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.

The Epiphany is celebrated on January 6, but there were two reenactments of a sort in late January, 2025 when Hamas released some of its female hostages. In a “ceremony” Hamas handed each a gift bag. Each bag contained a certificate of release, a necklace, and photos of the hostages when they were in captivity. * A gift bag! Did the leaders of Hamas take their cue from Hollywood?


Now, That’s What I call a Gift Bag!


Almost reminds one of those lavish parties at the Grammys, the Oscars, and the Golden Globes in Hollywood when the entertainment elite receive bags called “Everyone Wins Bags.” Here’s a list of gifts in those bags for the glitterati:


    The 2024 nominee gift bonanza features the full line of Miage ultra-luxury transformative skincare products, an all-inclusive luxurious Swiss getaway from Chalet Zermatt Peak, a seven-day holistic wellness retreat from the Golden Door, a three-night stay in a breathtaking private villa from Saint-Barth Paradise, THOR Kitchen luxury kitchen appliances and 10,000 donated meals from v-dog in support of PETA's Global Compassion Fund. Lucky nominees will also receive1MD Nutrition's LiverMD supplement, Adonis Arcana men's grooming and skincare, ultra-premium Antigua Cruz Añejo Cristalino Tequila, AURO WELLNESS Glutaryl topical glutathione, BAGCEIT portable purse seat, BlendQuik Personal Portable Blender, Blush Silks beauty pillowcases, Bored Rebel graphic undershirts, C60 Power Sugar Free Tart Cherry Gummies, a private show with mentalist to the stars Dr. Carl Christman, cate brown sustainable upcycled designer pillows, Potenza RF microneedling by Cynosure, DANUCERA award-winning Cerabalm and D22 Tonic, dooplikit full-color 3D selfie figurine, EATABLE premium gourmet popcorn, ELBOQUE sustainable artisan handbags and backpacks, élevé adaptogen-infused sparkling water, EpicLight Beauty Radiant Duo blush + lip balm, Fetcha Chocolates handmade luxury vegan chocolate,  Gin Bothy award-winning small-batch Scottish gin, Goodal Vitamin C serum + eye gel patch, Helight red light sleep therapy device, HEYDUDE comfortable + versatile footwear, Hotsy Totsy Haus Deafinitely Divine Glow Kit, INSTYTUTUM result-driven skincare, Isopure Collagen Peptides drink mix, Jambys "performance inactivewear" gift set, Karma Nuts bite-sized gluten-free Cashew Cookies, Sound Bath with Kate Schofield & The Earth's Hum Tuning Fork, Kenra Platinum Blow-Dry Spray, Maison Construction complimentary home project management, Meet the Playground Kids children's book of kindness and empathy, Memorable Movie Performances by J.B. Gould,  Overnight Travel Bags stylish travel duffle, poppi reimagined soda, Posh Pretzels handcrafted chocolate covered pretzels, Rose Box NYC luxury long lasting roses, Rubik's Cube 50th Anniversary Collector's Edition,  Safe  ̶ a memoir by Mark Daley, the Sagar Luxury Sugar Experience, Sattaché luxury shoe bag, Schwank Grills Portable Infrared Grill, Serucell restorative Recovery Serum, Shinery Radiance Wash and Brush Duo, Smack Pet Food raw dehydrated super food for cats, Glow by Dr. Stacie Stephenson, There's Something in the Water from STEM4Real, Wallis Annenberg GenSpace gratitude postcards fostering intergenerational connectedness, Wesper's in-home Clinical Sleep Consultation, mouth-watering black licorice from Windy City Sweets and "You Talkin' to Me?" from Workman Publishing/Hachette Book Group.

I’m a bit underwhelmed by Hamas’s gifts—especially the dime-store necklace. I think they should have included some gifts that the Hollywood people get, such as an all-inclusive luxurious Swiss getaway from Chalet Zermatt Peak, a seven-day holistic wellness retreat from the Golden Door, and a three-night stay in a breathtaking private villa from Saint-Barth Paradise. But no, Hamas couldn’t even think to give gold, frankincense, and myrrh. This gift-giving was not like that of the Magi. It was some pitiful attempt at propaganda. And, who knows? It will probably work on those college protestors and others who openly supported Hamas. “See, they’re nice people who are oppressed by Israel.”

Where’s Al Sharpton when you need him to negotiate for equity? The hostages endured imprisonment—and sometimes rape and torture—for more than 400 days. In Al’s and other liberals’ world, everything should be even, right? Upgrade the gift bags, Hamas.

Epiphany’s Other Meaning

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce’s character Stephen Daedalus undergoes a series of epiphanies, that is, revelations that come to the brain as “gifts” of awareness. Other authors have used the same theme of reaching a mental discovery as an epiphany. And you have probably also had your share of epiphanies, those moments when insight suddenly appears at your door like the Magi bearing gifts.

​Will the Hamas supporters ever receive the gift of realization? Probably not. Many rational people have tried to give them the gift of understanding that there is no equivocation between defending oneself from unprovoked attacks and attacking the innocent without provocation. There is no equity of outcome, also.

A Lesson for All of Us

Unlike the Biblical epiphany in which the Magi gave tangible gifts to the baby, all mental epiphanies come from within and appear to be sourceless, very much like remembering someone’s name after not seeing the person for years. You meet on the street, exchange pleasantries without saying the name, walk away, and then the brain seeming like an independent entity pops that name into your consciousness. “John! That was John! Shoot! Why didn’t I think of that at the time?” So wisdom and understanding seem at times to pop into our heads. Insight and inspiration work that way. They are gifts from nowhere—and everywhere. They are also like the Cosmic Background Radiation in having no point source but emanating from our entire universe.

Will Hamas’s supporters and anti-semites receive the gift? Maybe the best way to ensure that is to put them on that stage getting that bag after 400 days of captivity. Maybe that background experience will radiate their brains with understanding. “Oh! I see what you mean.”

*https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/hamas-handed-gift-bags-to-3-released-hostages-israeli-authorities-seize-materials-here-s-what-was-inside/ar-AA1xwTLX?ocid=BingNewsSerp

This is one of those “I wish I had put my thoughts on paper earlier” blogs. Miranda Devine, I discovered this morning, used the pawn/chess analog before I penned this. So, I’ll make a couple of comments and let you read Devine’s NY Post editorial.


Introit


Bishops usually command respect because they supposedly have devoted their lives to the care of a cadre of shepherds and their flocks of faithful. They are, in fact, human, as this century’s scandals and controversies in both the Roman Catholic and Episcopal Churches bear witness. Being human often entails having flawed judgment. Having flawed judgment often derives from having insufficient knowledge. And having insufficient knowledge often emanates from a naive parochialism that, in turn, derives from a mind closed to alternate thinking.


NY Post’s Miranda Devine wrote an insightful piece on the latest bishop controversy, the woke lecture of Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde seen on national TV. Budde, in case you missed it, played the useful idiot-pawn to the religion of Wokism by explaining how alphabet people, migrants, and “transgender” children will suffer under Trump. In a demeaning reference to the skill level of migrants, her Excellency basically relegated the migrants to picking crops and washing dishes. Her reference to children was equally “woke” and stereotypical. As Devine points out, the “good “ bishop seemed to have little concern about the victims of illegal aliens or about children receiving life-altering operations and drugs before they have the maturity to decide and the knowledge to understand potential psychological and physical problems that accompany irreversible changes. *


The Budde lecture takes me back to a few blogs ago when I wrote about the Peter Principle (1/10/25). She might have been a devout, even holy, pastor, but she has been elevated beyond her competence and vocation. Instead of praying for peace, unity, and a one-nation-under-God society, the cleric chose to publicly condemn on the basis of a stereotype of the President, whose gay Treasury Secretary-nominee Scott Bessent, took offense at her remarks (see Devine’s editorial) and refuted them. Contrary to her intention and belief, the bishop wasn’t speaking truth to power. She was ignoring truths incarnate in the many victims of the past four years.


TDS Alive and Well


And, of course, the folks on The View and at CNN rushed to give her an audience, indicating to me that TDS is still a plague on American society. The media’s pawns of the Left’s hate-breeding stereotypes will continue along their narrow path through the next four years. They will ignore all that contradicts their narrative and nit-pick any slip-up by a Trump appointee. They will fawn over anyone who supports their views and condemn anyone who doesn’t.


The best defense against the cacophony of hate is ignoring it while focusing on positive steps that put America on track to accomplish Trump’s threefold goal: a stronger, safer, more prosperous America—for All.    




*https://nypost.com/2025/01/22/opinion/miranda-devine-egomaniacal-bishop-buddes-woke-rant-just-makes-her-another-liberal-pawn-aiming-to-cut-down-trump/

The desire to spend money on nothing appears to be built into the liberal brain. Take the budget proposal of Gov. Hochul of New York as an example. She has $13.5 million earmarked to ban cellphones in schools.


I could achieve her goal for less. Pay me $1 million, and I’ll save the state $12.5 million.


How the Conte plan might work.


1.    Tell kids, parents and guardians that phones are banned during school hours under penalty of after-school detention for student violators.


2.    There is no #2.


Make check payable to Donald J. Conte.

According to the new Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the President will charge all members of his cabinet with a threefold purpose: To make America stronger, safer, and more prosperous.


Succinct. Bottom-line stuff. Typical of a successful businessman who wants to get things done—yesterday. My late friend Joe Hardy, successful entrepreneur and founder of, among other entities, 84 Lumber, was driven similarly to achieve practical goals efficiently. No platitudes. No beating around the bush. Clear and measured. Clear and measurable goals, as all three of Trump’s goals can be quantified. For Trump, who knew Joe, the thinking seems to be the same: “Give me something I can count, not some utopian and amorphous set of touchy-feely mandates that drove the last administration bent on equity and diversity at the expense of equal opportunity and  merit.” Sure, Trump’s goals are utilitarian, but what logical argument can be made against them in a world filled with self-proclaimed enemies of America?


But the Leftist Media Thinks Differently


Apparently, the talking heads on the liberal networks have a problem with such specificity. They prefer the Biden-Harris feckless foreign policy, ambiguous goals, and DEI policies to hard truths. And in ranting about Nazis and Fascists, they fail to ask themselves, “Are we against American strength, safety, and prosperity?”


The Left seeks refuge in scapegoating when it can’t bully or when it fears its truths are exposed as false gods. You can see such scapegoating in action as liberals blame climate change for the fires in Los Angeles and not insufficient plans, cluttered forest floors, an empty reservoir, and an absentee mayor and incompetent governor who is more concerned about a liberal agenda and Trump-proofing than the people of his state.


Stronger, safer, more prosperous. Works for me. How about you?