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/

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/