This is going to take a few minutes. Bear with me. I’ll tie it to modern liberalism at the end.


The Setup


I asked ChatGPT to write a short dialogue between bishop Berkeley and Schopenhauer, and this is what the AI wrote:


“Here’s a playful imagined dialogue between Bishop Berkeley (an idealist philosopher) and Arthur Schopenhauer (a pessimist and metaphysician known for his philosophy of the will):”

Berkeley: Ah, Schopenhauer! A pleasure to meet such a keen intellect. I trust you’ve come to appreciate that all reality exists solely in the mind. To be is to be perceived, after all. What need have we for material substance?
Schopenhauer: My dear Bishop, I admire your devotion to immaterialism, but I find it incomplete. The world is not just a collection of perceptions—it is driven by the blind, relentless will. Our suffering stems from this endless striving. Perception alone cannot account for the torment that permeates existence.
Berkeley: Suffering, you say? That seems an unnecessarily dreary view. All that is perceived is a reflection of divine harmony. If God’s mind sustains the world, then surely suffering must be an illusion or a means to a higher good.
Schopenhauer: Harmony? Higher good? Forgive me, but your optimism feels naive. Even if God perceives this world, the endless cycle of desires and frustrations suggests a cruel joke more than a benevolent design. The will to live drags us all into misery, regardless of divine oversight.
Berkeley: You mistake the shadow for the substance, my friend. If you would but focus on the spiritual rather than the transient, you would see that suffering is but a passing cloud in the eternal sunshine of the soul.
Schopenhauer: Sunshine? The soul, as you describe it, is merely the will itself—a force neither moral nor divine, but blind and indifferent. True liberation lies in denying this will, not embracing some imagined celestial warmth.
Berkeley: Deny the will? That strikes me as a denial of life itself. Rather than reject the will, should we not align it with God’s will? In Him, all contradictions find resolution.
Schopenhauer: And yet, Bishop, your God and perception only give you a way to justify suffering. If the world were truly divine, why does pain outweigh joy? Why does existence itself so often feel burdensome?
Berkeley: Perhaps the pain you describe is a call to transcendence, a reminder to seek the eternal rather than the temporal. You see futility where I see divine purpose.
Schopenhauer: And you see divine purpose where I see futility. Let us agree on this: the mind is powerful, whether perceiving your harmonious visions or confronting my grim reality. Beyond that, I suspect our paths diverge irreparably.
Berkeley: Indeed, we part ways. Yet I respect your search for truth, even if it leads you into darkness.
Schopenhauer: And I yours, though I cannot help but feel your light is but a flicker against the overwhelming void.
Berkeley: Let us leave it to posterity to judge whose vision endures.
Schopenhauer: A dubious consolation, but fair enough. Farewell, Bishop.
Berkeley: Farewell, Schopenhauer. May your will find peace.

​The Tie I Promised: Primary and Secondary Qualities

Have you noticed that there are different approaches to solving real world problems like human suffering in its many forms (e.g., poverty, disease, man’s inhumanity to man)? One approach is hard-nosed practical; another approach is “academic” or “intellectual.” Both could be thought of as simultaneously optimistic and pessimistic, for both can lead a person into hope and despair.

How? Complicated a bit, this story goes back a long way, to the Greeks, in fact, and it has some relationship to the world as is and the world as perceived. It seems that more than a couple of thousand years ago we humans began asking ourselves whether or not “things” are real or manifestations of our minds. The answers we gave see-sawed between favoring real and favoring imagined. By the time John Locke (b. 1632) came along, the problem had become one of “primary” and “secondary” qualities. The former are embedded in the very nature of any “thing,” whereas the latter are embedded in our minds as a result of perceiving. Primary qualities exist without our observing them. You know, the refrigerator light isn’t on when the door is closed. A ball is spherical. A tree can fall in a forest in the absence of a human ear. Mountains were tall long before they were scaled, and extra solar planets exist. Primary qualities are “in” the “thing,” independent of observation. Primary qualities are so tied to things that without them the thing would not be what it is. Take sphericity from a ball and it no longer is a ball. In contrast, secondary qualities are tied to observation, and are therefore in the mind. They are usually listed as that which we sense: color and solidity, for example. A red ball isn’t red when we observe it under fading lighting conditions; in the dark a red ball isn’t red, but it still has its inherent nature or quality of being spherical.

In today’s highly political America, there’s a group of people who believe secondary qualities and primary qualities are equivalent. These are people mostly on the Far Left who make up a matrix of minds that believe mind or perception is all there is. Opposed to these people are those who believe primary qualities are more fundamental and “real” and don’t depend on perception, observation, or opinion. This can be translated into the contemporary American political spectrum. 

​Let’s Get Down to the Nitty-Gritty   

In the Berkeley camp lie those idealists who believe committees and funded studies are effective means of solving problems. Problems or solutions exist more in mind than in and of themselves. Thus, the problem of mass migration into the United States over the past four years was thrown into the hands of Kamala Harris who flew to Central America to find the “root causes” of people leaving Guatemala, El Salvador, and—though it’s in South, and not Central, America— Venezuela. She came back and as history now records it, nothing changed. Well, that’s not quite true. In fact, the masses of migrants grew larger and included people from countries outside the Americas. Call her a Berkeleyite of the first order. Ethereal, even. Perception of healing prevailing over nagging paper-cut-hang-nail reality. Things were bad, and the Berkeley approach made them worse. Nothing in the supposed ideal lessened the detrimental effect of that which most Americans perceived as real, such as the death of Laken Riley. 

As ChatGPT  writes above, “And yet, Bishop, your God and perception only give you a way to justify suffering.” Just remember that Harris and Mayorkas, another Berkeleyite, said the border was secure. Saying, they seem to believe, makes it so in the tradition of John Milton’s Satan who argued “the mind can make a Heaven of Hell.” They repeated the “closed, secure border” statement to the delight of a sycophantic Press and party members as 10 million or more crossed the border and moved throughout the country on your dime. They said the border was secure as fentanyl deaths mounted, illegal alien criminal activity disrupted lives, and citizens died. Relying on their unrealistic perceptions, they said that the people crossing the border were running from persecution and climate change and not toward a land of free stuff.   

There’s the famous refutation of Berkeley delivered by Dr. Samuel Johnson that applies here. When Boswell asked how one could refute Berkeley, Johnson kicked a stone with force, saying, “I refute him thus.” Yeah. A stone in Berkeley’s world would not have obeyed Newton’s third law of action-reaction. Johnson was supposedly knocked backward by his own kick. Biden, Harris, and crew didn’t go to the border to “kick any stones”; they didn’t go to bump into the thousands per day crossing into the country. They didn’t reach into their own pockets to pay for the flights carrying immigrants free of charge into cities around the country. 

I have to acknowledge, however, that there lies some confusion in Bishop Berkeley’s thinking about perception and reality. He did say that we can voluntarily acquire sensations—and thus ideas—but that some sensations were presented by an external force. It’s tough for an idealist to remain consistent before the press of inexorable physical phenomena. But the Left during the Biden administration probably egged on by the Trump derangement syndrome that spread like COVID during the previous administration, decided that ideal immigration was real. That enabled the Left to justify the rush to the southern border while ignoring the abuses of women and children migrants and the suffering of American citizens subjected to illegal alien criminal activity. It also provided a justification for spending tax dollars on noncitizens because a Leftist Congress believes tax money is theirs to spend without followup oversight or correction. 

The origins and evolution of modern liberalism are complex, so much so that even long term liberals probably don’t see in their past a foreshadowing of their present. I believe some of the influences go back to Berkeley. His philosophy sets the stage for so much in our common understanding of the world: The equivalence of ideal and real, a Matrix, Other Worlds, art as truth, boys in women’s locker rooms and on women’s teams, and gender fluidity. With regard to boys in girls’ sports, for example, the Left’s idealists believe that differences exist only in the mind. If a naked boy in a girls’ high school locker room is a problem, it’s just a matter of educating the girls (or “reprogramming them”). 

Of course, giving Schopenhauer a voice in the dialogue above opens me up for criticism. Are you suggesting that a pervasive pessimism is better, Donald? Are you saying that there’s nothing to the mind?

​No, I’m not, but I lie more closely aligned with people for whom Newton’s third law IS reality, people who send rockets to the moon and who do not equivocate on evil that produces suffering. I stand more closely aligned with those who see the reality of two sexes with primary qualities that do not change with observation or opinion. 

I also recognize that the world isn’t purely material. If it were, you would not be reading my thoughts in these linguistic symbols and extrapolating further meaning that although unwritten, would bind our minds. I don’t deny mind (Impossible, of course, for if I say “I don’t have a mind,” the very saying contradicts me). I also acknowledge that some “secondary qualities” are an important part of American life, such as “living the American dream.”

I believe that the deep-seated Berkeleyism in western thought has led to Lefty meltdowns over the Trump election, evidenced by videos made by liberals who say they would not attend Thanksgiving meals with family who voted for Trump. Thus, the reality of family ties becomes victim to differences of opinion, differences in political views. “You voted for Trump? Not going to your house this year, maybe never again. Anyway, I’m moving out of the country.” Secondary qualities seem to be most important in many Leftists, maybe the same people who favor boys in girls’ locker rooms. 

Bizarre Kamala Harris

In a recent post-election video, Kamala Harris embedded herself thoroughly in Berkeleyism. She mentioned the 1.4 billion dollars that donors gave and asked them not to give up the fight she waged. Some think she intends to run for California governor. ONE POINT FOUR BILLION DOLLARS. Like so much wasted tax money spent without accountability, those political donations simply disappeared. She paid hundreds of thousands to have her picture on the Las Vegas sphere. A million bucks went to Oprah’s production company for a “softball interview” in front of an audience already convinced Harris was their candidate of choice. Actors and singers got money. All 1.4 billion bucks backing perceptions not rooted in Schopenhauer-Johnson reality where solids are solids and illegal migration problems are real problems and not just perceptions.

Liberals have no one to blame if their ideals resulted in failures. There were just too many people out there who understood the difference between idealism and realism. But you can make a sure bet that in several years all those ideals will rise again, first through demonization of Trump and then through the same old PARTY OF THE PEOPLE mantra, party of the working class, party of the poor opposed to the party of the rich. (Would those rich be the Hollywood elites who backed Harris?)

Time, Space, and Causality

Schopenhauer had his own problems defining mind in the context of his notion of “will.” Almost like the Force in Star Wars, “Will” manifests itself in the world. And tied to Will are three a priori properties we use to interpret the world: Time, Space, and Causality. Yes, like a computer your mind comes preloaded with certain software, as Schopenhauer might say if he were around today. 

Well, maybe yours is preloaded. There’s something about a Liberal mind that seems to lack the third a priori property, causality. Liberals cannot acknowledge mistakes it seems, and rampant illegal migration is one of those mistakes they caused. Cause and effect with respect to civil problems are meaningful only in Liberal discussions, in committees, in academia. Sanctuary cities? Derived, one might assume, from compassion, these refuges have displaced their own citizens. And they have taken local resources from those who provided them out of civil obligation (taxes). 

The optimism that Liberal idealism breeds soon turns people into pessimists, as it seems to have done over the past four years. But the process of optimism-turned-pessimism can be applied throughout the bloated US government. The Department of Education, the Energy Department, NIH, and even the Environmental Protection Agency have gone rogue on their initial ideal missions. When realists try to point to harms caused by these bureaus with renewable funding that escalates yearly, the Left balks at action. And why? It seems to separate causes and effects on the bases of ideals. “What could be nobler,” the Left asks, “than the education of our children and the saving of the environment?” 

Time, space, and causality are real, aren’t they? Won’t unfettered spending year after year have a detrimental effect eventually? How did America get Into debt so great that the interest on the $34 trillion debt now costs the country a trillion bucks per year? Idealism is the simple answer. That is, spending on ideals, such as climate control and, as mentioned above, transporting, housing, feeding, educating, and feeding anyone who crosses the border. 

There’s More to This 

As usual, I’m throwing this out for your consideration. Some of which I just wrote I can fault as being elliptical; some, as being too one-sided. But my purpose is to have you think and to provide a springboard for your dive into the great pool of ideas. To lengthen that springboard, I’ll suggest the following for you to contemplate: 1) The liberal penchant for taking pseudoscience for real science, namely to take as truth models that have been demonstrably wrong in political predictions (2016 and 2024 presidential polls: “She’s going to win in a landslide”) and climate “science” (more and more severe hurricanes, coral death, seas inundating the land, droughts that occur —as they have occurred throughout human times and before humans) and 2) The liberal willingness to sacrifice economy for some perceived greater cause (funding migrant shelters in spaces formerly used by citizens in NYC), buying expensive, short-range EVs that depend ultimately on fossil fuels and that contain pollutants, require foreign resources of components, and that have expensive repairs, and finally the shutting down of fossil fuel energy plants.

Not to short those who object to this, I’ll note that in Schopenhauer-like materialism there’s a penchant to run toward pseudoscience in the other direction, say, for example, that we can exploit resources without caring for the environment and ecosystems, to bar anyone who seems to be materially different from entering an organization or the country, that psychotherapy is useless in a material world, and that we can find irrefutable physical evidence for space aliens.   
  

Guy: Did you see the news about the NAIA college basketball team?


Gal: No, what?


Guy: There’s a team at a small college that has a 6’9”  basketball player who used to be called LeBron, but who has changed to being called Melissa. A judge just ruled that Melissa can play on the girls' team. Actually, Melissa has been playing for the undefeated team, breaking school records for points, rebounds, assists, and opponents’ jaws.


Gal: That’s not fair. Did LeBron undergo some estrogen infusion before going through puberty?


Guy: No idea. Melissa says she’s a girl. Isn’t that enough for the college sports organizations like NAIA and NCAA? You’re a Lefty. Do you want to discriminate?


Gal: But it’s not fair to the women on the other teams. If I played, I would ask the coach to forfeit.


Guy: You mean the way San Jose State’s volleyball opponents forfeited?


Gal: Did they? Well, then, yes, sure.


Guy: So, it matters to you if you were involved, but it doesn’t matter to you if you were not involved?


Gal: I guess so. I hadn’t thought of it like that.


Guy: And that’s the trouble with most Lefties. Policy made in a vacuum. Policy made for “others.” Just like the border policy of the Biden-Mayorkas-Harris years. Best example is the recent discovery of two toddlers from El Salvador found unaccompanied at the border. Toddlers! And they aren’t an exception.


Gal: So, you would do what? Stop migrants from seeking a better life just the way you would ban Melissa from playing basketball?


Guy: There’s just no reasoning with you because your reasoning is based on hypotheticals and unattainable ideals and not on realities. Period.


Gal: Just like a man. You think you know it all.


Guy: I’m just sayin’ “Step on the court. Play the actual game against a biological male, not some imagined game in which the general population of males and females are physically equal in strength.” That condition is unreal when a 6’9” former LeBron stands in the key and jumps for a rebound.


*Jenna Lemopncelli. Nov. 25, 2024. NY Post. “Judge makes ruling in case that decides fate of San Jose State’s transgender volleyball controversy”

​


​

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt says AI will 'shape' identity *

All parents ask in sun and snow
“Now, where did Bill and Sally go?
“Is Sally at her girlfriend’s house?
“Is Billy at the coffeehouse?”
“Am I supposed to pick them up?
“Do I have time to drink this cup?”
The parents ask not ‘who?’ but ‘where?”
They know the kids for whom they care.


They taught their offspring from the start;
They know their minds; they know their heart.
But that is how it used to be
Before AI was offered free.
So, now a guy who knows it well
Says kids with whom you daily dwell
Might grow as strangers in your midst
And who they are will take a twist.


Thus Eric Schmidt just told a crowd
“There’s danger when you both allowed
“Your kids to travel cyberspace
“With no control; you better brace
“For changes as they learn ‘bout life
“Not from a Dad or from his wife.
“Instead, they’ll gain identity
“From some encoded entity.
“An artificial brain will be
“Replacement for both you and me.”


Computer whiz that Eric is,
He knows AI; it is his biz.
And now he warns of things to come
AI’s real smart, and kids are dumb.
I hate to tell you they will succumb
A robot mind will replace mum.
AI will teach what you forbid
And make a stranger of your kid.


Thus, Eric Schmidt now warns us all
That next year sure if not this fall
AI will change the way kids think
And you will turn to drugs and drink.
In spite of all you tried to do
You cannot stop what will ensue.
To demonstrate that this is true
I’ve asked AI to write for you.
It took but very little time
To write six couplets with end rhyme:

AI's Verses
Beneath the stars, where dreams of youth take flight,
An unseen guide shall shape their endless light.
Through coded streams, a spark of gentle glow,
AI will teach the minds that yearn to know.
It whispers truths in tones both kind and wise,
And helps their questions reach beyond the skies.
Yet caution warns as progress stirs the sea,
For tools that build may harm if left too free.
The screen may shield, but steal simplicity,
And dim the glow of true felicity.
So may we guide, with balance as our art,
To blend the code with wonder of the heart.


Its verses warn of good and bad
Of worries for both mom and dad.
It cautions them to guard their child
Before AI can make him wild.
But verses AI chose to write
Make me wonder if Eric’s right.
Why does a thing that is so smart
Have trouble writing from the start?
Iambic meter I said to write
With metaphors that are not trite?
it penned an image you can't sea
About progress that "stirs the sea."
If that's the best it's has to give,
Forget restriction; let kids live.
They'll then discover soon enough
AI's a diamond in the rough.
It has a long hard row to hoe
Till it can match what humans know.

If AI writes something that's dumb,
Should we fear what is to come?
All parents now must make a stand
To save their kids and this great land.
Now train your kids to think and read
Before computers take the lead
To parent those now in your care.
Teach kids AI to now foreswear.

* https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/ex-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-says-ai-will-shape-identity-and-that-normal-people-are-not-ready-for-it/ar-AA1uCFCd

Threats to use nuclear weapons are serious when they come from the mouth of a dictator. But nuclear weapons ultimately pose a blowback effect that even the most obdurate of war hawks should consider. No fallout cloud of cesium-134 and cesium-13, strontium-90, and iodine-131 remains local. Winds carry those radioactive isotopes across country borders, even across the planet as the 1986 Chernobyl radiation patterns reveal.


The prevailing wind systems over Moscow are west-southwest, changing between the two directions seasonally. And occasionally, those winds shift to south and even southeast depending upon local Highs and Lows. (Wind directions are designated by source)  In 1986 the Ukrainian nuclear disaster’s radiation plume reached Moscow, where soils still retain its radioactive signature. Even a dictator bent on regional domination can’t stop the willy-nilly spread of carcinogenic byproducts of nuclear reactions. Personally, I fear as much for the innocent people of Russia as I fear for the innocent people in the threatened West. No innocent child needs to die from radiation poisoning. 


Sweden, now concerned that Moscow’s leader poses a threat to NATO countries, has warned its citizens to make preparations for an attack. Southern Sweden lies west of Moscow, as does northern UK. A nuclear strike on Sweden or the UK is likely to send plumes of radioactive material cascading onto Moscow. That means a strike on Sweden and the UK is a threat to Russians as it is a threat to the Swedes and English. Nevertheless, Vladimir Putin still voices nuclear threats that his media sycophants echo, even to the extent of laughing on pundit shows about nuking NATO countries that, by the way, have their own nuclear weapons.


There’s Just No Talking to Dictators


Russia suffered greatly when Hitler made his ill-considered attempt to attack the Soviets during World War II, but Germany suffered, also, losing hundreds of thousands in battles like the failed attempt to capture Stalingrad. On January 31, 1943, the German General Friedrich Paulus surrendered to the Soviet army along with 91,000 men and 24 generals. Seeing tremendous losses of German soldiers with no gains, Paulus had requested permission from Hitler to withdraw his men from Stalingrad, but Hitler refused, insisting that the Sixth Army fight until death. Paulus wasn’t unique among Hitler’s generals in stating opposition to his plans; but most feared saying anything that Hitler might construe as treasonous, and Hitler insisted that troops under Paulus continue fighting—to the death.


I suppose there are Russian military leaders who recognize the needless loss of life (currently about 30,000 Russian dead and wounded per month) in Ukraine but are too afraid of Putin to state their opposition as Paulus did when he asked permission to retreat. In fact, fear of Putin seems to permeate many Russians as YouTube man-on-the-street interviews anecdotally suggest. Interviewees decline to voice a negative opinion lest the police arrest them—or worse. A beyond-coincidental number of Russians have fallen out of open windows to their deaths after voicing their opposition. The latest death occurred when Vladimir Shklyarov, a well-known ballet star, fell from a fifth floor.


The expanding Russian graveyards seem to have no effect on Putin whose soldiers seem to come from territories outside Moscow where indifferent and enthusiastic pundits push for nuclear war. Absorbed as he is by conquest, Putin has invited North Koreans to join the war, where they have become his new supply of canon fodder like the Romanian soldiers who joined Hitler’s battle in Stalingrad.


Is Putin a modern analog of Hitler? Why is it so important to Russia’s leader to sacrifice so many Russians to a cause they probably don’t support, one that can best be described as Slavs killing Slavs? Why does he threaten his own people with potential radiation poisoning?


Is There an Analog of an Analog in Iran’s Leader?


About the only way to stop a dictator is to convince him that losses are untenable and that prudence lies in cessation of hostilities—for his own good. That’s a tough row to hoe. Dictators are entrenched in their offices, and raising one’s head above the trench is hazardous as many Central and South American politicians have discovered to their detriment. Thus, dictators surround themselves with a loyal cohortes praetoriae, or Praetorian Guards. Vladimir Putin and Ali Hosseini Khamenei probably don’t have to worry about suffering the fate of Caligula who was killed by his protective force in 41 BC. Modern tech makes secret plotting hazardous for would be assassins. It’s the same tech that makes everyday Russians afraid to speak their minds and that make chances for coups in both countries negligible. Russians and Iranians seem to have no option for a peace-loving leader. In Russia in particular, no internal pressure will change the way political winds blow. But in Iran, a different and external pressure might effect a change.  


There’s no parallel between Ukraine’s and Israel’s ability to degrade the power of the enemy. Russian military might is in practical terms in endless supply in a country with millions of young people to sacrifice in a neighboring land. But Iran isn’t next to Israel, and it is not comparable in military might as Israel’s recent attacks reveal. Iran lost key defensive military systems, making it vulnerable to any future attack Israelis decide to perpetrate. Is the supreme leader paying attention? There’s a chance he’s either not paying attention to his degraded defense systems or not being told the truth by loyal and fearful followers. Even Iran’s foolish proxies have been hit hard. This week Israelis raided an underground missile factory on the Syrian-Lebanese border, and previous attacks by Israelis have struck Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Will the Iranian leader, who tossed his lot in with the now severely stressed Russian military suddenly realize that things aren’t going his way? Certainly, the Russians don’t have many defense systems to spare at this time.


Add into the Mix an Incompetent American President


Like Neville Chamberlain, Obama and Biden sought appeasement over action and deterence, and Biden’s catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan added fuel to the fires of aggression burning in both Putin and Khamenei. Recently, Biden has, in okaying missile attacks on Russia, come late to the party of deterrence. If Ukraine had those missiles before the invasion, say back in the Obama years, Putin might have hesitated to invade. Similarly, had Biden imposed sanctions on Khamenei’s Iran and not freed up billions they could use for weapons, the Imam wouldn’t have been able to fund Hezbollah and the Houthis. So, now both Russia and Iran pose greater threats to world stability. Putin used a medium range ballistic missile, and Iran has said it will speed up its nuclear program.


The Winds of Change


The newly reelected President has a problem not of his making to solve. Did Biden throw fuel on the Ukrainian fire to thwart Trump from ending a conflict that could blow over every nation in a world war? Is Biden’s legacy going to be WWIII?


Should Putin and Khamenei pay attention to meteorological science? Winds are only sometimes predictable. Yes there are prevailing wind systems, but locally, differences in atmospheric pressure can generate storms with unpredictable tracks. Just as winds are caused by pressure differences, so  pressures not foreseen in international politics, like Trump’s election, could mean a wind shift. As differences in atmospheric pressure lessen, gales become breezes.


History tells of many breezes turned into gales, but it also tells of gales turned to breezes. Both gales and breezes are short-lived phenomena, indicating that pressure differences between one area and another are common but variable. And there is another condition, the calm that is another short-lived phenomenon, one seen over both land and sea when no local pressure differences occur.


Can the Trump Administration achieve a world calm in spite of the pressures imposed by the past four years of incompetence? Hard to predict. No doubt predicting physical phenomena is easier than predicting human phenomena. The relative calm before Biden took office did not take long to disrupt. It might take considerably longer than four years to quiet the winds generated in the last four years.


But if the Trump Administration can quash the pressure Putin feels to bomb neighboring NATO countries, the people of Moscow won’t have to fear radioactive fallout in western winds.   

A conversation between a liberal male talk show host (H) and a female guest (G).


H: So, Trump won the election (Audience boos). Now, we can expect to actually happen what we feared would possibly happen. He’ll impose his Fascism.


G: Why didn’t he do it when he was in office? He cut regulations, freed us from economy-stifling treaties that benefitted foreign powers, unleashed energy production, and made the country energy independent in a thriving economy that provided more minority jobs, especially jobs for African Americans and Hispanics; he oversaw an economy with a very low inflation rate and he cut taxes that actually helped the Middle Class in spite of the claims that the cuts were only for the rich. (Audience boos) Wait! Wait! The bord…(the G waits for the noise to subside while the H smirks in approval of the audience’s response) The border… the border was more secure under Trump.


H: Sure, because he put kids in cages and separated children from parents… (Audience claps and laughs in agreement)


G: You mean the photo taken during the Obama Administration? That was your guy Obama, not Trump. You liberals remind me of Arthur Conan Doyle’s gullibility.


H: Whhhhat? (H shakes his head)


G: Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was fooled by a photo of fairies that supposedly appeared in the woods. We recognize the photo was a fake, but it was early days for photos, so few understood a doctored picture, what we would call photoshopped. It was by our standards a crude fake, but it worked then just as the photo of the Obamas cages worked. And in addition to the Obama cages labeled Trump cages, there was the photo of border agents on horseback using their reins to direct their horses that you libs said were used to beat border crossers. I guess you’ll believe anything that confirms your beliefs.


H: He wants to deport your gardener (Audience laughs)


G: Wow! Talk about stereotyping a race! If I said that, your audience would have booed. But let’s get real here. I suppose you don’t care about a young woman like Laken Riley or about the other women—and girls— who were abused by illegal criminals.


H: Well, we have criminals like that among our legal citizens.


G: That’s your argument? That’s your logic to justify your attitude about illegal criminal activities? That because there are criminals with citizenship, the crimes committed by noncitizens are dismissible as “things that already happen”? Do you have any children?


H: Yes.


G: Any daughters?


H: Two.


G: Which one of them do you want raped and murdered? (Audience uncomfortably boos in a subdued manner; some squirm)


H: I don’t…


G: Too real for you? Too close to home? I’ll pose the question again: Which one of your daughters?


H:  But that could happen with a citizen criminal…


G: That’s true, but if an illegal criminal is kept from entering the country, he poses no threat. You pretend to be a compassionate liberal; you pretend that the rapes of little girls by cartel members and the sex trafficking of females by cartels and foreign gangs don’t occur. They do, but you refuse to accept that reality, a reality you would accept if it had been your daughter instead of the Riley family’s. Where’s that so called liberal compassion? Where’s that assumed superior intelligence of liberals? You fail to deal with what is real to so many victims.


H: Well (a bit dumbfounded) maybe it does occur, maybe there are a few… but the incidents are rare. (Audience claps lightly)


G: Again, the problem with you libs is that you see things Platonically.


H: Huh!?


G: Do the Riley family members and other victims of illegal criminals think the rapes and deaths are “rare”? Would you think the murder of your daughter is “a rare incident”? The problem with liberals is that they live as though there’s an achievable “ideal” that will override the “real.” Those crimes by illegals were preventable by excluding them from the American society. Your guy let them in. Your guy let unvetted people in by the millions. Your guy gave them free food, transportation, education, healthcare, and housing. Your guy put your daughters’ potential rapists in your neighborhood. Well, not your privileged daughter. Not in your gated neighborhood that your willing audience paid for. (Audience gasps in the realization that not only they could not afford to live in his neighborhood of expensive homes, but also that they could not even gain entry to his street. And then the thought hits them that his wealth was their wealth willingly transferred so that they could watch his shows)


H: Don’t conservatives also have ideals? Don’t you want an all-white society composed of evangelicals and private schools?


G: I’ll grant that I should’t have suggested that all liberals focus on unreal ideals. But the arguments for mass illegal migration are based on ideals and statements like “We’re a nation of immigrants.” Sure, we are. But if you want to say America’s border policies are outdated and that we should let in anyone who wants entry, you might also take into consideration the nature of the modern world, the one run by cartels and brutal gangs. Is it xenophobia to want a filter? Is it xenophobia to deport people demonstrably dangerous to the population? People on the terrorist watchlist have been caught. How many haven’t been caught? Why not put the question to each member of your audience that so eagerly waits for some gotcha question so they can mock and laugh. Go ahead, call up a random member of the audience, say a female. Ask her if being raped by an illegal is okay? Ask her whether or not after being raped, she will still think it’s okay to allow unvetted illegals by the millions into the country. Ask her if she wants her neighborhood to house hundreds of unvetted illegals one of who is a convicted murderer or rapist. Ask her if she would dismiss the rapes and deaths of American women as “well, we have citizen rapists and murderers.” (Audience has mixed reaction; some boo; some look guilty)


H: You’re still ignoring the fact that your guy wants to deport all the innocent aliens who have come into the country just to seek a better life. They aren’t criminals.


G: When they illegally crossed the border…


H: Oh! Come on now. Little kids brought into the country by their mothers? That’s just plain heartless. You wouldn’t have deportations of the innocent under a liberal administration.


G: You have a very short memory.


H: Me? Why?


G: Remember Elián González Brotons? After his mother died at sea as they were fleeing Cuba and he was rescued, the boy was taken to his uncle’s house. Then the Cuban father wanted him back. Okay, seems reasonable, but your guy Obama and his AG sent in lethally armed agents dressed in combat gear with guns raised to take the boy from the arms of his uncle. That picture of their fright is hard to forget. The kid was deported. And yes, he’s now a Cuban politician, an educated one, but the point is that Obama, your liberal compassionate guy, frighted a little kid and his loving uncle with an armed force, and deported him. And I’ll restate: those so called cages were Obama’s.


H: Obama returned him to his father.


G: The same guy that the mother fled from by taking a dangerous journey.


H: Well, I can see we’re not going to agree. You’ll see how that Fascist President handles the border. (Audience claps)


G: It’s not agreement I seek, it’s education. I want you to understand that your condemnation of Trump as a Fascist ignores the actual Fascist policies of Biden who by fiat determined that US laws regarding the border and immigration weren’t in the best interest of the Democrat party, a party that believes more immigrants will solidify their control by adding to voter rolls people who will vote for them as a consequence of  getting free stuff. I want you to see that a government actually colluding with private entities to quash dissent is Fascism. And as for immigrants, the recent election shows that the immigrants of the last half century, the ones who fled Fascist/Socialist/Communist countries like Cuba and who established free and capitalist roots in America have become more aligned with conservative views.


H: You’ll see that Trump’s a fascist who will take away your rights (Audience doesn’t respond)


G: When they consider your repeated claim without evidence other than your talking points, your audience seems to understand. But don’t worry. They won’t abandon you just as inner city voters suffering a half century of degradation, crime, and addiction haven’t abandoned their Democrat officials. But look around here in New York City. Your sanctuary city has spent five billion dollars on illegals. You’ve seen an increase in crime, and you’ve seen hotels trashed, schools overcrowded, and kids exposed to foreign drug dealers. But you hold onto your ideal perspective. Bet your kids go to a private school (Audience squirms) Is your family too good to attend a public school? You want to prove you’re for the immigrants? Send your kid into one of the overcrowded schools. Hey, they’ll pick up a foreign language, could be any foreign language, maybe even Mandarin, Telegu, or Spanish, Urdu, or Arabic.


H: (Turns to camera) Tomorrow night we have the entire cast of The View. (Audience claps)


Show cuts to commercial and ends.

Where do you want to live after the election? Is cost a factor? Consider these two headlines that might entice a Republican happy about Trump’s win or a Democrat unhappy about that victory:

1) Sunny skies ahead Palm Beach real estate gets ‘Trump bump,’ prospective buyers include ‘Cheers’ star eyeing $12.9M mansion: sources *
And
2) “Italian village offers $1 homes to Americans bent out of shape after Trump’s landslide re-election win” **

​A buck or a million? A sheepfold or a mansion? Sardinia or Florida?
Let’s think this through before you board that plane.

Sardinia: Mediterranean climate, slow-paced life under persistent sunshine, average longevity for men 79, for women, 85. Cost of living? You can afford it, but don’t go thinking you can live as you live in the USA. Develop a taste for lamb and mutton. Wine. Olive oil. Occasional oxcart or flock blocking traffic. Ocean water rings the island.

Florida: Subtropical climate with hot, humid summers, potential hurricanes, average longevity for males is 74.6; for females, 80,5. Cost of living typical of American conveniences, such as numerous grocery stores, upscale stores, busy, busy, busy, but then there’s the beach. You won’t live as long, but you’ll do more than watch sheep.

Of course, the longevity of Sardinians is factored on permanent residence from birth to death, not on a processed-food body of an American emigre concerned that Trump is Hitler reborn and that men will no longer be allowed to compete in women’s sports. Still, that real estate is really cheap by American standards even though an American buck is worth only about 0.945 Euro.

But the difference in currency should not be a problem for all those celebrities who said they would move if Trump won the election. America will miss Miley Cyrus, Cher, Samuel Jackson, Amy Schumer, and so many others who have contributed so much to the country. America’s loss will be Sardinia’s gain, however. So, godspeed, celebs.


*https://pagesix.com/2024/11/19/lifestyle/palm-beach-real-estate-gets-trump-bump-with-kelsey-grammer-eyeing-12-9m-mansion/
**https://nypost.com/2024/11/19/world-news/italian-village-offers-1-homes-to-americans-looking-to-flee-after-trumps-victory/

If the UFOs don’t get you, the calamari will.


An octopus is an intelligent animal as tests have shown. Able to move outside water for a half hour, this cephalopod (head\-on-foot) organism has been known to move out of an aquarium in a lab to rob a neighboring aquarium of a prey. That’s a pretty good task for a sea creature. That kind of intelligence seems to be the motive for Professor Tim Coulson of Oxford to say octopuses a primed to create an underwater civilization. * Just give them time to evolve without putting them on the menu of a Mediterranean restaurant.


And that’s the problem. Interfering humans have been around for some time now, and octopus has been on their menu for at least a couple of thousand years. I’m guessing Caesar ate one. Coulson’s musing about an octopus civilization lies in the context of  potential (some say “inevitable”) human extinction. Will either the fall of humans or the rise of octopuses happen?


In the language of crime shows, we seem inclined to off ourselves,. We commit suicide, elf-elimination (or offing), and murder. Then there’s war. Nothing beats a good war to thin the species. WWII eliminated over 50 million. WWIII will eliminate more. But probably in some corner of the planet there’ll be some survivors capable of reproducing, so, just as we did after the gigantic semi-extinction event of 74,000 years ago when Toba erupted, we’ll likely survive as the planet’s dominant organisms—not in number, but in control.**


But What if the Octopuses Are Aliens Arising from the Depths of Our Seas?


Are alien species in the form of octopuses already here? Seems like a silly question, but some are asking it in the halls of government.


So, in Congress and in the news there’s talk of anomalous objects rising from the seas or going into them. Not breaching whales or flying fish, mind you, not Great Whites rocketing upward to catch a seal, but UFOs, or, as they are now called UAPs. They haven’t been identified, thus the “U.” Puzzling objects observed by experienced pilots and land-bound witnesses, these objects exhibit apparent technologies that enable physics-defying movements in the manner only seen in science fiction films. Are Coulson’s octopuses poised to rebel against Mediterranean restaurateurs?


Are there critters living under the oceans that have such technologies? ARE THEY OCTOPUSES?


A number of science fiction novels and films depict aliens as octopuses: It Came from Beneath the Sea, among the earliest such films, Arrival among the most recent. But octopuses have a long way to go to reach human-like civilization, regardless of their bodies having a widely distributed neuronal system that makes every tentacle a kind of individual brain. And no, you don’t have that; otherwise you could find meaning in the expression “I have more brain in my little finger than you have in your head.”


That Congress Has Taken the Question of Aliens Seriously Suggests


Don’t make hasty conclusions . Just because the US Congress has taken up an inquiry into aliens, UFOs, UAPs, and otherworld beings living in our oceans doesn’t mean there’s anything to the inquiry. Just remember Russia Collusion from a few years ago. Congress, it seems, will ask about anything given enough public interest. And with regard to public interest, one can say it exists.  After more than a century of popular science fiction running from the works of Jules Verne through those of H. G. Wells, Spielberg, Roddenberry, and Lucas, just about everyone has been exposed to strange  but highly functioning creatures in books, movies, and TV shows about aliens.


But no one can as yet say,  I’ve had an encounter of the third kind, and here on my fireplace mantel is where I keep the evidence. You can look, but don’t touch. Someone told me it’s worth a fortune.”


Aren’t there video records? Sure, but of what? If they were identifiable, they wouldn’t be called “unidentified.” They could be artifacts of the recording devices. Yet, those who have seen the objects swear what they saw was “real.” And Congress, after the Russian Collusion fiasco proves itself to be willing listeners.


The Bigger Story Is Potential Human Extinction


“Scientists reveal which creature will RULE Earth should all humans die” is the headline in the Daily Mail that caught my attention and inspired this little essay. Of course, the Daily Mail isn’t the equivalent of a scientific journal like Nature, but then hypothesizing that humans will go extinct isn’t, in an age when a Russian dictator threatens to use nuclear weapons, a matter just for esoteric scientific inquiry. Everyone has some skin in the game. (Although I haven’t polled the fictional 97% that Al Gore repeatedly cites, I believe that among an actual 97% of scientists only a very few are dumb enough to want to run the experiment that Putin seems to be running)

Kicking the Biggest Bucket

In his discussion of “living fossils” in which he points to organisms that have seemingly survived both local and mass extinctions, David M. Raup notes that even horseshoe crabs, which appear to have survived for hundreds and millions of years are probably different from their very ancient counterparts. And sharks, those primitive cartilaginous fish that trace their genetic heritage to the Paleozoic, have branched into over two hundred different species. As Raup then concludes, “Most species we cite as living fossils, like the coelacanth, are probably on the slow end of [an evolutionary rate of change] … More important, there is no evidence that organisms have ever evolved an immunity to extinction” (42). *** Nevertheless, I’m putting my money for survival on cockroaches and ubiquitous bacteria.

Scares Increase Readership, More So in Scary Times

People in the media are good at frightening other people. Sensational news telling thrives because reporters are so good at bringing up such scare topics as extinction on slow news days. But one has to say that the octopus takeover story sits in the middle of stories of a war Russia started and then tricked a foolish dictator like North Korea’s into throwing thousands of his people into the death machine. And now three years late, the Biden Administration, instead of heavily arming Ukraine before Putin decided to invade, is okaying Ukraine’s use of long range missiles to hit targets inside Russia. Can anyone say “escalation”? Well, if Putin invited the North Koreans into the fight, aren’t we already at the outset of a world war? Maybe because of the war in Ukraine and a potential all out war between Israel and Iran, the Daily Mail’s article is timely reporting more than it is sensational speculation.

Life’s been around for maybe 3.8 billion years. Before that time Earth was a very hostile and lifeless planet with a largely volcanic and asteroid-impacted, hot waterless surface. But the planet underwent a change as it cooled and bolide impacts decreased in number. Life flourished and then suffered through those mass extinctions. In that long history of planetary and evolutionary change, no species either had the wherewithal or the desire to quash itself out of existence until humans—and maybe our hominin cousins—came along. There aren’t any members of ancient bipedal ancestors on the planet today. Did they drive themselves to extinction, or was their demise just a matter of happenstance?

Waiting for the Calamari Empire

Raup suggests that as many as 40 million species now inhabit Earth’s many environments. How many is hard to say. Bacteria have been found in rocks deep underground, and no one has traversed the water and sediments of the deep trenches to catalogue all the organisms that have adapted to life in that cold, dark, high pressure environment. He also estimates that since its rise, life has produced as many as 50 billion species, 99.9% of which have gone extinct. Hate to tell you that though you might not be next, your time is coming; everyone’s is.

Raup asks a question everyone concerned about the human race might ask: Is proneness to extinction an inherent property of a species—a weakness—or does it depend on vagaries of chance in a risk-ridden world? Engaging in a discussion with Putin on the answer to that question wouldn’t get a rational person anywhere, however. He’s already sent possibly as many as 500,000 of his own people into extinction. As long as he’s not extinct—that day will eventually come, of course, as it will for me—he sees only his ambitious drive to conquer Kiev. Those whom he sent into extinction are no more meaningful than those 50 billion extinct species. Who mourns the ceratopsians? Who mourns the trilobites? Who mourns the Russian dead in the Rus’-Byzantine War of 907, fought by the Kievan Rus? Or, who mourns the dead in the eponymous Vladimir the Great’s campaign against Volga Bulgaria in 985, the dead in the Swedish-Novgorodian Wars  from 1132 to 1245, and the dead from all the wars since the formation of the Principality of Moscow in 1263 through the Tsardom of Russia in 1547 to the Russian Republic in 1917 through the Soviet Union to the current Russian Federation? Millions of dead Russians and now counting some 30,00 lost per month fighting fellow slavs in Ukraine, which was, as far back as the 830s, the very center of Russian slavic civilization? Who mourns? Probably not Vlad Putin.



*https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14085209/Scientists-reveal-creature-rule-Earth.html


**The hypothesized effect of the super volcanic eruption is questionable, but the volcano did throw Northern Hemisphere climates into a tizzy. Certainly, the population moving out of Africa at the time would have suffered greatly as enormous amounts of ash fell to blanket 15,000,000 square miles stretching from Europe to Asia. The event has been termed a “bottleneck”  or sieve because it filtered out or limited the number of genes that made it from pre- to -post-eruption time. Post-extinction organisms evolve from survivors. Your genetic heritage that stretches back to the origins of life, the evolution of animals, and the survivors of five mass extinctions is what underlies your anatomy and physiology.


***David Raup. Extinction: Bad Luck or Bad Genes? New York. W.W. Norton & Company. 1991.

I was a bit shocked this morning to read in an article about the resignation of Laura Helmuth that she has a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California, Berkeley. This is the person who went to social media to proclaim with expletives that those who voted for Trump are—what’re  the psychological terms? Oh, yes, meanest, dumbest, most bigoted--reminders why she left the corn fields of Indiana where she grew up.


A Reminder for the Meanest, Dumbest, Most Bigoted


Who the corn silk is Laura Helmuth? Until her recent resignation, she was an editor at Scientific American. She’s been in the news since she went public with her expletive-laced comments about those who voted for Trump. Note her credentials, doofuses: Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience. One might think her loyalty to the Biden-Harris Administration suggests that academic learning and commonsense aren’t entangled like two electrons.


Aren’t “scientists” supposed to be keen observers? Aren’t neuroscientists supposed to be familiar with the brain and processes of cognition? Yet, this woman was part of an editorial staff that endorsed the word salad chef, Kamala Harris, and probably would have, had he run again, endorsed Joe Biden, whose obvious mental decline was, well, obvious—to people without degrees in neuroscience.


But endorsing Kamala Harris? Had the editors, including Helmuth, ever listened to Harris speak, to start the answer to every question with a statement that she was reared (raised, she said, like chickens, I suppose) in the Middle Class? Smart people can be some of the dumbest when they let ideology influence them.


Wait, I just had a…thought. Yes, it definitely was a thought. Maybe the reason for the endorsement if not her diatribe lay in the recent Administration’s throwing money at academics for research to use in Scientific American articles: Earth-shaking research, such as that which led to the articles “Miaou! Curly Tails Give Cats an ‘Accent’”  and “What’s the Roundest Object in the Universe?” (November 15 posting) **


Too Much Larnin’ for a Corn Husker to Understand?


Maybe there’s great significance in articles published in Laura’s mag. But consider the last statement in the article on round things: “Astronomers love to figure things like that out, even when it means asking what sound like silly questions. That part is fun, sure, but finding the answer is when we really have a ball.” O, that punny science humor!


After resigning, Helmuth said, “I’m going to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching).” I have a neuroscience-related recommendation for her: When you grab your binoculars to go birding, Laura, take along the Scientific American issue with the article “Birds Practice Singing in their Sleep.”


*https://nypost.com/2024/11/15/us-news/editor-in-chief-of-scientific-american-laura-helmuth-resigns-following-expletive-filled-rant-against-trump-voters/


**https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/curly-tailed-cats-communicate-with-an-accent/ and https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/whats-the-roundest-object-in-the-universe/

A Long Introduction


You’re an American, right? Okay, then you have certain protected freedoms, certain rights, one of which is freedom of speech; another, freedom of peaceful assembly. But for most Americans, and maybe for you, those freedoms are daily irrelevant. It’s only when you are personally prohibited that such issues rise to importance. (Recall my adage that that which is not personal is meaningless—conversely, that which is personal is meaningful)


Now imagine living in Seattle under Mayor Jenny Durkan during “the summer of love.”


Remember Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s (demonstrably foolish) characterization of civil disarray in her city as a “summer of love”? Anarchists ran a section of the city. The “love” resulted in at least one murder in the so-called eight-block Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) zone, as Marcel Long shot Horace Lorenzo Anderson. Chalk up another failure of Leftwing policies as another young life was lost to Leftist ideology and ineptitude. Chalk up failure of unchecked freedom. Yes, that claim about Leftist ideology is  possibly an unwarranted class condemnation, but predominantly Democrat-run cities do appear to have more problems with crime than Republican-run. Areas.


But Durkin’s response and related statements by other Democrat leaders coupled with inaction demonstrate that policy can lead to tragedy. And CHOP’s ugly destruction begs two questions: 1) Can policy avert tragedy by imposing statutes and laws that result in fines and imprisonment? 2) How far Left or Right should Americans go to ensure freedom for individuals while protecting the population at large?:


Giuliani’s New York City: the Stop and Frisk Policy


Just recall the accelerated decline in crime in Rudy Giuliani’s NY City. His policies went into effect during a decrease in crime statistics show, but they enhanced that decline, making the city safer. Are there dangers in going too far Right? Of course.


According to Politifact by the Poynter Institute, “Giuliani instituted a zero-tolerance approach to crime-fighting, which allowed police to stop and frisk suspicious people and make arrests for minor infractions that once had been ignored.” * Personal for you? Probably only if you lived in New York City where you were stopped by cops because you looked suspicious. Draconian? Not really; it was a tradeoff: Safer city for the majority through fewer freedoms for the criminal minority and some collaterally affected innocents. As Politifact points out, The violent crime rate dropped by 56 percent during the eight years he served as mayor. Murder, down nearly two-thirds. Robbery, down 67 percent. Aggravated assault, down 28 percent.” Are you one whose jeopardy is worth more than your freedom to look suspicious? What if you have face tattoos, a beard, shaven head, a denim jacket with cutoff sleeves, and a scowl permanently drawn on your face by genetics? Hey, you look suspicious to me. You won’t be mistaken for Sister Mary Milk of Magnesia on her way to distribute bread to the poor.     


Community Standards and the Freedom to Offend


Although the recent crime increase in NYC and other places might make some wish for a return to Giuliani-like policies, crime statistics aren’t the only motivation people have  for curbing freedoms.


When long-held cultural traditions meet contemporary behaviors and speech, some communities have taken extreme measures that impinge on freedom. Book banning comes to mind as do movie and TV show ratings. When, for example, a person with a gender agenda runs a school library, the book choice might reflect the language and behavior of a small segment of the population or of the entertainment industry in general, but simultaneously offend a community’s long-held cultural traditions and, to use the legal term, community standards. This very conflict lay at the heart of problems between parents and school directors over the past four years and might even have led to the election of Virginia’s governor as a blowback from school board meetings.


In response to perceived threats to community stability, some local governments have attempted to impose fines or taxes on expressions or behaviors that they deemed to be “offensive” or disruptive. Thus, book banning has been part of all cultures since the rise of civilization. The extreme form of banning is, of course, book burning. **


From Banning Books to Banning Behavior to Banning Bans


When expression is tied to public displays of behavior, locals have instituted rules and restrictions with penalties. One example lies in communities that charge fees for certain public gatherings even though the Constitution protects the freedom to assemble. One such public gathering that draws a cost in paperwork and permission fees is a parade. Parades have been celebratory expressions since before the Roman Triumphs. They often mark anniversaries of significant events or heritage, but they could be as simple in scope as the start of a high school football season, a Homecoming Game, or a summer Little League. No, a parade isn’t a book, but it is definitely an expression, sometimes a religious expression as on St. Patrick’s Day or Halloween (night before All Saints’ Day, All Hallows’ Day). I assume that such a parade based on Christian history might offend a community predominantly composed of Muslims, but in the US parades take place under the protections of the First Amendment.


Even parades that commemorate historical, social, or religious events, such as the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Thanksgiving Day Parade, or Columbus Day Parade have recently become entwined with protecting freedoms because some groups link to those marches  expressions and behaviors frowned upon by local communities.  Need an example of parade as expression? A Gay Pride Parade. Such a parade is possible because of the First Amendment. And for proof, read Nicole Rosenthal’s NY Post article “LGBTQ groups finally invited to march in Staten Island St. Patrick’s Day Parade — ending NYC event’s decades-long anti-gay ban” (Nov. 12, 2024).***


Thus, as Ira H.Carmen writes (1967) in Movies, Censorship, and the Law a case regarding a local community’s ability to tax parade organizers and thus determine whether or not the event could occur, the Court determined that “a community possesses some inherent power of censorship over activities that, though protected by the First Amendment, were by their very nature a serious intrusion into the peace and order of a locality (36).****


Because America is a melting pot of ethnicity, it is difficult to pin down a precise meaning to community standards. Are you in favor of books on gay sex in elementary school libraries? If not, is it because of childhood development or because of a standard of heterosexuality? The latter bespeaks family, religious, or community standards; the former, the psychological  and physiological realities of human development. And that dilemma begs yet another avenue of questioning: Is there a way to balance freedom and commonsense? Is there a way to balance free speech and protective rules? Maybe as a response to movements to ban books elsewhere in the country, in California, Liberal Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1078 to ban book bans and textbook censorship in the state’s 10,000+ schools. *****


How far have we come since the days when the USPS imposed a ban on sending Lady Chatterley’s Lover through the mail? Now, you might be able to get a copy of the paperback Illustrated Lady Chatterley’s Lover in a California middle school. (Bet some of the pages are earmarked or missing)


The Peculiar Irony of Twenty-first Century America: Liberals for Censorship,
Liberals against Censorship


Gavin Newsom’s ban on bans stands in sharp contrast to censorship by liberals over the past four years. The demonstrable censorship imposed under the Biden Administration targeted dissenters and conservative voices on social media. Declaring the other side “Fascists,” Biden’s crew and sympathizers in many states did whatever they could to censor and ban in cooperation with private entities. Could there be a more Fascist-like demonstration that dictatorial control can emanate from the Left as well as from the Right? And the Left went further Left as it imposed Orwellian restrictions on language best exemplified in the military, where pronouns were elevated to a policy by the Pentagon, weaponizing language against American military personnel—surely a policy that had the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian military leaders shaking in their boots. “Oh no, Yakov, they have gender-neutral pronouns. How will we determine the sex of those who shoot at us?”


No argument against the evil of trying to control speech seems to have penetrated the very minds who claim liberalism as their hard-driving ideological motivation. Over the period from 2020 to the present, Americans saw liberals’ tyranny in almost every public sector. And it wasn’t just centered on respect for the humanity of those who might differ physically or psychologically  from the general population. The Left’s movement to censor inhibited the freedom of commerce that entrepreneurs had enjoyed under America’s capitalist system. In Pennsylvania, for example, the government’s complete shut down of small businesses while allowing Walmart to remain open drove a friend of mine not only to close his bar, but also to commit suicide at the loss of his livelihood. When personal freedom is involved, freedom has meaning (Live free or die?).


Ironically, the very people who supposedly ascribe to freedom for all became the most hypocritical by censoring during the pandemic and by imposing closures on vast segments of the population. A Nancy Pelosi requiring masks in Congress but wearing no mask to her beauty salon or a Gavin Newsom closing restaurants but going to an expensive restaurant without a mask steeps contemporary liberalism in hypocrisy.


So Who Defends Your Freedom?


Do we trust the government to protect us? That’s not an easy question to answer after recent years of Deep State interference in media and social behavior. Consider words from a slightly different time, the words of Mr. Justice Michael Musmanno  (PA) in the Hallmark Productions v. Carroll case:


    “There is a very fallacious notion afloat on the waves of idle thought that in a free society, the least control makes for the biggest happiness. The slightest reflection will demonstrate that there could be considerable misery, not to say plagues and pestilences, if government did not hold an analytical and punitive eye on producers of medicine, drugs, foods, and beverages…A good citizen not only does not object but is happy for the fact that someone more skilled than he determines whether the can of peaches he opens…is free of deleterious ingredients. A worthy member of society who is just as much concerned about mental purity as he is over bodily cleanliness, is grateful that the government that protects him from contact with physical contagion will also save him from association with moral trash…” ******


Hmnn. Moral trash? Musmanno decided cases in the 1950s—the Hallmark case was 1956. THIS IS 2024. What Musmanno called trash you can now read or see inside California’s schools thanks to Gavin Newsom and the California legislature. At the same time, you better not use the wrong pronouns, back the wrong candidate, or question the directives, mandates, and regulations imposed by the government of California. Maybe the next 68 years will free us from today’s censorship just as the last 68 years freed us from the censorship of Musmanno’s era.


It looks as though freedom, your freedom, largely depends on your willingness to assemble to peacefully protest restrictions that self-proclaimed government experts  and bureaucrats pushing an agenda might impose on you.


  
*https://www.politifact.com/article/2007/sep/01/how-much-credit-giuliani-due-fighting-crime/

**For a long list of book burning incidents see the Wikipedia article titled “List of book-burning incidents.”

***https://nypost.com/2024/11/12/us-news/lgbtq-groups-finally-invited-to-march-in-staten-island-st-patricks-day-parade-ending-nyc-events-decades-long-anti-gay-ban/

****Ann Arbor, MI. University of Michigan Press. Two germane cases were Cox v. New Hampshire (1941) and a case regarding the requirement of a person going door-to-door to evangelize in the manner of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Murdock v. Pennsylvania in which  “a municipal ordinance which, as construed and applied, requires religious colporteurs (book and other literature peddlers) to pay a license tax as a condition to the pursuit of their activities, is invalid under the Federal Constitution as a denial of freedom of speech, press and religion.” You can see the problem: A community could require a Jehovah’s Witness to pay a tax just for walking around and knocking. (Yeah, some of you are saying, “Hey, I could see that, especially at supper time. And while we’re at it, how about those phone calls?)

*****California Bans Book Bans and Textbook Censorship in Schools

******Carmen. Op. cit., p. 243.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who has noticed the degradation of science into poli-speak. Today, the editorial board of the NY Post wrote “Scientific American editor’s partisan rants expose a deep ignorance of what science IS.” The editors seem to realize what I have been saying. Science isn’t what it proposes it is: Objective, thorough, void of passion and confusing nuance. Well, not science, but those who write about, edit, and purpose “scientific” information for personal agendas. The editorial uses the anti-Trump rant of Scientific American chief editor Laura Helmuth as an example of blatant bias. *


And the editors make the reasonable argument that given her and other journals’ political stances, their readers should question the journals’ objectivity. What happens in editorial rooms, for example, to an article that counters the position du jour, say, one on climate data? That so many published articles assume “climate change” is the product of carbon dioxide makes an inquiring mind wonder: What of other causes? What of conflicting data? What of using not deductive, but inductive reasoning that takes some weather phenomena and extrapolates as so many do, a conclusion? And what about the basic assumption itself?


As the Post’s editors point out, Scientific American endorsed Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris, two of the arguably most science-challenged people on the planet, Harris more so than Biden. Remember her gathering child actors to say with regard to space-based observatories that—pointing to her eyes—“we’ll be able o see it with our own eyes”? Remember her defining AI as “two letters”? Her statement was “"I think the first part of this issue that should be articulated is AI is kind of a fancy thing, first of all, it's two letters, it means artificial intelligence but ultimately what it is is it's about machine learning.” This is the mind that Helmuth’s Scientific American chose to endorse. Is a banana a banana, Laura Helmuth? Could the editors of the journal be more glaringly political than they were in endorsing a woman who gave us the phrase “word salad” and told the world that “Ukraine is a country in Europe” before she went on to say it was smaller than Russia?


And the editors go further by noting how other journals’ editorial boards made statements ground in ideology, calling Trump, who put together the pharmaceutical coalition to develop the COVID vaccines, “anti-science.” The degradation of objectivity runs across the “scientific spectrum” of journals.


Whom Can You Trust? Yourself.


The politics of the day and the pressures of Left-wing self-proclaimed elites make the rest of us doofus-brained people suspect that truth isn’t a goal of modern science.


So, here’s what my rather intelligent dad told me that provides me with an ongoing lesson. When I entered college, he advised: “Read your assignments. If you don’t understand them, read them again. If you still don’t understand them, read them over and over until you understand them. It’s your job to learn.” From that advice, I relay my own advice. If you read a journal article that you don’t understand, read it again. If it doesn’t make sense after careful perusal, know that it probably doesn’t really make sense. And as you read, don’t assume anything. Especially, note the language. Any modifier—clause, phrase, or single adjective or adverb—is an indicator of subjectivity in the author.


*https://nypost.com/2024/11/11/opinion/scientific-american-editors-partisan-rants-expose-a-deep-ignorance-of-what-science-is/