Defending Distrust
A common theme, in looking at America's galaxy of ills in the fall 2020, is that we are transitioning from a high trust society to one of low trust. Consider though, if we look at the last two decades, the problem is trust in the competency (and motives) of our...
Jill Biden and the Cancelniks
Joseph Epstein, a writer, essayist, and "visiting lecturer in literature and writing at Northwestern University," set off the kerfuffle of the day with an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal that offered a bit of unsolicited advice to the First Lady-Elect....
They’re Not Even Pretending Any More
For weeks after the New York Post broke its story about Hunter Biden's shady dealings, we were told by the mainstream press that it was all "fake news," foreign propaganda, and wildly unconfirmed claims. We also bore witness to social media giants damping the story on...
Biden, Babies, and Bathwater
Politics of personality is the state of affairs America finds herself in more often than not, usually with problematic outcome. One of the greatest features of libertarianism, at least for me, is its elevation of ideas over idols, and while we do have our idols...
The Gatekeepers’ Panic
Remember 2005? It wasn't that long ago. George W. Bush started his second term in office. The Iraq War entered its third year. Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became Iraq's President, and pressed forward with a nuclear program that...
Remembering AOL
A bit over 20 years ago, social media was dominated by one company: America Online (AOL). It was a monster, and if you weren't on AOL, you weren't one of the cool kids. AOL's market cap in December, 1999 was $222B (about $350B today). A month later, AOL announced that...
Modern Monetary Stupidity
An economic notion, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), has been pulled from the dustbin of history to serve as the foundation for a set political doctrines and proposals currently being espoused by the progressives in America. The word "theory" is the notion's first...
SALT Follies, Revisited
We hear it all the time: Republicans support "tax breaks for the rich," Democrats want the rich to pay "their fair share." All this makes great fodder for those who don't bother to inform themselves of the realities of our tax code, and of taxation in America in...
Weekend Musings #4
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the fourth of a recurring (and highly irregular) series of quick-hits. Because, not everything needs a thousand words. Thanks for reading! Biden's Mask Duplicity President-Elect Joe Biden has informed us of one element of his COVID-19 plans: a...
The Razors of Scrutiny
Highly charged events often produce highly questionable assertions, allegations, opinions masquerading as facts, and armchair erudition. We are inundated with such even in quiet times, and that inundation becomes deluge when things get "interesting." A discerning...
Ideology Trumps Color
The post-election parsing has begun in earnest, no matter that we are still several weeks from Biden taking the oath of office. People have noticed that the country did not go whole-hog down the path laid out by the Left, the Justice Democrats, the socialist-wannabes,...
It’s Not You, It’s Me
An outsider that looked at a system of 90% disapproval, with 90% non-adaptivity, would conclude there was some kind of fundamental flaw. Most Americans agree this is true of our political system. Ask a spectrum of Americans if they think the system is broken, and...
The Fruits of Hypocrisy
New York City's five boroughs are a rather diverse group. Each has its own character, and each produces a distinct breed of New Yorker. Even the two that share a land border - Brooklyn and Queens - have different "feels" and different attitudes. Nowhere is this...
Structural Stupidity
Every so often, a new word becomes de mode in the political sandbox. While the metastasizing social justice movement has provided a veritable deluge of such, along with words to describe those words, oftentimes a "new" word is merely one being used in a new fashion....
Lawsuit Frivolity
Anyone who thought we would escape pandemic year election 2020 without maximum self-inflicted agony has not been paying attention. Naturally, lawyers have added a heapin-helpin. That a judge is throwing out Republican lawsuits in Pennsylvania that contest the election...
The Pandemic and the Public Trust
Editors Note: This article is a follow-up to Inconvenience or Devastation, which explores citizens' motivations in complying with pandemic lockdowns. In the grand tradition of dividing people into two groups, today sort people based on their attitude toward public...
Oppressor *And* Savior
The New York Times, the Gray Lady, the former bastion of proper journalism, where legendary editor Abe Rosenthal maintained an iron wall between news and opinion, has become a full-on apparatus of the Democratic Party machine and leftist politics. In other news, water...
Inconvenience, or Devastation?
Editors Note: This article is a follow-up to The Politics of Lockdowns, which explores politicians' motives and motivations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Early on in the COVID crisis, many warned that this fall would bring a second wave of infections, as...
The Politics of Lockdowns
Conspicuous Action. Those two words encapsulate a politician's default response to any crisis (or "crisis" - many dubbed as such do not, considered rationally, deserve that level of emphasis), with the effects or efficacy of the action of secondary relevance. Doing...
The Power Makes The Bully
Most Americans agree that we are in a culture war, and most probably agree that temperature is rising. Many see a real possibility of a systemic disruption, despite it being the most enduring political arrangement in the world. With both sides of the political divide...
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