In a Gary Larson cartoon panel one farmer stands next to another outside a barn as he says, “It’s the only way to go, Frank. Why, my life’s changed ever since I discovered Stackable Livestock.” On one side of the panel there’s a stack of chickens; on the other, two stacks of animals, one of sheep on one another’s backs and one of cows. NY’s Governor should have seen the cartoon before she instituted a congestion tax that could have cost drivers up to $500 per month to go to work in NYC.


Hochul is now protesting President Trump’s declaring the tax null and void. “NYC workers, commuters rejoice over Trump’s axing of congestion pricing toll: ‘I’m ecstatic’” reads the headline in the NY Post. * Had the President not acted, I would have suggested the Gary Larson solution to overcrowded streets: Stackable cars.


*https://nypost.com/2025/02/19/us-news/nyc-workers-commuters-rejoice-over-trumps-axing-of-congestion-pricing-toll-im-ecstatic/

Poor us. Hit from all sides by unrelenting abundance and ease, we need a break from all the stress. Fortunately, we have an out in wellness centers and spas, even home spas. Whew! Don’t know how people used to hammer out their days of drudgery and woe.


A Bit of Background


According to Statista, Americans spent 300 billion bucks on wellness/spa tourism. That’s up from the low of 149 billion dollars spent during the pandemic of 2020. In 2023, the spa “industry” provided services for 182 million people, down ten million from the high in 2019 before COVID decimated the economy.


But we Americans aren’t the only people who seem to need days of respite. The worldwide wellness business raked in 6.3 trillion in 2023. Trillion, yeah, with a “t”; you read it correctly; it’s not a typo. Does such an outlay of wealth by customers (clients?) say anything about us? Anything about our priorities or character?


A Bit More Background


Although I question the validity of his conclusions because they ultimately came from self-reporting surveys, I see some value in Hans Eysenck’s classification of personality “dimensions.” Those dimensions are extroversion/introversion and neuroticism. I believe they might in a cursory way explain the modern need for wellness centers in a society not bogged down by a global war. (Eysenck surveyed soldiers in the Mill Hill Emergency Hospital during WWII, drawing conclusions from his extensive surveys of hundreds of soldiers) War resets priorities of people formerly living in relative safety and comfort. That Eysenck derived much of his thinking for Dimensions of Personality from a wartime world probably makes his work a little less applicable to today’s cushy life for the wellness crowd. Nevertheless, see whether or not you might want to draw your own conclusions from the following characteristics associated with extroversion, introversion, and neuroticism (summary statements by Tom Butler-Bowdon*):

Extraversion
    The extravert’s brain is the opposite of what we would expect; it is less excitable than the introvert’s. Because there is less going on inside, extraverts naturally seek outside stimulation and contact with others to really feel alive.
Introversion
    The introvert’s brain is more excitable, making them more vulnerable to moods and having intense inner lives. Introverts have a rich inner life, so they don’t need much social interaction. They have a deeper and more anguished response to life.
Neuroticism
    Apparently both extraverts and introverts can be neurotically minded. In Eysenck’s view,     for example, neurotically minded introverts over-respond to stimuli and are susceptible to phobias and panic attacks whereas neurotically minded extraverts tend to  undervalue the impact of life events and might develop neuroses of denial and repression.


Eysenck drew on Carl Jung to formulate his classification of personality dimensions.  About the same time that he was interviewing soldiers at the hospital Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother Katharine Cook Briggs developed the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, also based on Jung’s work, that categorizes individuals into one of 16 personality types based on their preferences in four dimensions: extraversion/introversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving.


I suppose these generalizations are insufficient for one to conclude what kind of personality dimension dominates the wellness crowd. If you peruse the Web for wellness testimonials, you will see numerous success stories, that is, autobiographical tales of people who suffered from physical and psychological maladies that disappeared during treatments of various kinds. And I have no reason to question those testimonials, but some of them simply indicate the need for a push to change lifestyle. I read one testimonial from a man who accompanied his wife to the wellness center to have a common experience with her. At the wellness center he learned to cut out bread and sugar, resulting in his “feeling” better. Sugar. One has to ask how new the concept of refraining from its consumption was for the man. My hasty conclusion by extrapolation is that much of what drives people to spas and wellness centers is common sense and already known.


Who Might Not Go to a Wellness Center


It’s a cultural thing, this wellness craze upon which people have spent $trillions. It’s a sign of the times, also. People barely subsisting and people in the midst of war just don’t have the time or wealth to support their desires for luxurious lifestyles. But in times of relative peace the affluent do have the time and money to pursue wellness. The absence of personal physical threats makes a society somewhat “soft.” Anecdote alert! Dive, dive, dive.


My father, a marine who fought on Okinawa, was reared in a home without a father (he died when my. Dad was 8). He went through the Great Depression with his mother and two sisters, not a life of luxury. In 1980, when I was on sabbatical leave and living in Miami, both he and my mother visited us. Showing them around, my wife and I took them to Bal Harbour. As we walked around, I saw a quaint courtyard with a little coffee shop that served baked goods. I walked them in and said, “Come on, I’ll get you two a piece of pie and coffee.” He looked at the suspended chalkboard that listed the prices and said, “Three dollars for a piece of pie? I’d choke before I would eat that.” It didn’t matter to him that I said I would pay for the pie and coffee and that it would cost him nothing. He had been through Depression and war. Both combined to make him “hard” rather than “soft.” There would have been no way I could ever have gotten him to go to a spa or wellness center, even though it might have eased what I later believed was PTSD buried in his brain since World War II and the horrors of fighting in Okinawa.


Pavlovian Desires


So, in a “soft” society of affluence, I’m of a mind that Pavlovian conditioning might be at play. Keeping up with the Joneses doesn’t just apply just to owning stuff. We keep up by adopting lifestyles and behaviors. Going to a wellness center can be a matter of “They did it, why can’t we?” And possibly the free-wheeling anonymity of modern communications via social media might make extraverts flock to wellness centers for needed outside stimulation.


But at the risk of contradicting myself, I’ll note that those inward people, the introverts, might also use wellness experiences to intensify their feeling in the presence of strangers with whom they will never again interact. The eventual separation protects that anguished brain from outsiders. And the wellness center experience can enhance the moodiness.


The Search for Identity


Long a theme in literature, the search for identity has been a goal for many since the rise of the modern world. I suppose the culture of “finding oneself” entered into everyday consciousness during the Romantic period of the nineteenth century and then turned into the existentialism of the twentieth century. Going off to discover one’s “real Self” has motivated many to travel to exotic places, mountain vistas, and gurus of various leanings stereotyped by the shaman, the monk, and the astrologer. Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Transcendentalists at Brooke Farm and others set in motion a widespread notion that one could a’find oneself,’ or indeed that one “needed to find One’s Self” to be a “whole person.” That “wholeness,” a unity of selves, appears to be the goal at holistic wellness centers.


To Sum Up


There might be as many reasons for people to go to a wellness center as there are people, but that seems to be a silly statement in light of similarities among humans. Those personality dimensions identified by Jung and refined by Briggs, Briggs-Myers, and Eysenck link all humanity. Someone, maybe you, could identify a limited set of reasons. To a common search for identity and meaning that drives some to those centers, I might add boredom in an affluent society. Even those who have not experienced much of the planet by traveling have nevertheless experienced much vicariously through TV and books (as Emily Dickinson wrote, “There is no frigate like a book”). Many have “seen and done IT ALL” either in person or through those media. What’s left but frivolous luxury?

*50 Psychology Classics.2007.

​As one who has taught both vertebrate and invertebrate paleontology to college students and taken them on field trips to dig fossils, I was attracted to the recent story about billionaires who sought and purchased dinosaur fossils. * Apparently, owning a dinosaur fossil is a status symbol. Hmnnn…Do I belong to an exclusive club of the ultra rich?


Think I’ll go downstairs to stare at the giant dinosaur footprint that’s leaning against the wall. It’s quite heavy, so once I carried it into the house years ago, I haven’t moved it. I’m sorry to say that I haven’t identified the species other than to say it belongs to the theropods like T-Rex and that it, when I see other full skeletons, appears to be from an animal as large as a full grown Allosaurus, but it might be from a juvenile T-Rex. Its origin in Utah’s section of the Upper (Late) Jurassic Morrison Formation makes me think “Allosaurus.”


Dinosaur footprints aren’t dinosaurs, of course. They are “trace” fossils that are evidence of dinosaur presence and that sometimes reveal the herding of dinosaurs. Their spacing also can reveal both the size of the animal (by stride length and depth of the imprint) and its velocity (both the vector of travel and the speed). Often the footprints are easily separated from the matrix rock in which they are found. The reason is that the impression in soft sediment is later infilled by other sediments washed in or blown into the depression. Differences in particle (clast) size between the matrix and the infilling make a boundary of separation. The sizes and compositions of sediments in matrices and infilling, coupled sometimes with plant fossils also found in the area, reveal the nature of the original landscape the dinosaurs crossed. A great display of such environments can be seen at Dinosaur State Park and Connecticut’s dinosaur museum at Rocky Hill that houses Early (Lower) Jurassic footprints. *


So, I guess my trace fossil excludes me from the class of billionaires who own actual T-Rex heads and full skeletons though I do have a friend in that category of wealth. I do on occasion mention to guests that if they want to see the footprint, I’m happy to show them. As impressive as it is to most people, it doesn’t match for me the significance of an even older fossil in my possession, a stromatolite that dates to the Devonian Period (419.2-358.9 MA), that is, millions of years before the first dinosaurs like Alwalkeria maleriensis and Eoraptor walked around Argentina in the Triassic. The stromatolite is upon a cursory look, just a plain dark grey rock. It was formed as bacteria mats and fine sediments accumulated to form mushroom shapes in shallow water as they still do today in Shark Bay, Australia. If fossil age bears significance, I’m one up on owners of dinosaur skeletons.


Take that, you ultra wealthy showoffs with your younger Mesozoic fossils.


*https://nypost.com/2025/02/16/us-news/billionaires-are-bidding-on-dinosaur-bones-as-the-ultimate-status-symbol/


  

Is Hollywood the Left’s main refuge? Is it the site that harbors rudderless ships? And center of counterproductive symbolic acts of virtue signaling?


Selling One’s Tesla


Ever write a college textbook? I have, couple of them, in fact. Made some money with my co-authors on the first printings of the books, and then nothing on the resale via all those college bookstores that repurchase used copies and then resell them for an exorbitant profit.


The point: Car manufacturers make cars and sell them for a profit. They make their money on that first sale. Whatever sales ensue are out of their control; whatever happens to the cars through resale has no effect on them, save in their business in parts that used vehicles might need.


Enter Sheryl Crow, successful singer and song writer, and, I’m guessing, liberal. She just sold her Tesla, I think in protest of Elon Musk’s DOGE’s reclaiming tax money from liberal NPR. * She said the money for the car would go to NPR. Great. Good for her. But, was it bad for Elon Musk?


Didn’t Elon already make a profit from Crow’s original purchase?


And if she is a true believer in global warming, didn’t she just give away her non-fossil-fuel-powered car? That is, non-fossil-fueled if California’s electricity comes from hydro, nuclear, wind, or solar. I think Sheryl is missing something. She isn’t punishing Elon Musk. He made his profit.


Oh! I forgot. There’s that symbolism thing, the virtue signaling. Seems Sheryl wants the government to avoid a thorough audit. Who knows? She might be happy with wasteful and fraudulent spending.


At the Next Gathering of Hollywood Elites


Sheryl might have scored social points with her neighbors by getting rid of her Tesla. No doubt her actions will be the talk at the next party she attends. In ensuing years Elon will continue to make money on parts for used Teslas, and NPR will scramble for contributors like her and advertisers to foot the bills.


*https://nypost.com/2025/02/17/media/fccs-brendan-carr-sarcastically-applauds-sheryl-crows-npr-donation/

Quantum physicists tell us that the vacuum produces virtual particles. Stuff emerges from nothing. For a moment let’s forget the paradoxes, (il)logic, and history of the hypothesis/theory to focus on its manifestation in the macro world, specifically Kamala Harris.


I know. What am I doing? Kicking a dead horse? Picking on the poor woman who spent over a billion bucks of donations on a failed political campaign? Am I reliving the agony of listening to her edited interviews with the sycophantic press?


Let that dead horse lie, Donald. If she returns to politics, it will be in faraway California.


I want to, but the vacuum visited Broadway actors recently to deliver a few motivational words.


Like the physicists’ quantum vacuum that continuously produces virtual particles, the vacuous exVP keeps creating a Cosmos of meaningless word salads and virtual meanings. Not to burden you too much, I’ll merely quote, “When we think about these moments where we see things that are being taken, but also let’s see it, you know, nature abhors a vacuum,” she told the performers.”  *


The comment engenders jokes and comments unsaid on late night talk shows. But here’s one: Did America abhor the vacuum during the last election?


That so many Americans voted for Harris, a truly vacuous person, might reveal either the failure of American education or the success of Leftist ideology. If it’s the former, then the next platitudinous politician on the Left will garner the votes of those Harris supporters. If it’s the latter, then…well, same result.


*Kristen Fleming. NY Post Published Feb. 17, 2025
https://nypost.com/2025/02/17/opinion/kamalas-broadway-word-salad-latest-sign-america-made-the-right-choice-in-november/

Give me a break! A University of Pittsburgh spokesperson just said that cutbacks in NIH grants will eliminate jobs for researchers and research assistants. The National Institutes of Health announced that the cutbacks will limit the funding for indirect costs to 15%. Fifteen percent. I can understand the frustration because those indirect costs have been a gravy train for universities.


One of Those Anecdotes


Called to redo research mandated in five-year intervals by the Pennsylvania legislature, A co-researcher and I approached the University of Pittsburgh and a former student, a professor there, to partner with us on the research. In the initial study, our university had charged the PA DEP 15% override, and I went into the meeting thinking 15% was reasonable, given that the university’s facilities were multipurpose, the electricity, janitor costs, and security were part of ongoing costs already covered. I was surprised when Pitt wanted 50%. Fifty percent. The Commonwealth would be required to cough up half of the projected $200,000 for the research, an amount that would have limited the thoroughness required because we could not hire the same number of assistants we had used five years earlier.


The DOGE Effect


What arguments can research institutes make in the context of cutbacks for indirect costs? Well, some could go outside to sing as DOGE protestors recently did.


I can understand the fright of losing one’s job and the desperate protests of federal workers fired from inefficient, wasteful, and corrupt agencies. But what lies behind the protests? Support for government waste and fraud? The desire (greed) to continue wasting tax money on overpaid federal jobs.   


What, other than decades of lucrative override money, lies behind Pitt’s hyperbole that cutting back to 15% would be disastrous for medical research? Not only has the federal government grown obese, but the universities have also become fat with spending excesses.


DOGE is exposing more than wasteful, inefficient, and corrupt bureaucrats and bureaucracies. It’s exposing all those who sought to take advantage of seemingly unlimited funding.

Carl Campanile: “So much for that green new spiel. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration — facing the heat over Con Edison’s proposed double-digit gas and electric hikes— is stepping up gas production that flies in the face of New York’s controversial green energy law. The administration approved permits to expand the capacity of the 414-mile Iroquois pipeline and pump more natural gas into New York City and southern Connecticut in a move to maintain adequate supply during the coldest days of the year — and avoid freezeouts.” --NY Post, Published Feb. 16, 2025, 5:11 p.m. ET *


“Reality’s a b——h,” isn’t it? More appropriately, reality is often a wake up call. And Governor Kathy Hochul might just now have heard that call. But maybe not.


The expansion of the Iroquois carrying capacity by increasing pumping capacity is attached to a $5 million requirement to mitigate emissions and add EV charging stations. The fear off global warming—sorry, climate change—still motivates the Hochul administration, that persistent current winter cold notwithstanding.


Are There No Creative Thinkers in NY?


Have you noticed that the current cadre of greenies and green elected officials can’t think laterally? That any acquiescence to reality is reluctant and comes with attachment to previous perspectives?


As one who did a study on green technologies for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and who wrote a mitigation policy for the now defunct PA Energy Office, I realize that like the wheels of justice, the perspectives of government officials grind slowly. Once onto a view, they hold it because it becomes livelihood supported by offices, office supplies, staff, reports, and lavish government grants. NY is no exception.


People are cold in a state that banned fracking yet uses fracked natural gas from Canada. Does the word absurd come to mind? And then, “more than absurd” if one thinks of lost sales of LNG to Europe and piped gas to other states with all the attendant jobs. NY’s estimated gas reserves exceed one trillion cubic feet. Ideology is a bummer.


Edward de Bono wrote The Use of Lateral Thinking in 1967, followed by Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step. His term lateral thinking has become so much a part of western culture that it can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary. Someone in the Hochul administration should read his books. NY needs some lateral thinking.


Here are some steps the administration could use as it oversees NY’s energy sector:


     1) Challenge assumptions. The assumed threat of climate change and global warming might not be as serious as Hochul thinks. In fact, for a state that has been in the temperate current Interglacial, the future might lie in a Younger Dryas type of cooling. And the assumption of global warming might not actually have legitimate data supporting it, first because the modern records go back only less than two centuries and second, because much of the current data is extrapolated from a paucity of weather stations (numerous older stations having been abandoned and some spread widely in areas of sparse populations as on the continents of Africa, South America, and Australia).


    2) Reverse thinking. The use and distribution of resources in NY follow a pattern established long before modern technology.What would happen if NY rethought its energy sector in light of modern technology and artificial intelligence. Could $5 million for charging stations and mitigation studies obviate the need for mitigation if it were spent on AI energy controls?
    
     3) Suspended judgment. Under Cuomo, Hochul’s predecessor, NY banned fracking. The policy was adopted relatively quickly. Is it now time to step back to reconsider a decision to lock up a trillion cubic feet of gas?


De Bono has other mechanisms to enhance lateral thinking that might serve NY’s energy officials as they deal with winter cold and summer heat. But in addition to reading his books, Hochul’s crew could ask themselves if the current policy isn’t just a response to and satisfaction of climate alarmists’ shrill demands for a carbon-free NY.


What happens to New Yorkers if the weather runs persistently colder as it did during the Little Ice Age? What happens to the energy grid if NY achieves its goal of all EVs by 2035? We have already seen California’s request for EV owners not to charge their cars during brownouts. Will New Yorkers be happy with such restrictions?


NY definitely needs some lateral thinking; or better, rethinking.
  


*https://nypost.com/2025/02/16/us-news/kathy-hochul-steps-on-the-gas-amid-con-edison-rate-hike-furor/

In The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951) Eric Hoffer explains how mass movements generate or manifest themselves in religious fervor. Leaders of political movements tap into their followers’ desire for change in their lives. Their movements then progress on “extravagant hope.” Recall Obama’s “hope and change” mantra as he first ran for the Presidency and the myriad followers who saw him as some messiah.


According to Hoffer, such movements feed on the followers’ need to rid themselves of an “unwanted self.” Eventually, the need morphs into subservience to a “holy cause” that, in turn, makes identity dependent on fulfillment of that extravagant hope.


Hoffer cites as models the Bolshevik and Nazi revolutions that initially eradicated the feelings of frustration and meaninglessness in the Russian and German populations. As we know now in retrospect, we see how those initial movements turned into the Soviet Union’s erasure of individualism and Nazi Germany’s widespread destruction and death. Ultimately, the promise of extravagant hope not only failed in its original intent, but also reintroduced the frustration and meaninglessness that had motivated people to join the movements. Disillusioned by the failure, the majority of participants abandoned their fervor and found themselves back where they began emotionally, stuck in a present without an escape like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day.


Many Mass Movements


Mass movements are not just “modern” social phenomena. A list isn’t necessary, but a few examples suffice: Christianity’s rise through hard times before it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, Islam’s rise that precipitated Arab conquests that stretched from the Iberian Peninsula to west-central Asia and India, the Crusades of a millennium or so ago, and, in the New World the Great Awakening about a hundred years after passengers disembarked from the Mayflower. The “Awakening” was a mass religious movement led by George Whitefield, an Anglican priest who preached to throngs of people in the Colonies. The crowds were too large for churches, so they had to gather outside, foreshadowing twentieth-century tent revivals. Whitefield’s movement was enhanced intellectually by the Congregational pastor of Northampton * and academician Jonathan Edwards.


If Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) Were Alive in the 21st Century


There are 21st-century parallels, of course, just as there were precursors of the large-scale movements in the 20th century that Hoffer uses as models to illustrate his contentions. Numerous soapbox leaders have inspired people to adopt a “secular religion” often evidenced by fanatical self-sacrifice: From those submitting themselves for sacrifice to Aztec priests on pyramids to Japanese Kamikaze pilots in WWII, to the “martyrs” wearing bomb vests in the Middle East over the past three decades. In fact, Hoffer had discovered nothing new in his social psychology. People have always undertaken a search for identity or Self that begins in dissatisfaction and anxiety. Not finding identity internally, many, especially the young, latched onto an external identity, often associated with a group supporting a common cause. The success of cults stands as an example.


Who Participates?


Hoffer argues that the poor are less likely to join mass movements than the “well off.” But why? He says, “Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less satisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.” I’m not sure he makes the point he wants to make in that sentence, but elsewhere he argues that the poor “are too satisfied with just surviving to be interested in some grand vision.”


Am I wrong in saying the well-off are more likely to join movements? Hoffer says people with unlimited opportunities are attracted to mass movements. Are there modern examples?


The Climate Alarmism Movement


To a lesser degree than sacrificing one’s life on a pyramid or in crashing a plane in a suicidal attack, people like Greta Thunberg and other climate alarmists have joined a movement that has clearly become a belief with an unshakeable dogma. Those outside the movement are labeled either barbarians or heretics. The dogma of the secular religion of climate change has produced crowds that proportionally rival George Whitefield’s enthusiastic followers. Hoffer might argue that the willingness to join today’s alarmism movement stems from a disdain for the present (for nonbelievers, a questionable present). In its place, the “faithful” hope to install an ideal future. The “satan” (adversary) that has imposed a perceived ”evil” on the world isn’t a king or tzar, but rather carbon, the inanimate substance that ironically underlies the lives of those who wish to eliminate it.


In their fervor, climate activists are willing to negatively affect economies built on cheap energy. The promised future, they believe, will somehow remain the same cushy civilization they currently know, but will somehow differ from the present: Civilization will continue with all its benefits under a carbon-free world, or so the leaders promise. And climate alarmism provides each alarmist with an identity tied to association with others in the movement. Want to witness it? Go to COP30, 31, 32, 33…


But every promise runs into the reality of fulfillment and actualization. The real devil is in the details.


The Dangers of Hopes and Dreams


Kristallnacht and similar events make Hoffer’s point that times when“hopes and dreams are loose in the streets,” usually precipitate some sort of disaster. The “disasters” associated with climate change religion have so far been limited to overt attacks on famous artworks and gas guzzlers and insidious, but so far small disruptions of the energy grids, these latter foreshadowing impoverishment in an energy-starved society of the future. The results of fervor in a secular religion, like enthusiasm in any endeavor, result in a letdown, if not disappointment as the promise engenders its opposite.


Mass movements might begin in good intentions, but most of them end in disillusionment and disarray as they drag on toward an ensuing generation and splinter groups begin altering the original vision. The grand vision of Marx became incarnate in Stalin’s killing millions of Russians and North Korea’s “Supreme” leaders Kim II Sung, Kim Jong II, and Kim Jong Un enslaving the population. As any mass movement progresses toward the opposite of its initial promise, enthusiasm wanes, and despair emerges.


Anything Good Come from Mass Movements?


Yeah. Mass movements have produced some good, though usually only temporary. The overthrow of tyrants by mass movements is good at the outset. Dreaming and scheming for a better life and a better world have produced much of the modern world, sure, some of it bad, but also some of it good. Every revolution has dichotomous results.




*Ah! How the world turns! Whitefield and Johnathan Edwards would have been scandalized by a Time magazine article proclaiming Northampton North America’s lesbian capital, a classification echoed by today’s even more encompassing title as “Lesbian Capital of the World” published in the Massachusetts Daily Collegian (https://dailycollegian.com/2023/10/northampton-the-lesbian-capital-of-the-world/) and echoed in the Daily Hampshire Gazette (https://www.gazettenet.com/Keeping-queer-spaces-alive-in-downtown-Northampton-53588752).

Do you think Americans have a good relationship with elected officials and government employees? I ask that in the context of the term public servant. Aren't elected officials and government bureaucrats supposed to serve their constituents? How has this relationship evolved into one that makes constituents subservient to elected officials and government employees? How have those elected and hired to serve turned service into haughty privilege and fraudulent self-serving authoritarianism? Isn't this backward?

Emotional Blackmail

In her Emotional Blackmail: When the People in your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You, Dr. Susan Forward notes six circumstances that indicate when we are being subjected to “emotional blackmail.” One of those she characterizes as someone’s implying that “their [sic.] misery is the result of our noncompliance” (95).*


Haranguing


Avoiding Democrat harangues about Elon Musk, DOGE, and presumed attacks on the Constitution is almost impossible unless one turns off all devices that broadcast news. The diehard liberal media pundits echo what people like Maxine Waters, Chuck Schumer, and California Rep. Robert Garcia have said about the attempts to clean out government fraud and waste. Garcia sits on the extreme end of that group as he has called for bringing “actual weapons” in the “fight for democracy.” Threat? Emotional blackmail?


Forward says that emotional blackmailers use FOG  to intimidate and to bend people to their wills. FOG is her acronym for fear, obligation, and guilt. All three of the above mentioned Democrats have used FOG in their harangues. Here’s a model of how it works:


    1) The blackmailer makes a demand. “Rehire all the fired government employees in USAID and restore all funding.
    2) The target resists.
    3) The blackmailer exerts pressure: “If you can’t commit to stopping this insane rifling through government files, maybe you are           a Russian spy.”
    4) If the target continues to resist, the blackmailer makes either subtle or overt threats, as Garcia did.


It hasn’t worked because many Americans have grown tired of paying taxes for fraudulent and wasteful bureaucrats. Not many voters would say, “You’re right. We should have fraud and waste. I don’t care what you do with my tax dollars. In fact, spend more of it on projects devoted to social engineering in other countries, helping Taliban poppy farmers in Afghanistan, and college educations for terrorists.”


According to Forward, “Blackmailers always try to make out that their motives are superior to ours, and that there is something wrong with us, for example that we’re selfish and uncaring” (97). It’s this “we not only know better than you, but we ARE also better than you” attitude that is on display in D.C. at this time.


Some Will Acquiesce


Experience tells us that many Americans will acquiesce under such blackmail. Many will simply buy into the faulty reasoning and hyperbole, giving no thought to the realities of actual fraud and waste. Many will acquiesce through fear, just as many have acquiesced under the “existential threat” of climate.


You can attempt to reason with emotional blackmailers, but they are, in fact, just bullies trying to bludgeon compliance into their targets. You won’t change their minds.


My advice: Ignore them and be happy that finally someone is actually cutting out fraud and waste.


*Butler-Bowdon, 2007. Tom. “Chapter 16,” 50 Psychology Classics.

Government waste is the proverbial “monkey on one’s back.” And it’s hard to shake off. Currently, DOGE is trying to lift the “monkey” of waste from the back of Uncle Sam, but a number of Democrats are helping the monkey hold on. Why?


I suppose it would be too much to ask the liberal media’s pundits to ask Democrats the simple question, “Why do you support waste and fraud?” And as a corollary, to ask Republicans, “Why haven’t you done anything to eliminate waste and fraud?” Both parties have been complicit in the snowballing of fraud and waste.


A Previously Told Anecdote


During Bush II’s presidency, I was called into a state representative’s office to discuss redoing research I had done on greenhouse gas emissions. The young representative, a Democrat, and his chief of staff, were intent on doing something that would put Republicans and particularly George Bush II in a bad light. They thought the energy/global warming issue was their best option. As we discussed the nature of the research necessary for the project, the representative asked, “How much would such a study cost?”


I thought for a minute or two, calculating the number of graduate research assistants I would need and the totals for their salaries, any materials, and travel, eventually saying—this was in early 2000—“about $60,000-65,000.” The representative looked shocked, and then said, “Is that all? It seems like so little.”


I said, “Look, I am a taxpayer. If I balloon the cost, I’m taking money I’ll have to pay along with other taxpayers. No, legitimately, I can do the study for that amount, maybe less; I have always come in under budget.”


He then pulled back in his chair, and said, “When I came to Harrisburg, I was enthused to tackle the problem of government waste. But I didn’t realize how big the problem was. These politicians think nothing of spending or throwing tax money at anything that will buy them votes. Politicians have “walking-around money” they’ll give to their local community for a parade, for example, or for improvement in a local firehall’s ballroom. The scale of spending is just too large to control; representatives and senators all have their hands in the till. Everyone is spend-happy. I was expecting you to say ‘well over $100,000 for the study, maybe $200,000.’”


I’ve told that story before, so, sorry if you’ve heard it. But it seems germane to the current news about DOGE, excesses in government spending, and outright fraud. It also says something about purposes for which politicians spend money. The chief of staff and the young politician were motivated (the latter, I believe, convinced by the former) by their political desire to negatively affect Bush and other Republicans.


I never did the research the representative and I discussed as the national conversation switched to the 9-11 attacks. In looking back, I’m happy that that ship sailed without me, but I did another and larger study for Pennsylvania on developing “green energy technologies” that I believed would be supplemental to fossil fuels but that wouldn’t replace them. Little did I know how “off the deep end” Democrats would go in trying to eliminate fossil fuels and in spending untold tax money on projects to achieve that goal.


As I have said elsewhere, I did the Commonwealth’s study on greenhouse gas emissions, a study that was funded by the USEPA through the Pennsylvania Energy Office, and one that the USEPA said it would use as a model for the other states to follow. Had I known at the time how politicized carbon dioxide would become, I might not have done that initial study. Mine and others’ similar studies became the basis for all the wasted dollars spent on projects, such as Solyndra. Such studies also motivated Obama’s and then Biden’s war on coal, oil, and natural gas that provided America with cheap energy. If we could only recover all the money thrown at global warming/climate change that enriched people and quashed fossil fuels without affecting global temperature…Well, that’s water that has passed over the dam of recovery.


The Democrat Mindset: Another Anecdote


Of course, no anecdote is proof of anything, and even a plethora of anecdotes don’t add to confirmation of anything. Inductive thinking never leads to unshakeable proof because there’s always something more to add or an exception. Nevertheless, I have a strong belief that Democrats believe throwing money at a problem is the only path to a solution.


I was on a field trip with college students sometime before my meeting I mentioned above. Dressed for climbing over rocks in Vermont and New Hampshire one morning, I went for coffee and donuts in the Montpelier hotel where I often stayed with students because 1) it was cheap and 2) if you’ve ever been to Montpelier, VT, you know the little capital isn’t a Mecca with numerous hotels. Anyway, as I entered the hotel’s free breakfast room, I saw a couple of tables occupied by Vermont representatives and senators, the men in suits and the women in dresses, who were going into sessions in the Capitol that morning. They were engaged in talk that led me to believe all were Democrats. I heard, “Yeah, Bush doesn’t want to do anything about energy” and other similar comments.”


Standing at the coffee pot across the room, I turned and interrupted their conversation. Now, picture this. I was unshaven, dressed in old jeans, a hoody, and wearing work boots, pretty much looking like a homeless man who sneaked in for the free donuts. Startled and a bit afraid that I was about to attack, they all grew silent and looked as I said, “Excuse me, I hear you want George Bush to do something about energy.” Some sheepishly nodded. I continued, “So, let me get this straight, you want George Bush to do something about energy, but you are all seated by the big picture window through which that morning sunlight is streaming. Yet not one of you thought to turn off the lights. Do you want George Bush to fly up from D.C. to flip the switch for you? And I have to ask, since you all stayed in the hotel. Did you use just a single towel this morning or two towels. You know it takes energy to wash towels. Also, I hope everyone carpooled to get here for your sessions. That would have saved energy.” The room fell silent as I picked up my styrofoam coffee cup, wished them all a good day, and left. I’m guessing that they did not return to their conversation about how Bush didn’t do anything about energy through some project funded through a government agency.


Government Spending Is Really Bureaucratic Spending


The monkey of waste is on the government’s back because people like those in Montpelier and elsewhere expect the government to fund solutions. But the funding is never precise, and once put in the hands of bureaucrats, it goes to whatever they choose to do with it, including egregious expenditures like that infamous GSA conference in Las Vegas that cost taxpayers more than $800,000. *


Unproductive conferences and unnecessary travel are par for government agencies. After the GSA scandal, the Obama Administration instituted new regulations on conferences, but still allowed agencies to throw conferences that cost up to $500,000. According to an article by Eric Katz, reducing the amount an agency could spend on conferences saved millions (see *). But agencies to this year have still run to or held conferences, spending tens of thousands—or more on each.


The only way to ensure a savings is to reduce the bureaucracy. It’s the monkey on Uncle Sam’s back.


*Katz, Eric. Looking Back at the GSA Scandal: Did the Administration Overreact?
https://www.govexec.com/management/2015/01/looking-back-gsa-scandal-did-administration-overreact/103764/