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/

Want to try for a job at Disney? First look in the mirror; get good selfies from multiple angles. Then go to Walt Disney World and look around. Pay attention to the employees, especially those performance artists on stages across the four parks. Think you’ll fit in?


Wait! Don’t go just yet. Stop first to read “Disney dumps two DEI programs as investors pressure company to ax more woke initiatives: SEC filing” by Alexandra Steigrad.* The article reveals that “Disney is reportedly pulling back on its diversity, equity and inclusion policies — the latest major company to walk back the woke initiatives amid pressure from activist investors and the Trump administration.” But that’s not all:


“The company has also dropped its “The Disney Look” appearance guidelines from the DEI section in its SEC filing.”


Now, I’m not sure what that Disney Look is exactly, but I’m guessing I don’t have it. Anyway, could you imagine all this taking place before Walt made that first Mickey Mouse cartoon in 1928? I can see the tryouts with various rodentia showing up with vitae in their little hands. The interviewer says, “Sorry, we’re after a different look. Does anyone here have a rat or mouse relative to recommend?”


*NY Post. Feb. 10, 2025, Online at  https://nypost.com/2025/02/10/media/disney-dumps-two-dei-programs-as-investors-pressure-company/

Have you noticed the goings on in Washington, D.C.? USAID employees and politicians, the former concerned about their jobs and the latter about their power, are out protesting efficiency. Seems their values lie in inefficiency. Whodathunkit? And who would have associated Democrats with government overreach, wasteful spending, and Leftist initiatives?


So, it seems that the Democrats are screaming, “The barbarians are at the gates” mirroring the panicked Romans crying "Hannibal is at the gates."
 
This means, of course, “Elon Musk’s DOGE is looking at the books, looking at government spending on behalf of the President. Wouldn’t want Senator Chuck Schumer and other senators trying to do something about wasteful spending, would we? The current political kerfuffle in D.C. and in the liberal media was foreshadowed in a poem called “Waiting for the Barbarians,” by Constantine Cavafy (1864-1923). Consider this stanza:


    Because the barbarians are coming today.
    What laws can the senators make now?
    Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.
    Why did our emperor get up so early,
    and why is he sitting at the city’s main gate
    on his throne, in state, wearing the crown? *


There they are, those outraged senators, congressmen and congresswomen, standing guard, fists raised, sitting “at the city’s main gate” promising that no one—no barbarian like Elon Musk—will enter those buildings and look at those financial books. But what if Elon Musk’s barbarians didn’t show up at government offices? What then? What would be done about the government waste? Would anybody ever do something about it? Cavafy tells us:


    Because the barbarians are coming today
    and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.
    Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
    (How serious people’s faces have become.)
    Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
    everyone going home so lost in thought?
    Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
    And some who have just returned from the border say
    there are no barbarians any longer.
    And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
    They were, those people, a kind of solution.

So, if Elon Musk and DOGE don’t show up at the gates, will anyone in the government do something about cutting out wasteful spending? As the government grew over decades of mindless expansion and foolish misuse of public wealth by uninhibited government employees, no one, no Democrat, no Republican, no Independent, no “Democratic Socialist” did anything of consequence to stop the reckless spending. The only solution to waste is the arrival of barbarians who have no compunction about eliminating that waste, sparing no agency in the process.

NOW is different. Now a President has ordered an examination of government spending.

I suppose Schumer et al. will keep crying, “We weren’t warned. No one consulted us.” The argument they make is that Musk wasn’t elected. Isn’t that the same argument one can make for the USAID employees who spent untold (as yet) millions on projects like transgenderism and DEI in foreign countries? Expenditures for which no one was held accountable.
The unwarranted accusations of treason, revolution, overthrow, coup, and whatever other words they choose to throw out for consumption by liberal pundits reminds me of a story told by Boethius (480-524): The Emperor Caligula accused Canius of being involved in a plot against him. Canius responded,”If I had known of it, you would not.”

Thus, the assassination of reckless spending and unnecessary jobs has occurred. If Schumer had been warned (He actually was in the campaign words of Donald Trump), he might have gotten the Senate to enact laws against an audit and against a presidential appointee’s having access to the books. If he had known, he might have warned the USAID to cook the books. Probably only a few Romans outside the sphere of Praetorian tribunes Cassius Chaerea and Cornelius Sabrina’s closest friends knew of the plot to assassinate Caligula. As the Wikipedia writer puts it, Very few conspirators would have been involved, and not all need have been directly in touch with each other. The fewer who knew, the greater the chance of success.”

That the Democrats and government employees who were directly responsible for the waste of taxes did not know about the reality of Elon's coming, mirrors the Caligula story:  The fewer who knew, the greater the chance of success. Elon is at the gates. The analogs in ancient Roman history abound. It’s a cry like “Hannibal is at the gates!” And panic is raging in the Senate as it must have raged during Nero’s fire.


*https://boards.straightdope.com/t/origin-of-phrase-barbarians-at-the-gate/304655/2

Conversation in the student union coffee shop between a humanities professor (Art) and a dean of student life (Life).


Life: We’re getting more complaints than ever.


Art: About?


Life: Just about everything. It’s hard to keep up: Appropriation, word choice, materials, topics. It seems that whatever you profs say triggers someone who then asks my office for a safe space or the academic dean’s office for disciplinary action against professors or other students.


Art: I heard that Professor Smith in literature was under scrutiny for teaching Shakespeare and Martin in biology was called in for showing anatomy drawings.


Life: Yes. Gone are the days when someone could teach the “classics” like the Iliad, Macbeth, and The Red Badge of Courage. Students find the violence and reality  upsetting. By the way, what are you teaching this semester?


Art: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India.


Life: Geez. You’re just going to cause me grief. Works on war and colonialism. Well, all I can say is “Expect protests” and a tribunal for your insensitivity. Also, paperwork and probation. The Board seems to favor the triggered over someone who triggers.


Art: So, what are you saying? I should abandon teaching anything that “might” trigger some coddled rich kid?


Life: Practically. Choose something innocuous like The Berenstain Bears, Peter Pan, or Harry Potter.
Art: Have you been sleeping under a rock? All three of those have been triggers. Berenstain’s mother bear for being a stay-at-home mom who cooks, cleans, and does dishes as a slave to husband and family. Peter Pan’s Indians for the portrayal of Native
Americans as unsophisticated and rather stupid savages, and Harry Potter for its portrayal of death. There’s no predicting what will trigger today’s snowflakes who seek safe spaces. No author’s work is free from the whims of the easily triggered. Take the
Bard for example. According to a UK Telegraph article by Tom McArdle,


    The University of the West of England (UWE) has issued warnings for “blood” and “psychological trauma” in Macbeth as well as “storms” and “extreme weather” in The Tempest. One theatre show of the shipwreck play was highlighted for containing the “popping of balloons”. [sic.] *


Shakespeare! Dean, Shakespeare! The sacred bard’s plays are “triggers.” And balloons!


Life: Tell me about it. I’ve been in contact with my counterpart in the U. of Nottingham after the school banned the use of Anglo-Saxon in a course title, replacing it with “Viking and Early Medieval English Studies.”


Art: What? As part of my literature studies I had to take Anglo-Saxon to be able to read Beowulf. Sure, it could be called Old English, but that doesn’t erase the history of the people who spoke and wrote it. And what are “early Medieval English studies if not studies in Anglo-Saxon and the history of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes?


Life: Look, you’re preaching to the choir, here. We’ve had people complain about paintings in the school’s museum and in texts used by the Art Department. Everything is potentially offensive…even White on White, especially after students hear that it is Kazimir Malevich’s 1918 suprematist composition. White on White! That’s even worse than being triggered by MacBeth or pictures of human anatomy.


Art: We’re doomed. It won’t take a nuclear war to annihilate civilization. A few vocal snowflakes will destroy it just as effectively.


*https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/07/university-west-england-shakespeare-trigger-warnings/

A while back I wrote about the politicization of Scientific American and the demise of science writing under its former editor Laura Helmuth (11/15/24 Well, Shuck My Corn and Call Me Doofus). Well, it seems that even after Helmuth’s resignation, the periodical is still wallowing in social engineering, Leftist ideology, and probably, though not demonstrably, TDS. I had not paid attention to the magazine since the Helmuth controversy, so I’m thankful that Cory Franklin * recently reported on the nonsense that has polluted the once fertile soil of science popularization. Franklin excerpts an article that relates feminism to climate, revealing how insidious the intellectual pollution of absurd reasoning based on unwarranted assumptions has demeaned science.

Scientific American’s op-ed piece  “How feminism can guide climate change by action” contains the following passage::


    “Feminism gives us the analysis, tools and movement to create a better climate future . . . Climate policymaking needs to take into account the expertise that women, including indigenous and rural women, bring to bear on issues like preserving ecosystems and environmentally sustainable agriculture . . . We must redistribute resources away from male-dominated, environmentally harmful economic activities towards those prioritizing women’s employment, regeneration and care for both people and ecosystems.”


How Did We Get Here?


You don’t need me to point out all that is wrong with the excerpt. When I read it, I immediately thought of the expression attributed to Wolfgang Pauli ( "Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig; es ist nicht einmal falsch!” **) in its shortened version, “not even wrong,” it is an expression that is akin to saying about my current running speed on bad knees, “Don would have to speed up just to stop.”


But it’s hard not to vent. What does “feminism gives us the analysis” mean? What kind of “tools” does feminism provide? Protests? What’s meant by “indigenous women"? A Native American growing corn in a semiarid land? An aboriginal in Australia? A white woman whose family has lived in the Americas for several centuries or a European woman whose roots go back to Angles, Saxons, and Jutes? And just what are “male-dominated, environmentally harmful economic activities”? Are those the same activities that provide feminists with all the modern conveniences? Or, YES, maybe that’s what Scientific American’s editors mean: Go back to subsistence farming and hunting. Go back to eating roots, seeds, and berries found in the wild. Go back to darkness at night in a world without tooth brushes and toilet paper.


This is not even nonsense!


That recent op-ed reveals how far away from scientific thinking and writing Scientific American has wandered. Although I’ve never considered the magazine to be a bellwether for the scientific community, I have long considered it to be a mirror of what is happening in science and scientific writing. In years gone by I considered the magazine to be a goto site for up-to-date summaries of current scientific knowledge and cutting-edge hypotheses. No more.


Blame me. No, not me, rather blame my generation and maybe the one before mine for educating the Laura Helmuths in control of science today. Born into a society ripe for the proliferation of academics housed in tenure-ridden institutions that multiplied like rabbits, many of my contemporaries did what I call “research-research,” that is, they focused their efforts on producing “more of the same,” often merely providing neologisms for previous terminology and documented phenomena. Yes, some scientific advances occurred, most of it technology-based. But the pre-Galilean pressure to conform resurfaced as a science driver. How many journals published contrarian articles on climate science?


Climate Science?


Once the “97% myth” spread, it overwhelmed most efforts to revive true inquisitiveness. As science turned into belief, it started an avalanche of articles pinning any phenomena—from disease to anxieties to weather events—on climate change.


Unscience, if I may coin a word, prevails in various intellectual endeavors, but one stands out from my perspective: “Climate “science.” That thousands of “scientists” attend the annual COPs is dismaying to me because I know many go for the party, and many go on some government’s dime. Conference of the Parties’ annuals aren’t Solvay. There’s no argument between a deterministic Einstein and a Copenhagen Bohr. Everyone is deterministic: There is no science save a predetermined future of rising temperatures and seas, increased storm intensities and droughts, and atmospheric rivers and Siberian Expresses.


Never fear. Scientific American has revealed the mechanism that will stop the inexorable warming, and it is feminism.
   
*https://nypost.com/2025/02/06/opinion/how-scientific-american-sacrificed-science-for-progressive-politics/

**"That is not only not right; it is not even wrong.” Peter Woit used “not even wrong” for his book blasting string theory: Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Search for Unity in Physical Law

After four years of Joe Biden’s walking around and appearing lost, there’s little surprise in the Democrats’ latest mental wanderings into the land of exaggeration and fibs.Looking for a unifying cause, they are now rallying around illegal immigration and wasteful spending, spreading lies and hyperbole. Among the latest examples of both exaggeration and lying is Governor Murphy’s hint that he, like Hermine "Miep" Gies Santrouschitz, was protector of the oppressed and persecuted. Like Miep who hid Anne Frank, Murphy suggested he was housing an illegal alien in his garage attic. Turns out he was, in the I’ve-been-caught-in-a-lie-words of Democrats like Hillary Clinton, “misspeaking.” Running contemporaneously on the lie meter was the statement by Governor Pritzker that ICE raided an elementary school—No, it was the Secret Service after someone who had made a threat. The implication? A heartless ICE was scaring little kids and trying to separate them from their parents.


Without regard for the American citizens affected by illegal alien gang members in New Jersey and Illinois, both governors have used lies and exaggeration to support the party line that Trump is a dictator-fascist-Nazi-Russian-racist-felon-operative without concern for the poor and downtrodden. The gang activities were inconsequential, they intimated. Add to that narrative Trump’s obsession with excluding men from women’s sports, locker rooms, and restrooms. Where, one might ask, is a young girl to go to learn about male anatomy if not in a women’s locker room?   


We Are the World


This morning I turned on CBS’s news to see a reporter's interview in Sudan that a temporary cessation in funding by USAID will lead to suffering and death. Remind anyone of the Ethiopian crisis that inspired singers to raise money? The report focused on a kid whom doctors helped. Without that help…Yeah, millions will starve and little kids will go without food and medical care. Need to feel guilty? Pull up that TV segment on your smart phone as you drink your morning coffee and munch on your scone at Starve-bucks.


So, how is eliminating money spent on condoms in Gaza, comic books and musicals on transgenderism in Peru and Ireland, and DEI In Serbia going to feed Sudanese? By the way, as the late comic Sam Kinison once said about starving kids in eastern Africa, “Surely, the reporter and film crew could have given the kid a sandwich.” And just as surely, the reporter could have said that the focus on USAID by Elon Musk was on wasteful spending that is not in the interest of desperate humanity in general and US in particular. How, Mr. USAID employee and Senator Schumer, as you stand in protest in front of TV cameras, does funding a play on transgenderism in a foreign country serve either? How does supporting DEI in a foreign country serve American interests?


In the Cookie Jar


The mainstream media can’t seem to shake off their affinity for the Democratic Party. The loyalty of the press prevents them from asking serious questions about how the government is run or how government employees serve Democrats first and the
American people second. It hasn’t occurred to the media to ask about the relationship between government employees and the Democratic Party as evidenced by contributions. Democrats really do have their hands in the cookie jar: In the 2024 election cycle, USAID staff made a total of $406,790 in political contributions, according to data collected on OpenSecrets. More than half of that, $241,079, went to the former Vice President Kamala Harris. Only $999 — a quarter of a percent — went to President Donald Trump.” (Source: Daily Wire at https://joemiller.us/2025/02/97-of-political-contributions-from-usaid-employees-went-to-dems/ ) This relationship between Democrats and government employees has evolved with the burgeoning number of people who work in the government’s growing agencies. And there’s virtually no oversight with clout—at least not until now and DOGE. An obvious, if unspoken, relationship exists between USAID employees and the Democrats.


So, now, the work of DOGE has motivated the Democrats to go once again for impeachment. “Who elected Elon Musk,” they shout. To counter, I would ask, “Who elected the USAID employees who pushed an alphabet agenda on American taxpayers and made transgenderism in foreign countries an issue worth funding? Who among the unelected agency’s officials decided that a transgender play is more important than feeding that Sudanese kid?

The waste and fraud are hard to ignore because the numbers are big, really, really big: Billions of bucks.

In 2023 Richard Lardner, Jennifer McDermott, and Aaron Kessler reported for the AP that "fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another $123 billion was wasted or misspent." * 

Spending, one might think, is supposed to be in the national interest. Ask yourself if you deem the following expenditures by USAID to be in the national interest:

• $1.5 million to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities”
• $70,000 for production of a “DEI musical” in Ireland
• $2.5 million for electric vehicles for Vietnam
• $47,000 for a “transgender opera” in Colombia
• $32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru
• $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala
• $6 million to fund tourism in Egypt **

Tourism in Egypt? Let's guess: People have never heard of the pyramids, Khartoum, and the Valley of Kings.

DEI in Serbia? A DEI musical in Ireland? 

Your money. My money. Someone at the Plain of Nazca on the Andes' Pampas de Jumana reading a comic book on transgenderism to a llama? 

That so many politicians on both sides of the aisle have permitted this runaway waste to continue over the past 75 years is in itself a crime against the American people.

So, yes, now there's an elephant in the room, and hopefully, no one will be able to ignore it.



*https://apnews.com/article/pandemic-fraud-waste-billions-small-business-labor-fb1d9a9eb24857efbe4611344311ae78
**https://www.whitehouse.gov/uncategorized/2025/02/at-usaid-waste-and-abuse-runs-deep/ 


​

This was a tough one. After writing my last blog, I started to write about America’s current revolution, then enfolded by doubts that I could NOT in a short blog cover the complex goings-on in 2024-2025, I stopped because any revolution is better understood in retrospect than during its occurrence. What could I possibly discern from my perspective inside my times that my readers couldn’t better discern? As one inside a galaxy is relegated to surmising the galaxy’s shape, I am—if there is indeed a revolution occurring now—enveloped by a process too encompassing to envision. I would only exhibit hubris by saying, “I know where all this is headed.” Nevertheless…(the hubris surfaces, lol)…


Revolutions Fast, Slow, Lingering


Because our brains have a tendency to compress past events, most revolutions seem to have developed quickly; and whereas that’s true (relatively) for some coups, many revolutions are turtle slow. Think of revolution in art, for example. Expressionism seen from today’s perspective appears to have sprung up overnight. But between Edvard Munch (The Scream, 1893) and Paul Klee (Castle and Sun, 1928) 32 years of revolution occurred with lingering influences nearly a century later. Just go to a modern art gallery or even into a high school art class to see its lingering effect. Better yet, go into some wellness center where people paint their feelings.  Or think of the philosophical revolution that bred existentialism; seemingly born from the writings of Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, it gradually matured in the twentieth century as it spread into literature, psychology, and film. Chances are good that you are in part an existentialist and that you know someone with “existential” anxiety over matters like climate change, potential pandemics, cancer, and nuclear war.


Sociopolitical Revolutions


Our biological reproduction is often mirrored in political reproduction. One generation of conservatives or liberals largely finds its political leanings carried on by the ensuing generations, ensuring sociopolitical stability. A red-and-blue election map of states reveals the areas where this stability has endured through at least a few generations, with markedly blue areas along the western and northeast coasts. Change in blue or in predominantly red states is slow, but there are the rebellious children who break from tradition to forge in their inexperienced minds a “new” world. The rebellious children then engender an oppositional tendency in offspring with the potential to overthrow the political affinities of grandparents, great grandparents, etc. Immediately, this pattern begs the question of whether or not the recent electoral shift from blue to red in the upper Midwest foreshadows a longterm political change. In retrospect, we will know.


Sociopolitical revolutions have occurred both rapidly (through violence) and slowly (with demographic changes). Stable political control can endure many vicissitudes in an overall national society, but local changes precipitate the rise of opposition in a particular city, state, or region. Go to Montpelier, Vermont, today, engage in a coffee shop discussion with a local politician or resident, and ask yourself if you are really in Vermont or have somehow been transported into Eugene, Oregon. Vermont was a Republican stronghold from 1853 to 1958. In the middle of the last century, the population grew rapidly as outsiders moved into the state. By 1970 those immigrants made up one-fourth of the Green State’s population, many of the new residents Left-leaning New York ex patriots. The influx of outsiders and their offspring subtly changed the politics until the Supreme Court ordered a redistricting that favored Democrats that culminated in Bernie Sanders, the self-proclaimed Democratic-Socialist.


Numerous states’ and cities’ political trajectories also mimic demographic changes fast and slow. Baltimore and Chicago come to mind. Baltimore has not had a republican on its council since 1939. Electing one would be revolutionary. Chicago has no republicans among its alderpersons and hasn’t had a republican mayor since 1931. With regard to the megalopolis from of Baltimore to Alexandria, one could reasonably guess that such an area became increasingly more Democratic because of government expansion, the many resident federal employees favoring Big Government Democrats who will preserve their lucrative jobs with almost unbridled spending that maintains agencies.


We of the Radio- and TV-homogenized Generations


Although regional differences do exist in the United State, allowing one to identify “a Southerner,” “Midwesterner,” or New Englander,” most Americans share a rather homogenized culture probably because of the ubiquity of first radio, then television, and now social media. You and I have no difficulty finding entertainment and news stories meaningful across the spectrum of American cultures and subcultures. We Americans get one another because of this homogenization, and proof of this lies in unified nationwide responses to extreme events like the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Twin Towers.   


In a largely homogenized country like the United States, political power is difficult to change because the majority holds nearly similar values. Political inertia fostered by this homogenization is difficult to overcome without a revolutionary philosophical or demographic change. Also, a democratic republic, especially one incarnate in and across a big government, resists rapid change. America’s political power is spread out, so to speak, in the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of government that are all backed by a strong military and police force dedicated to preserving the nation and its many political local entities from enemies both foreign and domestic. Thus, a revolution akin to the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions is extremely difficult if not impossible in the United States. I don’t know about you, but I had difficulty believing that the January 6 riot at the Capitol was a "revolution” akin to storming the Bastille.         


Here’s a simplification: The smaller the number of people in control of state power, the quicker and more dramatic the initial revolutionary movement. The overthrow of tzars (Caesars) and kings stand as evidence best exemplified in the famous “Et tu, Brute” assassination of Julius Caesar and the assassinations of other Roman emperors. The American, French, Chinese, and Russian revolutions burst the confining walls of political control in relatively short times punctuated from our perspective by their initial years: 1776, 1789, 1911,1917. Those revolutions did, of course undergo a decade or more of evolution till a new “stability” was reached (with a second revolution by USSR satellite countries in 1989, this more recent revolution being remarkable because of the tight controls of a police state).


In contrast to the assassinations of kings like Charles I of England and Louis XVI of France, the assassinations of American presidents in no way engendered revolutions like those elsewhere. The American government and the society it oversees continued without teetering on collapse.   


Those (In)famous Historical Revolutions


I hesitate to rely on a lengthy recap by an expert on revolutions, but here’s summary by Theda Skocpol:


    “Prerevolutionary France, Russia, and China all had well-established imperial states with proven capacities to protect their own hegemony and that of the dominant classes against revolts from below. Before social revolutions could occur, the administrative and military power of these states had to break down” (285). * Skocpol then writes that “it was not because of deliberate activities to break down” the military structure by revolutionaries, but rather because of “cross-pressures between intensified military competition or intrusions from abroad and constraints imposed on monarchical responses by the existing agrarian class structures and political institutions.” Basically, the old regimes could not meet military and other international exigencies…"Once the old-regime states had broken apart, fundamental political and class conflicts were set in motion, not to be resolved until new administrative and military organizations were consolidated in the place of the old.” This set the context for peasant and working class inclusion in the newly formed autonomous states.


Overthrowing the Deep State


Many, if not all, states are layered entities, a surface government of known officials and a deep state government comprised of a myriad of agents who can manipulate in anonymity. It is one thing to overthrow the known officials and quite another to overthrow the unknown government agents that use the government to further an agenda and control state power over citizens. These anonymous operatives hide in big government agencies.


Right now, the Democrats and their friends in the Press are expressing concerns over the “Trump revolution.” The newly elected President  says he wants to clean up the political activists who have weaponized the government, and that means a loss of power among Democrats who know they have had the support of both the Press and the deep state.


Are we in the midst of a revolution against the American deep state? If it is a matter of those anonymous agents, the current President with the help of a new cabinet, seems to favor overturning much of the power the previous administration vested in both the surface and deep state, the latter peopled by FBI agents like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page whose anonymity was erased by the release of their anti-Trump emails. **


Of course, there are those whose interrupted agendas will motivate them to do what they can to salvage their power, that is, the power they have increased under the previous three administrations as the government grew steadily into a cadre of 2.1 million employees drunk on agendas fueled by regulations become de facto laws. Or think of the power vested in the Justice Department that allowed the surveillance of 200,000+ Americans, many supposedly for frivolous reasons or that fostered spying on Catholics, called parents who attended school board meetings “domestic terrorists,” or sent fully armed agents to arrest a Pro-Lifer and jailed a grandmother for praying outside an abortion clinic. ***


The Power of the Press in Revolutions


A complicit Press through propaganda helped USSR’s (and now Russia’s) dictators maintain power. If political leaders weaponize the media and agencies on their behalf, they win the battle for the majority of minds because, as Isa Blagden wrote, “If a lie is only printed often enough, it becomes a quasi-truth, and if such a truth is repeated often enough, it becomes an article of belief.” **** Haven’t we seen enough of that over the last eight years of Russian Collusion, Laptop lies supported by 51 intelligence agents and  shackled social media outlets, and Wokism gone wild? The lies spread by a “deep state” and people like Adam Schiff were sufficient enough to get a president impeached. Similarly, a Press in the back pocket of the Democratic Party kept many Americans from seeing the mental decline of Joe Biden, or from responding with outrage at the debacle of the Afghanistan withdrawal.


Baby Steps on the Road to True Revolution


A successful revolution is often as much the product of the Press as it is the work of revolutionaries. As a consequence, an entrenched government is more difficult to oust when the Press supports it. It seems to me surprising, therefore, that Trump without Press support won the election and that Biden and Harris, propped up by the Press, lost the election. The 2025 American regime change appears to have occurred in spite of media support or lack thereof.


Even in the context of Trump’s victory, the media cannot relinquish their ties to the Democrats in this second week of the Trump presidency. One reporter at the first Press Room meeting with Karoline Leavitt mimicked Elizabeth Warren’s hypocritical cry, “Why haven’t the prices come down?” with “Why haven’t egg prices come down?” Somehow prices were not on the minds of Democrats and the media during the past four years, even when Bidenomics skyrocketed inflation to 9% and egg prices rose for a couple of reasons last year, one being the cost of fuel and the other being the culling of millions of sick chickens. Eggs. Yes, the new talking point for liberal media pundits and hypocritical politicians is the price of eggs. The question about egg prices reminds me of that which the Democrats and the Press asked a week or two after Bush initiated the 2007 “surge of troops”: “Why isn’t the war over yet?” Democrats and the liberal pundits asked. Can anyone remember reporters asking Biden during the nine percent inflation period when prices would come down?


Priorities Will Out


I don’t think the public is as prone to accept the media’s and politicians’ concerns as they were during the last 30 years because those concerns seem to be 1) purely politically motivated and  2) frivolously detached from reality (especially the reality of everyday life in the context of bad policies that emptied a California reservoir and hydrants, opened sanctuary cities to illegal immigrants, including criminals, and made diesel and gas more expensive). The priorities of daily life take precedence over the pundits’ narratives. Those priorities seem to have driven voters to reelect Trump and oust Democrats.


The Revolution: Alternative News Sources


The proliferation of YouTube videos and a gajillion podcasts, X posts, TikTok, and other social media that can expose hypocrites, liars, and their lies has had more than a little effect on the dissemination of information. Plus, the reality of ever tightening government controls with detrimental influence on freedoms and personal finances has awakened people to the evils of Big Government in the hands of little minds. The current shakeup in liberal media circles seems to reflect a public grown tired of the staid narratives that 1) conservative policies are inhumane, racist, and misogynist and that 2) liberal policies that drain the country’s treasure for nonessential pie-in-the-sky ideals, such as special interest groups’ social engineering projects, are supposedly good.


Maybe we really are in the midst of a revolution.


Liberal Media and Politicians Temporarily Lost in a Limbo of Their Own Making


Struggling with the loss by their favored party, many media outlets just can’t let go of their ties to the liberal narratives, as a recent cover of New York Magazine demonstrates: A cropped photo shows only white party attendees at an affair hosted by African-American CJ Pearson and attended by numerous other Black American Trump supporters. ***** The cover and its implication that MAGA is exclusively white reminds me of liberal Keith Olbermann’s decrying the “whiteness” of a Republican administration and then posing with his all-white production support staff. NY Magazine’s editorial staff, by the way, is dominated by white people. That kind of blatant hypocrisy convinces me that that the media are either pawns or corrupt.


Selena Gomez Sees the Removal of Criminal Aliens as Heartless but Does Not See the Heartless Rapes and Murders of American Citizens by Illegal Criminal Aliens


All revolutions involve perceptions. The dominant perception of those on the Left during the past half century or so seems to be that conservatives are ruthless and heartless exploiters only bent on enriching themselves. And taking their cue from Isa Blagden (see above), Liberals have repeated the charge of ruthlessness against conservatives enough that it has become belief embedded in the minds of Hollywood elites and Leftist pundits. Ironically, this perception has been forwarded to millions in the working class by some very wealthy people.


Overturning any belief is the toughest revolution to make, but it is the first step toward a true intellectual revolution. Enter Selena Gomez…


There’s the widely broadcast tearful Selena Gomez worrying about “her people” as the roundups of illegal criminal aliens begin. But are the roundups perceived the same way by others outside Hollywood and the liberal media? According to an article in the NY Post, “NYC minority communities cheer ICE raids that rounded up violent criminal migrants: ‘Get them the hell off the street!’” **** Does this mean that Hollywood elites and the liberal Press can’t shape the minds of the masses? Have the people revolted against the Hollywood elites? Do the people actually being affected by the crush of illegal immigrants and the additional crime in their neighborhoods think differently from the Selena Gomezes not affected by tax revenues going into free housing and other benefits for illegal aliens while citizens are denied services? Will the Selena Gomezes understand the pain of mothers, husbands, and children whose loved ones were raped and murdered by illegal criminal aliens?


When she and her ilk do understand why the Trump administration has expedited the removal of criminal aliens, a revolution will have occurred.


One Revolution That Could Save Billions of Bucks: Overthrow the Green New Deal


Then there’s climate change. Blamed for everything from hurricanes, to atmospheric rivers to ice melt and cold snaps, it’s been a moneymaker for academics, Al Gore, green energy companies, and other people and entities. Bernie Sanders stated in RFK’s confirmation hearing that he’s a firm believer in climate change as an existential threat. The revolution here is just beginning as people realize how much money governments are throwing at the supposed problem without any guarantees that they can affect world climate and literally without any quantification of the cost effectiveness of money thrown at the assumed problem. The revolution has received an impetus from Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement—which was not really an agreement as one can see by reading through the documents. Again the Blagden principle plays a role here. For three decades people have been told that global warming/climate change was an existential threat. Biden believes it; Sanders believes it; Ocasio-Cortez believes it; Thunberg believes it with her whole heart and soul. The belief has manifested itself in extraordinary expenditures, mandates, and restrictions, all of which are destined to harm national and personal economies without a tangible return.


If We Are in the Midst of a Revolution…


Will Trump’s administration through actions by the cabinet and DOGE be able to revolutionize the government? Here’s the ignorance with which I began this piece coming to the fore, and here’s where I end by confessing that from within this galaxy of many parts, I really can’t see the end or know the exact shape. The current revolution—if we are really in the midst of one—is as complicated as a galaxy. Every government agency should be closely examined to see to what extent it fulfills or does not fulfill its legal purpose.


I favor completely revolutionizing the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency. The former oversees an educational system in which students by too high a percentage fail to reach minimum standards in math and reading. Students in American public schools generally also lag behind their contemporaries in other countries in science, history, and geography (human and physical). With regard to the USEPA, I favor a complete examination of current restrictions and policies, such as classifying carbon dioxide as a pollutant, especially since the EPA looks at radiative forcing instead of energy influx and ignores contrarian evidence that carbon dioxide, whose increase seems to be undeniably linked to anthropogenic emissions, has no provable link to many historical episodes of atmospheric warming. In addition, the EPA seems to have overstepped its mission in micromanaging water resources, as it did  in imposing more than $20 million in fines on a Wyoming family for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act when they built a stock pond. *******


Well, there you have it, long and winded. If you reread my first sentence, you’ll understand why I hesitated to write about a subject too complex for my intellectual ability and knowledge. You might, however, as I ask you to do in all my blogs, take the whole of this or any part and use it as a point of departure for your own thoughts.


*Skopol, Theda. 1979. States and Social Revolutions:  A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge University Press.


**Ah! Justice. Poor Strzok and Page split about two million from the government for outing them. Lesson: You can pretty much abuse your government power without negative consequence; in fact, you might end up with a monetary reward.


***https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/4012650-fbi-misused-surveillance-tool-fisa-section-702/ ; AND “Pro-Life Activist Arrested After SWAT Team Raids Home with Guns Drawn in Front of ‘Screaming’ Children at https://www.yahoo.com/news/pro-life-activist-arrested-swat-171717669.html AND “Judge Sentences 75-Year-Old Woman for Praying at Abortion Clinic, Taunts Horrified Husband for Christian Faith: Report” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/judge-sentences-75-year-old-woman-for-praying-at-abortion-clinic-taunts-horrified-husband-for-christian-faith-report/ar-BB1nCiOO   


****Isabella (Isa) Blagden. 1869. The Crown of a Life, Vol. III, London. Hurst and Blackett, p. 155. The quotation is often attributed to Lenin, Goebbels, and Hitler.


*****https://nypost.com/2025/01/28/media/ny-magazine-ripped-for-cropping-black-people-from-trump-party-cover/


******https://nypost.com/2025/01/28/us-news/nyc-minority-communities-cheer-ice-raids-that-rounded-up-violent-criminal-migrants-get-them-the-hell-off-the-street/ (Admittedly, this is largely an anecdotal report, but there appears to be a consensus over the deportation of criminals)


*******https://pacificlegal.org/case/johnson-v-environmental-protection-agency/

Remember Jackie Kennedy? Took the world by storm. Media couldn’t praise her beauty enough. Time, Life, McCall’s, People, Look, Cosmopolitan, Match (French), and other magazines featured her on their covers. After she became Mrs. Onassis, however, there was a bit of a change, a falloff as the media focused more on her as one of the wealthy elites and not as a beauty or fashion model. Remember Michelle Obama? On the cover of Ladies’ Home Journal, Ebony, Time, Essence, Glamour, Prevention, Vogue, Cooking Light, Rachel Ray’s every day, Variety, InStyle, More, and probably many more magazines in a list so long it’s…just too long. Couldn’t find a magazine whose cover she didn’t grace. And Jill Biden? Also a darling of the fashion world: Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, probably others I didn’t see. Anyone ever hear of Melania Trump? Well, maybe before her husband ran for president. Yeah, come to think of it, she did grace some covers then, but…


As Clair Atkinson writes for NBC, “There’s a clear reluctance among editors to put themselves in the cross-hairs of the culture wars. Mostly New York-based editors may fear having to face unhappy readers or advertisers if they go with a choice so closely tied to President Donald Trump.” *


“Wasn’t she some kind of model or somepin? Yeah, I thinked she was? Then what’d I know ‘bout beauty and style and stuff. Never been to a fashion show, buy my jeans at Walmart, have worn the same jackets for years, think I own—wait—yes I do own some ties cause I just checked the back of the closet….”


What’s the Truth about Beauty?


Call it “The year Beauty Died.” So, it seems that Melania Trump was beautiful and stylish enough to grace magazine covers before the 2016 election, but not afterwards. Apparently, beauty isn’t skin deep; it’s ideologically deep. Thus, whereas thin (svelte?) models were once the “ideal,” now thin-challenged models (Corpulent? Chubby? Hefty? Fat?) are equally ideal, and ideologically appropriate models are even “more” ideal.


There’s Melanie Trump at the inauguration, in my eyes looking rather elegant and sophisticated, the broad-brimmed hat hiding some of her face. Didn’t Kate Middleton wear a similar hat—without derision and criticism—at some ceremony? And how does the media see her? If they didn’t want her on their magazine covers the first time she was First Lady, what are the chances she will grace any covers this time?


Poor Kim Kardashian, she lost followers—supposedly more than 100,000— because she posted a picture of Melania Trump in that inauguration outfit. Yep, beauty really is only as ideology says it is. But I wonder…


Hypothetically, let’s make the Slovenian poly-lingual lady an “ordinary citizen.” Put her in chic nightclub attire, and send her into a club alone. Think she would attract any attention from both guys and gals (sorry for the “only two sexes” reference)? I think she would.


So, What Is Beauty? Or, Rather, Who Is “Beautiful”?


Take overriding political propaganda out of the consideration. Melania Trump was a model for a reason, and I’m guessing that reason was…beauty carried well, even better than well. Stately, even, evidenced by her status with media before 2016. Have standards of beauty changed so radically in less than a decade?


We should admit that the idea of beauty does change as does the idea of who is beautiful. There are cultural and ethnic preferences. I assume Geishas look the way they do because that look defines a standard of beauty. And I also assume that every ethnicity has a “standard” for beauty, a standard that rises to the level of “ideal.” If that assumption is true, then from Australian Aborigines to Okinawa islanders, to Inuits, the sense that some people are more beautiful than others is a universal. The parameters of such beauty might differ, but the underlying truth of an ideal prevails as a universal concept.


So, what are the parameters for beauty in the West during the twenty-first century? And have they changed in the past decade?


The model for Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1536) had a bit of a tummy that would not get her on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue of 2015, but would have gotten on the cover in 2016.  The model for Venus in Front of the Mirror (1614-1615) by Peter Paul Rubens would also have been excluded because of her “spare tire.” But things changed in 2016 as Sports illustrated featured Ashley Graham, a plus-sized model—who had no “spare tire,” by the way. Obviously, the sense of who is a beautiful woman has changed, even more so in that trans women have now participated in beauty contests and won (Kataluna Enriquez, Miss Nevada, and Bailey Anne Kennedy, Miss Maryland). My goodness, one doesn’t  even have to be a Missto be Miss America anymore, as the selection of Mrs. Bailey Anne Kennedy, wife of a Marine, reveals.


Now those are some changes in the idea of beauty that no one in the centuries prior to our own would probably understand. Would Titian paint a man-Venus? Would he have considered painting such a model? We can’t know, of course, but we can surmise that he wouldn’t comprehend what political correctness and ideology have done to our brains’ basic understanding of beauty. Nor would he understand the needs to conform in a socially engineered art world.


Liberalism Destroyed


Let’s go back to classical liberalism and the idea of unrestricted freedom to think as one prefers. Liberalism manifested in political correctness and ideology now entails restrictions and forced or mandated ideals supported by seemingly endless propaganda. You have to accept a trans woman as a beauty; you have to accept a plus-sized woman as a bikini model; you have to accept… NO! Wait! You can’t accept Melania Trump’s beauty even though you formerly praised her beauty.


And just as liberals could not see Kamala Harris as a bumbling, inarticulate person, so they seem unable to see any conservative woman as beautiful. It’s truly a shame how supposedly liberal ideology has become restrictive. John Locke would be disappointed by the conversion of his ideas into their opposites. All avant-garde artists of the past are probably turning over in their paint boxes, er… graves.






*”Model, first lady: Melania Trump conspicuously absent from magazine covers.” NBC Online.