We need a new oxymoronic word to encapsulate what happened Tuesday night at the 2024 DNC. It was a night of condemning the wealthy for being rich and praising the wealthy for being rich. I suggest “praisedemning.”


Could there be any greater example of juxtaposition than there was at the 2024 DNC? Wealthy Obamas and “self-proclaimed” billionaire Governor JB Pritzker spoke to an adoring crowd that also heard “self-proclaimed” socialist Bernie Sanders speak? Could there have been a more telling reaction of folly than a crowd of head bobbing, elated delegates showing glee when Pritzker proudly pointed out his wealth, gesturing by pointing his finger toward himself like a fist-thumping silverback? (https://nypost.com/2024/08/21/us-news/illinois-gov-jb-pritzker-boasts-about-his-wealth-at-dnc-2024-right-after-bernie-sanders-anti-wealthy-rant/)


What’s an on-the-street Democrat supposed to think? “Do we want individuals to be extraordinarily wealthy, or do we want everyone to be hampered by crushing taxes that support never-ending giveaways?” “What is our platform?” “What are our values?”


So, the “party of the people,” the party that wants to tax the 1% into poverty, seems perfectly happy to elect a billionaire as governor. Is it because Pritzker lived the American dream of starting off poor and working his way, shovel, pick, hammer and drill, to success? Or is it because he inherited wealth from his family’s Hyatt Hotels? And Pritzker himself? Does he want his money taxed at 70% so that the poor can have what he has—less, of course, the income and luxury stuff? One would think he might, at least, help Bernie Sanders pay for a fourth home.


And Sanders? What was he thinking as Pritzker spoke about “serenity.” Sanders had just said, “Brothers and sisters, bottom line we need an economy that works for all of us not just the billionaire class…My fellow Americans, when 60% of us live paycheck to paycheck. the top 1% have never ever had it so good.”


Pritzker, the Obamas, the Biden family, Nancy Pelosi, and Bernie Sanders himself, are among those who “never had it so good.” The gleeful delegates shaking their heads in approval as Pritzker proclaimed he was “a real billionaire” need to ask themselves whose policies they really want to support.

Controversial topic, indeed! Abortion.


Is that growing organism in an inseminated woman a human being? Is it a “child,” a person of value equal to a Democrat voter? Does I† have any right other than that provided by the woman who carries I†?


Joe Biden’s religion’s official moral position is that I† does have independent rights by virtue of I†’s being a human from I†s conception. I† is an entity with identifiable DNA, so identifiable that given its maturation into an adult criminal, I†s DNA can be used in court as evidence believed by every jury save that in the OJ Simpson case. Biology, whose tenets Democrats accept only when they are convenient, tells us that DNA distinguishes each of us from the other. I’m different from my sister, you from your brother, and all your siblings from your common parents. Without such independent existence there can be no individual to fault. Do we throw the whole family in prison, the extended family, the entire species, genus, order, phylum? No, given irrefutable evidence, we imprison the individual. Generally, we don’t usually throw mothers in jail for the crimes of their children.


But rules are rules by virtue of exceptions, as in the cases of Jennifer and James Crumbley, the parents of Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley. Those parents were held responsible for the crimes of their child and were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison. Ethan’s separate DNA, formed from the combination of his parents chromosomes, didn’t absolve his parents of his crimes. The conviction, however, was predicated on their behavior and not on their mutual biology.


Democrats Eliminating Home Grown Democrats


Call it a conspiracy if you will, but the Biden-Harris open border policy with its many giveaways in American treasure, seemed designed from the start to cull fresh voters from around the world, voters who would show their thanks in perpetuity by voting for Democrats.


“Come, ‘huddled masses, the ‘tired and poor’; yearn no more. We’ll give you stuff, take care of you, provide education, housing, and healthcare. In turn, we ask only for your chad, your mark on a piece of paper we will provide at drop-off boxes. If you want, we will even fill out the form for you. And your arrival and eventual vote will enable us to snuff out the meddlesome DNA growing in our women. In fact at the Democratic National Convention this year, in addition to hats, signs, and noisemakers, we’re providing a clinic for abortions and vasectomies. With that recent influx of potential voters from other lands, we don’t have to grow our own.”

Are we really capable of living in “the Middle”? Or are we sliding evermore leftward of center?


In Marx’s Words


As I read through some of Karl Marx’s writings today, I  thought of how closely they foreshadowed modern economic and social contexts for Leftist political arguments.


Marx writes in his The Poverty of Philosophy that “henceforth the good side of an economic relation is that which affirms equality….” (235)* Over the past couple of decades Americans have been hammered by the notion of equity, the Marxist version of equality that centers on the leveling of outcomes regardless of talent or effort. That’s the ideal fostered for more than a century by labor unions striving, not for just higher wages, but also for equal pay in their ranks of workers. In writing about Proletarians and Communists, Marx also says, “Communism abolishes eternal truths; it abolishes all religion and morality….” (261). * Since the nineteenth century, attacks on previously accepted “eternal truths” and morality have increased so much as to become commonplace, so that, in a recent example, the Mets honored with a game-opening  “first pitch” a young woman whose rise to fame on TikTok centered on her telling followers how she prepares for oral sex. ** It’s not that we humans have only recently discovered the Clintonian practice of “not having sex,” but since his Oval orifice escapades with Monica Lewinsky, the cat’s gotten out of the zippered pants on the most public forums available to both adults and children. The Puritan heritage, smudged by the red of Hester Prynne’s Scarlet Letter worn in shame in the eponymous Hawthorne novel, is now worn publicly and proudly by a widely followed “influencer” in front of fans both present and remote, with the history of the display forever recorded.


Furthermore, Marx writes the following four “measures” in a ten-point list, “in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable:
    
    1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents to public purposes
    2. A heavy progressive income tax
    3. Abolition of all right of inheritance
    4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants…”(262)


Pause here to consider:


    #1. New York City now houses illegal immigrants in former hotels, and other Democrat-run sanctuary cities also provide housing free of charge to both illegal immigrants and American homeless people, essentially turning private property into public facilities. Now candidate Harris says she will “build” three million housing units—a strong promise in the context of the Biden-Harris failure to build an infrastructure of charging stations. A Politico article published in December, 2023 carries the title “Congress provided $7.5B for electric vehicle chargers. Built so far: Zero.” *** So, three million new Marxist housing units? You tell me the odds of that happening. Plus, Harris promises $25,000 for first-time home buyers. Yeah. That won’t raise the price of homes just as educational subsidies haven’t raised college tuition. NOT.
    #2 “Make the rich pay their fair share,” is the mantra of modern Democrat candidates like Biden and now Harris. The idea of a progressive tax became reality during the Civil War, but was repealed in 1872. Even then it was limited at the top to 10%. And—Bernie Sanders take note—Vermont Rep. Justin Morrill wrote, “in this country we neither create nor tolerate any distinction of rank, race, or color, and should not tolerate anything else than entire equality in our taxes.” Oh! How Vermonters have changed. Then in 1913, the country ratified the 16th Amendment, and with it came the very public rise of class warfare that continues today and that has been from its inception supported by progressives on both the Right and the Left.
    #3 The Estate Tax is a tax on your right to transfer property at your death. It consists of an accounting of everything you own or have certain interests in at the date of death—and not what you paid when you acquired your stuff; rather, its current inflated value. Are you a successful entrepreneur who has weathered risks and provided jobs that support families? You know the expression, “You can’t take it with you”? Well, you can’t leave it all to your descendants under estate tax laws.
    #4 The California exit tax is a one-time tax that must be paid by businesses and individuals who relocate outside of California. Want the freedom to move? That freedom will cost you.


The Democrat Platform


Candidate VP Harris proposes:

• Tax breaks for homebuilders with the goal of building 3 million new housing units in four years
• Up to $25,000 in downpayment aid for first-time homebuyers
• Up to $6,000 for low- and middle-income families with infants (Not clear if this is a one-time gift or on ongoing yearly check. “Honey, you know that new car we wanted but was just too expensive? Well, here are the keys. Next year, we’re driving it to Disney World after the Harris check arrives. Grand Floridian, here we come”)
• Up to $3,600 per child per year in an expanded child tax credit (Will this extend to adult children living in basements of their parents’ home?
• A ban on price gouging in the food sector, singling out meat prices in particular. (Cattle drives will never be the same. But what about vegan burgers?)

And, of course, government-paid college debt that will drive the cost of college upward in a further guarantee on pay for tenured faculty as more students enroll for “free” schooling.
Legacy
If Marx could see his legacy in the impoverishment of billions of people and the deaths of millions under Communist and socialist systems, would he still hold his principles? If in selling his popular Manifesto, he became a millionaire, would he relish paying higher taxes? Would he set the price for his book or prefer a government agent who never had practical experience in writing, publishing, and distributing books, set that price?
*David McLellan. 1977. Ed. Karl Marx: Selected Writings. Oxford University Press.


**Phil Mushnick. Aug. 17, 2024. NY Post https://nypost.com/2024/08/17/sports/mets-should-be-ashamed-of-themselves-for-hawk-tuah-girl-first-pitch-on-camp-day/


***James Bikales. Politico online. 12/05/2023 05:00 AM EST

It seems like a long time ago when I first heard of the Peter Principle, but I didn’t immediately see its relevance. I was in my second year as a young instructor in the Department of English, and I felt a bit intimidated by the older faculty, especially by those who had published a paper in some obscure periodical that no one, save some freshman in search of opinion on some literary work or author, would open and skim for key points to plagiarize. The senior faculty members, wearing or carrying the aegis of tenure like Zeus fighting the Titans, stood on Olympian chairmanships (it was a time before today’s PC term chairperson), dismissing the ideas of younger nontenured faculty members as unworthy of consideration, that is, of logical discussion. Yes, I was in awe of professors who had risen to positions of authority, including professors elevated to positions in administration, like deans. provosts, and university ombudsmen. But slowly, the term Peter Principle began to shade the brilliance I had once seen emanating from those esteemed grey heads. I realized what Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull had postulated in their 1969 book might be more than a satirical take on organizational hierarchies. * Many people in positions of authority in educational and governmental organizations had risen to the level of their incompetence. That’s the principle.


Looking back, I now see how Peter came to formulate his principle. He had worked in a Canadian school about which he writes, “During the first year of teaching I was upset to find that a number of teachers, school principals, supervisors and superintendents appeared to be unaware of their professional responsibilities and incompetent in executing their duties” [Italics mine]. And there I was, the young professor slowly coming to the same realization as the veil of high expectation slipped off my enthralled brain. These older professors I initially held in high esteem might have been good or just average in the classroom while sitting on some little publication and reading yellowed notes to students, but they were far from exhibiting Olympian grandeur and wielding Zeus’ bolt. And they were even farther from knowing how to handle practical matters, steeped as they were in pretension born of promotions by other academics—many of those promotions based on croneyism and seniority.


I now understand what I didn’t understand as a young professor: There’s no organization more likely to practice the Peter Principle than an educational system—unless it is a government agency—where accountability and merit often give way to croneyism and seniority. Live long enough, become king. Such meritless promotion is an endemic process in the halls of liberal academia. Those who would feign logic and knowledge before the public are typically guilty in those hallowed halls of parochial, rather than cosmopolitan,  thinking. Those competent to teach grammar or literature, and whose financial experience rests in balancing a household checkbook, rise to positions in management that only a Wharton school graduate should handle, overseeing institutions with annual budgets that range from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars.


Enter Barack Obama


There’s a corollary to the Peter Principle. Just call it the Principle of Being There. I believe it is the driving principle of the Democratic Party.


Remember Barack Obama? Remember his campaign against Hilary Clinton? It was Chris Matthews, political Left-wing pundit and Clinton supporter, who asked Obama supporter State Senator Kirk Watson to name Obama’s accomplishments.  Watson dodged the question as every Obama supporter subsequently dodged the question. Obama had been a community organizer (whatever that means). His accomplishments were as Olympian as those single publications by members of my English Department. Essentially, Obama was as qualified to become President as Peter Sellers was to become Presidential advisor as the character Chance in the movie Being There (1979). In the movie Sellers plays a simple gardener named Chance who through a series of circumstances and misunderstandings becomes Chauncey Gardiner, a man sought after for advice. By virtue of his just being there in the right place at the right time, he rises to prominence.


Loyalty over Truth


And then, as the train of enthusiasm rolled Obama to the to the Grand Central of the Democratic ticket, the same Chris Matthews, loyal to his Democratic Party, sang Obama’s praises, even singing about some “tingling” going up his leg as Obama spoke. Matthews asked no more penetrating questions about accomplishments and demonstrated abilities. Obama had been elevated, had risen to the pinnacle of authority and power, had become godlike. It was an apotheosis of a person whose life before he became State Senator, Federal Senator,  and President consisted mainly of just “being there.” Right place, right time, however.


And once elevated, Obama gave a half billion dollars to Solyndra, which went belly-up  after 18 months, added through his eight years some ten trillion dollars to the national debt, quashed the great energy producers through a war on coal, oil, and gas while giving Brazil two billion dollars for their offshore drilling, and oversaw (or overlooked) a worsening border crisis. While Obama was in office, Putin moved into Crimea, Iran finagled a nuclear arms agreement that gained release of its frozen assets worth billions of dollars without guaranteeing it would stop nuclear research, and the US committed to the Paris Agreement on climate that would impose stifling restrictions on the American energy sector, and thus, on the American economy. Also, under Obama’s reign, the Deep State that fabricated the Russian Collusion Hoax flourished, and a healthcare system was driven toward today’s premiums that are three times what they were before his presidency.


Do those accomplishments speak competence or incompetence? Is he not the prime example of the Peter Principle? Actually, no. There’s a new prime example.


Enter Biden and Harris


So, Obama arguably rose to a position of authority simply on the basis of being there. Or was it on the basis of Biden’s assessment? As he said, ”I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” So, the “clean African-American” was pulled from the crowd of young Chicago Democrats to give a speech at the DNC in a nationally televised appearance that catapulted him into the limelight. Right place, right time. Think of Obama as a real life, but smarter, version of Chance, the gardener, advisor to the wealthy and politically powerful.


And that seems to be where we are with Kamala Harris—not to mention where we have been with Joe Biden, who rose to the top mostly by virtue of just being there for decades. Harris was a failed presidential candidate rejected by her party who rose by a Biden fiat to become VP and now Democrat Presidential candidate. Her accomplishments? Well, the contemporary versions of Chris Matthews can’t get past the tingling running up their legs to ask. For weeks they’ve jumped on the Harris bandwagon, but their only defense of her lies in statements like “We hate Trump,” “Trump’s s dictator,” and “Trump’s a felon.” Has anyone touted her accomplishments? A simple list would help.


The Principle of Bring There and the Peter Principle: Aren’t both principles apropos of the current choice of the Democrat Party?


*Peter and Hull. 1969. The Peter Principle. William Morrow and Company.

Escape


After a few years of Woke Far Leftness, some 80,174 New Zealanders recently decided to emigrate. Remind you of California in recent years of high taxation, increasing crime and homelessness, power outages, and stifling regulations?*


Almost seven million Venezuelans have left their country since 2014, and many more will probably leave if Maduro stays in power—many came to the US and more will like come. Ah! Socialism and Leftism, the miracle cures for all that ails the West’s economies. Not.


Come on, Now, What’s Wrong with a Little Socialism?


Attempts to quash speech and other freedoms, often attributed to people on the Right by the Press and liberal USA coast dwellers, have now become the modus operandi and goals of the Left. Take the attempted and successful quashing by the US government of conservative speech in American media and social media over the past few years as a foreshadowing of what lies ahead for Americans. Take a warning from the UK that the quashing isn’t restricted to America. Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds signalled that the new Government would consider changes to the Online Safety Act designed to regulate social media companies.”** That’s not just a promise to jail people involved in the recent riots, it’s “a reminder to everyone that whether you’re directly involved or whether you’re remotely involved, you’re culpable, and you will be put before the courts if you’ve broken the law.” Yeah, it’s one of those free speech problems that has the left twisted more than a Klein bottle. Convoluted thinking? You bet.


The Klein Bottle of Modern Leftist  Thinking


The topology of a Klein bottle challenges our intuitive thinking. It’s a non-orientable surface that seems to defy our sense of logic with its twists and turns and convoluted interior. That’s the current political and social manifold of the Left. And it’s a good example of psychological projection. Declaring the Right to be Fascist, the Left embodies a resurrected Mussolini through their efforts to control speech and behavior. Can anyone say “hypocrisy”?


Take the political Left’s and mainstream media’s responses to riots and civil disobedience in America and Britain as an example. Apparently, riots such as those centered in Missouri, Oregon, and Washington or the destruction and social disturbance of Occupy Wall Streeters in NYC have Leftist blessing and social media praise, whereas any public display—even those Tea Party peaceful protests—by conservatives generates calls for censorship and punishment.


Speech isn’t protected if it is conservative. Nothing illustrates this more than the Left’s attempt to quash Elon Musk, especially after his announcement that he would talk to Trump on X.  Washington Post journalist Cleve Wootson Jr. asked the White House’s Press secretary what it was doing to stop “the misinformation,” as he termed it. ***


Wootson, Jr., and other Leftists can’t see the Klein bottle of their thinking. Their world lies on a single surface whose twists of contradiction and hypocrisy seem beyond their comprehension. That a reporter would ask how the WH intends to control free speech is an indication of how the social snd political worlds have become convoluted.


The people who left New Zealand, Venezuela, and California somehow found a way to escape the Klein bottle of socialism—leaving their homes You might not have to leave yours, but you might start studying the math of topology just in case you are forced to live on the surface of a Leftist Klein bottle.   




*Lucy Craymer, Reuters. Tue, Aug 13, 2024. People leave New Zealand in record numbers as economy bites. Online at: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/people-leave-zealand-record-numbers-061232193.html


**The Standard. Online at: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/elon-musk-riots-uk-social-media-twitter-x-keir-starmer-asylum-seeker-b1175637.html


***AllSides: Online under title: WaPo Journo Asks How Biden-Harris Admin Can Quash Trump-Musk Interview and online also at  https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2024/08/13/washington-post-reporter-asked-the-white-house-an-unhinged-question-about-trump-and-musk-n2643327

Recall those days in high school geometry class when you had to prove some shape or angle on the basis of Euclid’s postulates? You’re in a political geometry class right now, and you’ve been given one of the toughest geometry problems: Disprove the parallel postulate.


The Euclidean assumption is that two lines emanating from a common line and both lying perpendicular to that common line (I.e., at right angles) will continue forever without touching, basically railroad tracks running into infinity, or, at least to Betelgeuse. Yeah, like railroad tracks, there’s a fundamental necessity that the lines can neither cross nor diverge.


Well, Kamala Harris wants you to forget the postulate. She wants you to believe that the lines don’t run parallel, but do (or will) diverge and converge.


Huh?


Yes, Harris wants you to believe that in her presidency, she will take a path that diverges from Biden-Harris policies of the past four years, such as open border, fecklessness in the face of Iran, Russia, and China, and over-regulation and mandates killing the energy sector. In Harris’s universe, political geometry is more Riemannian than Euclidean.


She wants you to accept the postulate that her future administration will diverge from her past administration. At the same time, on issues like the open border, she wants you to assume that she can solve the very problem she created by converging on the Trump border policy—and even of late on the Trump policy of eliminating tax on tips.


One of the reasons that Euclid’s geometry has worked for two millennia is that his underlying assumptions are difficult, if not impossible, to disprove. And that troublesome “parallel lines postulate” is toughest of all.


Want a postulate that seems unshakeable? A Harris Administration will parallel a Biden-Harris Administration. It won’t diverge from its past.


Unfortunately, there are many Americans who either failed geometry class or failed to learn the practical application of its lessons and way of thinking. True, all thinking starts with the unprovable, with some axiom. Logic doesn’t ultimately rest on logic, but we humans have to start our thinking somewhere, and that somewhere is an axiom.


AXIOM: A Harris future will parallel a Harris past.

This is August in the Northern Hemisphere. I don’t know whether or not the following facts are taught in schools, but August is on average one of the hotter months, and in many locations, also among the drier months.


Summer’s been the season since the Solstice in June, when the Sun, from our perspective reached its apex (but not zenith) in the dome of our sky. And whereas it’s true that since the Solstice, the Sun’s angle has been declining, it is also true that the buildup of heat actually started way back in December with the Winter Solstice. With months of longer days and increasingly higher Sun, Earth’s surface has warmed, and the heat will take months to dissipate as the days grow shorter. Thus, there’s no abrupt end of summer on America’s Memorial Day. Closures of swimming pools leave plenty of hot September days un-enjoyed.


The Reason for the Seasons


This cycle of seasonal heating and cooling has occurred ever since Earth, early in its formation, was hit by a Mars-size planetoid that knocked it over relative to the plane of its orbit by some 23.5 degrees, an angle that changes cyclically. In short, summer heat and winter cold are the product of Earth’s tilt, which also makes winter in the Southern Hemisphere coincide with summer in the Northern Hemisphere. And—bonus fact here—the relative importance of that tilt is significant in the context of Earth’s orbital positions of aphelion and perihelion, the former occurring during the Northern Hemisphere’s summer. In other words, we Northern Hemisphere residents are three million miles farther from the Sun in summer than we are in winter.


‘Nugh said, I think on the cause of summer’s accumulated surface heat that warms the bottom of the atmosphere. “No,” you say, “my teachers never covered that stuff or if they did, I wasn’t listening.”


Other Influences


One can add to the info some peripheral influences on temperatures: Latitude is chief among them because Earth’s surface lies on the arc of a sphere. Then land-water distribution because water has a higher specific heat than land (it takes longer to heat and longer to cool). And while we’re mentioning that climate and weather parameter, we should note continentality: The farther inland, the wider the ranges in temperature, with, for example, interior USA reaching higher summertime temperatures and colder wintertime temperatures than coastal USA., which has the moderating effect of water. Next: Altitude. Tops of mountains cooler than lowlands. Add in this mix, the albedo. Light colored surfaces like the Sahara’s sands or Greenland’s ice reflect solar energy, whereas dark green rainforests are more absorbent of that energy. Other influences include prevailing wind systems, ocean currents, and cloud cover. The Prevailing Westerlies of the Northern Hemisphere compound the effect of altitude. Thus, the western side of Mt Whitney and the Sierra Nevada get more precipitation than the eastern side, where America’s hottest and driest desert lies in the “rain shadow.” Walla! Sequoia Forest on the western windward side and Death Valley and the Mojave on the Eastern lee side, where downslope winds dry out and heat up as they roll off the eastern slopes.


There’s more to consider, of course, but why write any of this?


Consider this headline in the LA Times: “July was California's hottest month ever, as climate warms to dangerous new extremes” (Grace Toohey Thu, August 8, 2024 at 3:15 PM EDT) * Consider this fact buried in the story: “The agency's statewide climate data goes back to 1895.” That’s 129 years of Earth’s 4.5+ billion-year history. That's  0.0000000266%. Is Earth currently warming? Or, is the warm July just a fluctuation in weather on a planet whose temperature has trended upward since the melting of the great ice sheets that covered most of Canada's provinces and the northern US states. And how do a single month's temperature data figure into the 50-million-year decline in temperature since the Eocene or into the pattern of glacial and interglacial periods of the last 2.5 million years?


Consider, also, the influences on temperature I mentioned above and throw in other influences, such as seasonal semipermanent High and Low pressure systems and oscillations that couple ocean temperature to atmosphere.** We just rode an El Niño through a rainy Florida in 2024. Are we going into a period during which an El Niña dominates?


Earth Had Weather before 1895


Consider that during that brief 129-year span, some decades have been drier or hotter than others. Are we looking at climate or weather. Given a time machine, would the climate alarmists be astounded at the drought that decimated the Hopi (Anasazi) before anyone kept daily records? At the heat of the Medieval or Roman warm periods? At the persistent cold of the Little Ice Age or Younger Dryas? At the oppressive heat during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum?


Just askin’.    


*Online at https://www.yahoo.com/news/july-californias-hottest-month-ever-191501225.html 

**Summer's Atlantic "Bermuda High," for example, or the Low that forms off the western coast of India during summer and that directs moisture onto the subcontinent, where it rains over the Deccan Plateau and subsequently floods the western lowlands.

In Memoriam: On the Resignations of Susan Chang-Kim, Matthew Patashnick and Cristen Kromm,
the Three Columbia Deans Whose Antisemitic Tropes Got Them Fired. *


If Murray, Akroyd, Ramis, too **
Would bust the ghosts of deans eschewed,
I’d guess they would return to schools,
Columbia, i.e., where recent fools
Once haughty, writing tropes
Like silly teens so high on dopes
Repeated all the worn cliches
That students shouted on the lawn
From dark midnight till early dawn,
Now in the new year, they are gone.
Who? You ask. Both fools and tools,
Manipulated, defying rules.
Remember last year’s college camps
That cluttered lawns and dews and damps?
Remember all simplistic talks
Of genocide on campus walks?
Recall three deans regarded Jews
As privileged whites, dismissed their views,
And their concerns and their real fright
To walk on campus in the night?
Those deans are gone, but in their wake
Their ghosts will reappear to Jews
Will paint graffiti: Hakenkreuz,
The Nazi symbol of the Left.
The feelings then will haunt again
In academia’s hallowed den.
So, Murray, Akroyd, Ramis, too,
Have yet another job to do,
To exorcise the hateful ghosts
That roam the schools along the coasts.
Their job is big and will not end
In every age it will impend
As hate’s the real ghost that haunts on.
Just look this year on campus lawn
To see the ghosts of Nazis past
Persist, indeed, and peace outlast.
The hate that ran through many ages
Persists again, indeed it rages.
The Busters’ work will never cease.
The Jews will never live in peace.


*Katherine Donlevy, US News. August 8, 2024. Online at https://nypost.com/2024/08/08/us-news/3-columbia-university-deans-resign-after-antisemitic-tropes-texts-scandal-report/


**Columbia University was one of the film locations for the original Ghostbusters.

Yesterday, a TV news channel showed a video of an adoring crowd cheering on Kamala Harris and shaking their heads affirmatively as she said she would make inflation her priority "on day one." Putting aside that Biden-Harris policies caused the inflation she promises to address in some as yet un-articulated manner, I'll note that the same TV channel has shown videos of enthusiastic crowds at a Trump rally as he promised to reduce the same inflationary spiral. I would like you to put aside the two candidates' promises and focus instead on the adoration and enthusiasm. The videos brought to mind a blog I posted on 5/30/2015 titled "Take Me to Your Leader." I repost it here: 

An alien sees a planet with water, assumes it houses life, and lands in your backyard. Then the alien, approaching you as you drink your morning coffee on the patio, says in your language, “Take me to your leader.”

Taking a sip of the coffee while it is still hot, you, as a native Earthling, say, “I don’t have one. I am my own leader.”

Would you say that? Really? I hope so, but in what context would you proclaim to be self-led? You are, as you must surely realize, a product of inculcations beyond your ability to recognize or count: Influences from crib to current age both subtle and overt. And in this age of social media and mainstream media influencers, now including AI influencers, can you recognize when you are more follower than leader?  

Listen today to the voices of your fellow Earthlings. Many around you proclaim their “individuality.” What do those Earthlings mean when they say they are individuals? What constitutes the individuality they seem to cherish and defend with mental, emotional, and physical tools? Once defined, does that individuality ever succumb to disintegration, to dissolving like sugar in hot coffee? Are there people who are not “individuals”?

What’s that you say? Yes? But you are different, right?

If you recognize the individuality of others “dissolving like sugar in hot coffee” as they adoringly shake their heads at a political rally, can you recognize in yourself that same process that results in your own individuality dissolving in a solution of society?

​No? Not even a little dissolution? Be honest here. When you try to pin down the nature of individuality, you run into some difficulty and maybe into some frustration.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you; rather, I was just posing the question asked by a hypothetical alien. To what degree would you insist, “I am my own leader”? Is such self-leadership possible? if so, do you see it in your thinking and behavior?