception of drugs by the DEA, local, and state policing agencies has decreased the incoming supply, but the suppliers keep making more of the same and now more of the even-more-dangerous drugs that addicts and casual users use. There's no ultimate solution because every generation produces its own bad actors.

There are apparent measures that both the Feds and the state authorities might take to prevent the unbounded proliferation of this plague on humanity, specifically on American humanity. Closing the border is one policy that might reduce the quantity of drugs. Going after international drug cartels as well as domestic cartels is another policy that might lessen the number of the "living dead" produced by drug use. Educating youth doesn't, however, seem to have much effect as evidenced by the drug culture so popular among college students and business professionals--and dare I say some politicians (Bill Clinton: "I didn't inhale"). But I might suggest aversion therapy (as in A Clockwork Orange) for the young not yet exposed to a culture of drug acceptance if only for a personal argument: In junior high school I attended an afternoon assembly during which the speaker showed images of healthy and tobacco-damaged lungs. Those blackened masses of cancerous lungs served well to forever turn me against smoking--and I was reared in a home with two parents who smoked. ** Would images of people with rotting skin produced by tranq use stave off use by the next generation of New Yorkers? To answer my own question, I would say, "NO." The reason? "Keep off the grass signs work for a while, but then someone says, "Well, this one time won't hurt." That leads to making a path through the grass, one used by more people, leading to the building of a new sidewalk, usually for a diagonal connection that leads to another set of "keep off the grass" signs leading to evermore diagonal crossings until the only solution is the complete elimination of the grass by the paving of the entire area. Is there an analog to the drug problem in this phenomenon of new sidewalk construction? I'll let you decide. 

For sure, there's evidence that legalizing pot hasn't reduced the drug problems, but has, rather, opened the door for younger users (the Post points out that tranq is not an illegal drug in NYC). More sidewalks crisscrossing the yard do not ensure protection for the grass (ironically, more grass seems to result in more grass, if you get my drift: NY has 1,493 illegal weed stores***). 



*Flesh-eating tranq? Go right ahead, addicts, says NYC. Online at https://nypost.com/2023/08/06/flesh-eating-tranq-go-right-ahead-addicts-says-nyc/. Accessed August 7, 2023.

**Side note here: Neither parent seemed to have suffered the consequences of smoking, which they both stopped in their sixties. Both lived into their mid-plus nineties. But who knows? Maybe they might have reached 100+ without those decades of smoking. 

***Thaddeus Flint. 9 Jun 2023. NYC's Illegal Weed Stores: Seven Down, One Thousand, Four Hundred, and Ninety-three to Go. Online at: https://globalcannabistimes.com/nycs-illegal-weed-stores-seven-down-one-thousand-four-hundred-and-ninety-three-to-go/  

It wasn’t so very long ago
That Al Gore caused the electorate woe.
He had us count the chads again;
But lost the count to his chagrin.
And then John Kerry took us there;
He said HE won the oval’s chair.
But once again the loser lost
In spite of counts made at great cost.
The liberal Press believed both men
And mired us in a mental fen.
Hillary, too, could not accept
That Donald Trump was more adept.
And Donald, too, had his doubt
America really threw him out.
All these and others in their time
Believed the voting was a crime.
They faulted Right; they faulted Left;
Elections left them all bereft.
But in defense of what they did,
I’d say belief had moved their Id.
And that alone is not a crime
As TV pundits say prime time.
Elections have rarely been accepted
Since the day they were incepted.
But not till now have we seen guilt
Like some contraption jerry-built.
Now one's belief and misconception
Lead to indictment for perception.  
If you’re Left or if you’re Right,
You now must worry about your plight.
The Justice people want you to know
Belief alone will lead to woe.

I suppose there is justification in acting out the behavior of other animals in the manner of Toco, the guy who wears the $14,000 collie costume. Certain animals can serve as stereotypes of human accomplishments, desires, and foibles, so we have numerous similes and metaphors based on animal-human comparisons: Brave or fierce as a lion, meek as a sheep, or wise as a fox. But all those stereotypes are our own inventions and projections. I have seen videos, for example, of lions fleeing from charging water buffalo. Toco might think collies are worth emulating, but they are, regardless of Lassie’s exploits, just dogs. They poop in the yard. They lick other dogs’ butts. They shed hair on the couch. Dogs. Just dogs, and no matter how much we love them and care for them, they are more often burdens on our time and social interactions. Does Toco’s walker want to watch him pee on a tree? Does she want him to sniff her butt? 


Animals don’t do what we can do. Our cities, roads and bridges, and vast farmlands and factories connected by transportation networks reveal the differences that separate us from other life-forms. And then there’s language. Although other animals communicate through sounds, looks, postures, and gestures (think fanned out peacock plumage and various other bird dances), they do not have complex spoken and written language that can be passed on through generations that extend beyond the geographic distributions of animal species. They do not communicate through either wired or wireless technologies of their invention. And regardless of human efforts to communicate with other animal species, no one has yet found a way to discuss Plato’s philosophy with dolphins, great apes, or voice-mimicking parrots. Dogs, Toco, dogs.


Language Is a Human Cultural Invention; It Is Not Instinctive


That we have to teach babies to talk indicates that language is not instinctive. If there really had been a Romulus and Remus reared by wolves, neither would have acquired speech, and all those latinate root words (e.g., insul, libr) that populate our language would not exist. Those rare examples of humans reared by animals reveal that human nurture is essential for language development. The Siberian girl named Natasha, found in 2009, had spent her early childhood with dogs and feral cats until she was found. She ate from bowls left on the floor by her neglectful parent and knew no words, but rather communicated with hisses and barks. We might be born with the mechanisms for speech, but we aren’t born with an instinctual knowledge of it.


In our languages we stand alone among the planet’s other animals with brains. But the origin of language is a mystery. We cannot determine how long ago hominins began communicating through language. But we can guess that ritual burials and cave paintings from tens of thousands of years ago were likely accompanied by speech of some kind and that some cave artist might have said the equivalent of “Hey, come see what I just drew with ochre.” Paleoanthropologists think various relative species of Homo sapiens sapiens took an untold number of millennia to invent language, and we know that written language appeared less than 10,000 years ago. Then, once our ancient ancestors had words and grammars, they changed both unintentionally and intentionally, just as we now change our own modern languages through colloquialisms and dialects. Can anyone say, “cyberspace,” “catfish,” or  “emoji”? We alter language by adding words and expressions that are derivatives of our environments, social structures and technologies. Whereas it is true that songbirds also alter their songs from season to season, there is no evidence that their alterations are as complex as ours or reflect new discoveries or fashions.


Why Are There People like Toco?


It seems odd to me that in the twenty-first century we can find numerous examples of humans trying to return to our primitive speechless state. And the current fad of pretending to be (face it, it’s not an actuality; it’s an act) a furred animal is indicative of this regressive behavior. I was recently told that some college students have requested litter boxes because they “identify” as cats. Okay, if that’s what they want, but does that also entail not using toilet paper? And if these human felines are female, does that entail not using feminine napkins (note my use of a term that harks back decades)?


Why the regression? Why the drive to become what took millennia of evolution and cultural development to overcome? Those early limitations kept humans from technological advancement for most of the species’ existence. That we can express complex thoughts isn’t a minor accomplishment. It puts us at the top of a hierarchy of life-forms, including dogs. Yet, we now have people trying to imitate or pretending to be what our species left behind all those pre-language millennia ago.


An Enfeebled Adult Population


It’s unfortunate that the current Leftist Press, academia, some politicians, and sundry entertainment moguls cannot see the folly in thinking that all lifestyles are equal. Lives of equal value, yes, but lifestyles, no. Wallowing in drug addiction, for example, doesn’t speak well for our species. But among those groups I just mentioned, it’s not okay to question the sanity of someone who wants to be known as a four-legged animal. It is, however, okay to question and berate those who question debilitating life choices. And one of those debilitating choices involves pretending to be an animal. I designate such choices as debilitating because they limit humans psychologically, intellectually, and even physically. Toco, for example must use his arms for legs in a throwback to a time before bipedalism. Walking on all fours works for life-forms that don’t have cars, doorknobs, and computer keyboards.


Instead of noting the absurdity of humans pretending to be animals, the supposed adults in the media, academia, politics, and entertainment cower before the whims of the fools they should berate for their obvious folly. For those who would reverse hundreds of thousands of years (or more) of evolutionary progress, I have a modest proposal:


If a college student wants to act out the supposed life of a cat, then the best way to convince him or her that cats don’t really have better lives than humans is to avoid talking to that student (a human ability) and supplying toilet paper. If that college student insists on the “reality” of his or her catlike nature, then begin providing mice, rats, birds, and other small live animals for food. Give those who would be animals animal food; give them animal shelter, and provide animal vets for doctors in an act of compassionate health care. “Jump up on this table, Toco. Good dog.”


As Intelligible as a Barking Dog


The nonsense of twenty-first century Americans befuddles those with common sense, logic, and human goals. Woof, woof, woof. You get what I’m sayin’, right?