Impressed

"I'm impressed."

With snark being our default reaction to everything, perhaps we don't say it often enough.

The verb impress, meaning "to have a strong effect on the mind," entered English in the 14th century.

Its root was the Latin impressus, meaning "stamped," "indented," or "imprinted."

A marvelous event impressed you, stamping its mark on your mind.

A second, less joyous meaning of the verb arose two centuries later.

During wars in the 16th century, when the king needed to fill the ranks of the Royal Navy, he would press seafarers—usually sailors with the merchant fleet—into naval service. 

The king in fact claimed the permanent right to impress sailors any time he chose.

To do so, he would dispatch "press gangs" to roam the coastal towns. The press gangs were little more than bands of brutal thugs, led by ruthless naval officers. Often they'd snatch any man they spotted—regardless of seafaring experience.

To be "impressed"—a fearsome event—meant to be "kidnapped into the service."

The practice of impressing men into the Royal Navy lasted well into the 19th century, when crown service was made voluntary.

The Future of Face-to-Face is Now

A lackluster CES earlier this month prompted Fortune to question the appeal of live trade shows.

CES' organizer "will unquestionably hail it as a success and tout the benefits of face-to-face interaction despite the pandemic," Fortune observed. "And, in many ways, it’s hard to argue against that."

The sparsely populated event, however, underscored the fact that exhibitors can no longer be expected to spend tens of thousands—if not millions—of dollars merely to meet a handful of buyers; and that attendees can no longer be expected to hop cross-continental flights, merely to meet a few suppliers.

"While the sponsors of these events are eager to bring them back, the attendees are a lot less certain," Fortune said. Given the hesitancy, "it’s valid to ask if they're worth it."

My take is that, with the advent of the virtual meeting, live events' future hangs in the balance.

They may not be worth all the fuss and bother.

To keep live events worthwhile—and better than their virtual cousins—organizers must find new ways to assure not only participants' safety, but their ROI. 

The latter is something organizers haven't had to do—and something they may not be able to do.

For the harsh truth is, while virtual events are far from great, they're good enough. 

They allow buyers and sellers to connect, while eliminating almost all of the downside risks inherent in live events.

And in a risk-averse world, that says a lot.

Live events may be history, unless organizers find ways to reduce participants' risks.

Not one day, but now.

Above: Conference at Night by Edward Hopper.

The Supermoms Assemble

O Columbia! the gem of the ocean,

The home of the brave and the free,

The shrine of each patriot's devotion,
A world offers homage to thee.

Thy mandates make heroes assemble,
When Liberty's form stands in view.

Thy banners make tyranny tremble,
When borne by the red, white, and blue.

— Thomas á Becket

Across the nation, a new American hero is emerging: the Supermom.

Uninformed and dogmatic, she is as great a threat to democracy as any Proud Boy.

Perhaps greater.

She is, after all, your mom.

The extreme right is enlisting Supermoms to oversee elections and run for local offices. 

Supermoms have their own PAC, Moms for Liberty, too; and have been singled out by Trump operatives for cultivation.

The Supermoms' goal is to turn back the clock 180 eighty years to the time "Columbia the Gem of the Ocean" was penned.

Back then, God was in his heaven and all was right with the world. 

Columbia was indeed the gem of the ocean, which meant you needn't worry about porn or pervs or gang violence or uppity Blacks, Jews, Latinos, Asians, Muslims, Queers, and Feminists.

Supermoms claim they are "fighting for the survival of America" by galvanizing parents to defend their rights against tyrants.

Of course, the tyrants in their sights are all Democrats—most especially those of color.

In the past few months, Supermoms in Arizona, Colorado, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania have organized state-wide door-knocking campaigns to uncover phantom voters; launched forensic audits of the 2020 election results; and lobbied state lawmakers to scrap all voting machines, so they can count the votes in future elections. 

And just this week, Supermoms on a Tennessee school board banned Maus because it's "vulgar," while Supermoms on school boards in Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming banned hundreds of books authored by Blacks.

In more ways than one, fiery Supermoms compose America's 21st century Luftschutz.

The Luftschutz was an all-volunteer civil defense league founded by Hermann Göring in 1933. At its peak, more than 22 million Germans belonged, many of them women.

Organized by local air raid wardens, the Luftschutz trained its members to place sandbags, fight fires, clear rubble, and respond with first aid in the event of aerial bombings and gas attacks. The wardens claimed the Luftschutz's purpose was Selbschutz (self- protection).

The darker purpose of the Luftschutz, however, was to recruit average German citizens into the Nazi party, which was a minority party in 1933. Göring understood that if you just let moms wear cool hats and attend gatherings, you could count on their silence when the time came for the Final Solution.  

Supermoms may consider themselves simply "concerned" soccer moms protecting their precious children, but they're in the grip of fascists.

That makes them wholly to be feared.

Above: Frau im Luftschutz! Nazi poster by Ludwig Hohlwein. 1936.

Values: Masturbatory Marketing

 Greed is not a financial issue. It's a heart issue.

— Andy Stanley

Spotify's unconscionable decision to keep Joe Rogan and drop Neil Young proves what I've long thought about tech corporations' self-professed "values."

They're pure, unadulterated snake oil.

Spotify's video on values includes a Latino marketing manager claiming "we do not approve any sort of campaign that we don't believe in."

How's that for masturbatory marketing?

Obviously, her statement is bullshit—or, worse, Spotify believes in Joe Rogan's relentless antivaxxer messaging.

Let's stop the "values" marketing malarkey and get back to basics. It may play to Millennials, but it's bullshit.

The hard truth is: Spotify believes in one thing and one thing only.

Profit.

Pure and simple.

HAT TIP: Neil Young deserves everyone's thanks for spotlighting Spotify's horrendous hypocrisy. Thank you, Mr. Young.

POSTSCRIPT, JANUARY 29: Since Neil Young's ultimatum to Spotify, his greatest hits album has rocketed into the Top 5 on Apple Music, and Spotify has lost $4 billion in market value."

POSTSCRIPT, FEBRUARY 3: Neil Young has been joined in his boycott of Spotify by Crosby, Stills and Nash.

POSTSCRIPT, FEBRUARY 7: Spotify's CEO confirmed the company won't "silence Joe," even though he spouts the N-word as well as disinformation.

Cracked

The older I get, the more I realize how fallible I am.

— Roxane Gay

What failing do flat-earthers, antivaxxers and "big lie" believers share in common?

They all lack what psychologists call intellectual humility, the ability to admit you're fallible.

Just this week, I have heard a flat-earther insist Earth couldn't be round, else we'd see it curve when we climbed a hill; an antivaxxer insist Covid-19 can't be defeated, because it's invisible; and a "big lie" believer insist big data indisputably prove Trump won.

Duh.

While it's tempting to dismiss these kooks as childish, uniformed, or just stupid, psychologists would have us look deeper.

People who lack intellectual humility, psychologists have discovered through seven decades of research, usually also have a screw or two loose.

People who lack intellectual humility may also lack the abilities to evaluate evidence, enjoy learning, tolerate ambiguity, brook disagreement, appreciate expertise, or recognize the boundaries between reality and their egos.

In other words, they're cracked.

People with intellectual humility—the majority of us—realize they're fallible, according to the research. 

They spend more time contemplating their beliefs, questioning their assumptions, and seeking out proof than those who lack intellectual humility.

People with intellectual humility in general are curious, inquisitive, tolerant, empathetic, forgiving, and cerebral.

People who lack intellectual humility, on the other hand, are self-absorbed, judgmental, dogmatic, over-confident, arrogant, combative, and carnal.

They're also—as we well know—less able to distinguish truth from hoax.

Fortunately, although lack of intellectual humility is partly inherited, psychologists say there's hope for sufferers through cognitive behavioral therapy, which seeks to undo the bad influence of parents and teachers.

But can the rest of us wait for that?

And what about the influence of world events on those who lack intellectual humility?

Sadly, psychologists have discovered that lack of intellectual humility worsens in the face of economic downturns, pandemics, wars, terrorist threats, and mass migrations.

Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen.

More and more crackpots are heading your way!

Start with You

When you are deciding what to leave out, begin with the author.

— John McPhee

Far too many writers inject themselves into otherwise interesting pieces.

If you're one of the culprits, please, get over yourself. 

We don't care that you struggled to start your piece; thought about it for days on end; wrote about the same topic in the past; wrote on a tablet; wrote with your cat in your lap; wrote while suffering anguish about the state of the world; wrote late into the night; absolutely adore your subject; absolutely loathe your subject; are uncertain you've done your subject justice; or are delighted with your final product.

We. Don't. Care.

We care about the world outside your ego. 

Readers, if nothing else, are avid. 

They're searching for news, opinions, and new ideas.

Your ego provides none of that.

The masterful writer John McPhee put it succinctly:

"Let the reader have the experience. Leave judgment in the eye of the beholder. When you are deciding what to leave out, begin with the author. If you see yourself prancing around between subject and reader, get lost. Give elbow room to the creative reader."

To the extent that your piece is "all about you"—your process, insecurities, devotion, or judgements—your editorial job is crystal clear.

Cut the crap.

NOTE: Here's an example of "it's all about me" writing.

The Lonely Sailor

Privilege implies exclusion from privilege.

— Robert Anton Wilson

Call me a libtard: I don't care much for unbridled privilege.

My closest encounter with it came in the National Gallery of Art on on a March evening in 1998, when I spotted a frantic Bill Gates.

It was Sunday, around 7 pm, and the building was officially closed to the art-viewing public. All the galleries were dark and cordoned off.

I was standing with a friend in the hallway in a long line for an after-hours chamber recital when Gates and his wife walked up alongside us.

They paused at the door of one of the galleries and Gates said, "That's it," pointing at a huge Winslow Homer seascape inside the darkened room. Without thought, he unhitched the velvet rope that blocked the door and shooed his wife in.

A young Black security guard appeared suddenly and said, "Sir, sir, the gallery's closed." "We just want to look at the painting," Gates snapped and stepped into the gallery. The guard repeated his warning to no avail, shrugged his shoulders, and wandered off for reinforcements. Gates and his wife spent five minutes inside the room examining the Homer, then left. The reinforcements never arrived.

The following morning, Gates' DC visit made the headlines of The Washington Post. He was in town to testify on Capitol Hill about Microsoft's monopoly over Internet access.

Two months later, Gates made the headlines again, this time for buying a Winslow Homer seascape for $36 million—in 1998, the greatest price ever paid for an American artist's painting.

Lost on the Grand Banks, the last major Homer seascape in private hands, was believed at the time to be destined for the National Gallery's permanent collection. But Gates got his hands on it first. (He still owns it today.)

I realized why he'd been so keen to examine Homer's seascape in the National Gallery that Sunday evening in March. 

He was planning to buy one of his own.

The thing that galled me (and still does) wasn't Gates' ability to buy a $36 million Winslow Homer, but the notion that he was entitled to let himself into an art gallery—the National Art Gallery—after hours, as if it were his living room.

But, to his mind, it is. After all, he's a man of privilege.

Privilege entered English in the 12th century, derived from the Latin privilegium.

According to the Laws of the Twelve Tables—the source of Ancient Roman law—a privilegium was a right conferred by the emperor on one man, a "law for an individual."

The Romans called the privilegium precisely for what it was: favoritism.

To have privilege today is to be favored, entitled, endowed, advantaged, exempt, immune, or just plain special.

You know, like Bill Gates.

Gates grew up in a privileged household, so his sense of entitlement was strong to begin with. But his runaway success in business no doubt supersized it.

Business success often goes to people's heads, you've probably noticed. Successful business leaders frequently feel they're superior—distinguished from others in their ability and willingness to do endless battle against chill winds and harsh seas. They, the lonely sailors, have singlehandedly brought the boats home. Everyone else is just ballast.

And so we like to say, "It's lonely at the top." One art critic, in fact, has suggested that Bill Gates had to acquire Lost on the Grand Banks because he feels so alone.

"In his bunkered isolation from the rest of us," the critic writes, "the image of the solo sailor is paramount."  

Above: Lost on the Grand Banks by Winslow Homer. 1885. Oil on canvas. 32 x 50 inches. Collection of Bill Gates.

Screwed. Again.

A team of eminent bean counters at the National Bureau of Economic Research has concluded 2020's $800 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was "highly regressive" and that Trump screwed middle- and working-class Americans.

A whopping 75% of the PPP funds went to the top 20% of US households. Most received cash they didn't need.

Only 25% of the funds went into the pockets of Americans who would have lost their jobs otherwise.

The PPP bailout exceeded by $100 billion that which followed the Great Recession, when Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac imploded.

Economists have since determined that the 2009 bailout—known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)—while failing to correct the causes underlying the financial system's collapse, made Wall Street executives richer than ever.

Ironically, the public's bitter memories of TARP's injustice propelled Trump into the White House in 2016.

Four years later, Trump sent billions of PPP dollars to people like Joe Farrrell, a billionaire developer and Trump fundraiser; Kanye West, wealthy rapper and Trump toady; Jeff Koons, a pop artist who holds the world record for the most expensive work ever sold by a living artist ($91.1 million); Tal Tsfany, CEO of the right-wing Ayn Rand Institute; Elaine Chao, Trump's billionaire Secretary of Transportation; and his vile and venal family members, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

And the little people?

We were screwed. Again.

Time's Unkind to the Harried Mind

Time is unkind to the harried mind, filling it each passing day with the detritus of the moment.

— Richard Seaver

Book reading by Americans has nosedived in the past five years, according to a new Gallup poll.

While, on average, Americans read 12 books in 2021, that's three fewer than in 2016.

Pollsters attribute the drop to the ready availability of other entertainments.

Poor education doesn't factor into the decline: the steepest falloff in book reading was among college graduates.

Age doesn't either: Americans 55 and older—traditionally the most voracious book readers—read the same number of books, on average, as all other Americans.

Whether you point the finger at Netflix, Nintendo, or Facebook, the trend should worry you.

The fewer books we read, the poorer our worlds become.

The fewer books we read, the shorter our attention spans grow.

And the fewer books we read, the more hidebound we're apt to be.

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies; the man who never reads lives only one," says fantasy novelist George R.R. Martin.

I get why TV, games and social media are crowding out books.

They're a fast-acting anesthesia.

Books, on the other hand, can burden you—especially if they're well written. They can tax your thought, shake your faith, wake you up, or give you nightmares.

And unlike the crap on this month's Netflix menu, there's no lack of good books to read.

Identifying good books is easy:

• Explore series. Great series abound. I love Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer, Robert B. Parker's Spenser, and Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander.
  
  
• Explore prize winners. I have never read a Pulitzer or Booker prize-winning book that wasn't great.
  
  
• Explore individual authors. Choose an exceptional author and read every book he or she has written. I've done that with William Faulkner, John Updike, Philip Roth, and Richard Ford, and am doing it now with Erik Larson. You won't be disappointed.
  
  
• Explore subgenres. Pick a genre (sci-fi or history or memoir, for example) and then a subgenre (dystopian sci-fi or historical westerns or celebrity memoirs) and read the most popular book by each of the subgenre's foremost authors.   

• Explore classics. They're classics for a reason, so find out why. Just for starters, read Dracula, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Oil!, The Scarlet Letter, Treasure Island, Bleak House, Martin Eden, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Secret Agent, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Breakfast at Tiffany's, A Farewell to Arms, The Long Goodbye, Eye of the Needle, The Time Machine, Outerbridge Reach, Moby Dick, Catch-22, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Trout Fishing in America, The Moviegoer, Worlds' Fair, From the Terrace, The Wonder Boys, Nausea, White Noise, Amsterdam, Deliverance, The Killer Angels, A Flash of Green, The Razor's Edge, The Confessions of Nat Turner, On the Road, In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, A River Runs Through It, Crossing to Safety, Slaughterhouse-Five, War and Remembrance, or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. 

And good books are handy and cheap. Use your local library and check out online seller Thriftbooks.com, if you don't believe me.

Make it your goal to read at least three books every month.

Do so, and you can boast to your friends and family that you read three times more than the average American!

Above: Jug & Book by Robert Francis James. Oil on canvas board. 8 x 10 inches.

The Way Some People Spell

I don't see any use in having a uniform way of spelling words.

— Mark Twain

Mark Twain thought that policing the way people spelled was a merry chase, like policing the way people dressed. Thorstein Veblen called it a "conspicuous waste," "archaic, cumbrous, and ineffective."

My grammar school teachers, on the other hand, taught me that spelling was like math: there was one, and only one, right answer.

Of course, that was the early 1960s. 

They also taught us that policemen were our friends, that beatniks were dirty, and that America was the greatest country on earth.

Critical Race Theorists would say they were abusing their authority in order to oppress us and make us conform to the "dominant identity;" but, actually, they were following the lead of a mild-mannered Connecticut teacher, Noah Webster, and teaching us to be Americans.

Frustrated by the outdated teaching materials on hand, Webster revised America's grammar school textbooks immediately after the Revolutionary War, to rid them of references to the king. He also wrote a famous dictionary to rid the new nation's language of Briticisms. In the process, Webster simplified the spelling of hundreds of words. Travelling, for example, became traveling; colour became color; and publick became public. 

Webster believed his spellings, being humbler than their British counterparts were "of vast political consequence" to the young republic. 

And perhaps they were.

But we're an old republic now, soon to become a dictatorship. 

Humble is passé.

We don't care whether you spell smoking as smocking or coffee as covfefe. Just as long as you don't mention white supremacy, marginalization, or dominant-determined identifies.

For my part, call me a dinosaur, but I like Webster's democratic way with words.

Mystery

It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery.

— Sherlock Holmes

There are mysteries and there are mysteries.

Mystery (meaning a "puzzle") is a Middle English word derived from the Latin mysterium, meaning a "secret rite" or "initiation."

The medieval Catholic Church taught—and still teaches—that Jesus' life was an amalgam of mysteries, inexplicable to mortals, but worthy of contemplation. It used the Rosary to catalog these puzzles. A mystery meant an event in the life of Christ.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, mysteries was the term used to name the Seven Sacraments. So, for example, marriage was a mystery. (I can buy that.)

But mystery had a secular meaning, too, at the time.

A mystery meant an occupation, a trade, or a guild.

So, for example, the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, the guild for the retailers of fish in medieval London, were referred to as a "mystery."

Thanks to their royal charters, these mysteries were powerful monopolies, plying their might through arcane regulations.

They dictated who could sell fish in London and who couldn't; set all prices for their goods; and ran their own courts of law to settle disputes between sellers and suppliers.

The fishmongers, for example, fixed the prices for soles, turbots, herrings, oysters, and eels. They also forbid wholesalers from selling fish directly to the public; outlawed the selling of fish indoors; and prohibited the sale of any fish except salted ones after they were two days old.

The mysteries were also inordinately wealthy. They owned and ran their own apprentice programs, private schools, hospitals, poorhouses, and colonial plantations.

The mysteries' grip on commerce only ended with the rise of capitalism in the 19th century.

We echo the medieval mysteries' power today whenever we speak of guarding "trade secrets."

Coming Soon!

 

Short

It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short.

—Ernest Hemingway

Some things never change.

Good writing has never changed, even though writing itself has—a lot. 

We have, for example, seen use of the subjunctive (as in, "It's necessary my boss be at the meeting") nearly cease; sentence fragments (as in, "No can do") achieve acceptance; and verb conversions (such as "impact," "onboard," and "minoritize") shake off the stench of barbarism.

But good writing remains unchanged.

Good writing is good, first and foremost, because it's short. It coveys what's essential and leaves out the rest. Readers get the writer's point, because the point is made straightaway. 

And the wisdom in brevity never changes, as Ernest Hemingway once told his editor.

"If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.

"It wasn’t by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short," Hemingway said. 

"The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics."

Carry a Sharp Blade

The world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open.

— William Shakespeare

When in The Merry Wives of Windsor Shakespeare's scalawag Falstaff refuses to lend money to his trash-talking henchman Pistol, Pistol replies, "Why then, the world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open."

Knowing Pistol is a blowhard, Falstaff doesn't take the veiled threat seriously. 

But the English-speaking world has.

"The world's your oyster" we are prompt to say to anyone who's unsure about her next avenue.

It is advice I'd freely offer kids, teens, and twenty-somethings fresh out of college.

It's also advice I'd offer retirees. 

Especially retirees.

So often I hear retirees say that they can't decide how to spend their time productively—that the opportunities to accomplish good things are few and that they lack the know-how needed.

It's a shame our language has forgotten the second half of Pistol's threat, or else we'd say: The world's your oyster if you carry a sharp blade.

In other words, countless pearls are within your grasp provided you can pry them out; so carry a decent knife.

Sound like strange advice?

You should realize that Shakespeare's audience would not have found it so.

Being voracious consumers of oysters, they would have grasped it—as they did Pistol's words—instantly.

That's because large rivers like the Thames teemed with oysters in their day, supplying London with cartloads of the cheap and savory snack.

Playgoers in particular liked to chomp on oysters during performances at the Globe, as archeological evidence shows.

They knew full well oysters demanded a sharp blade. 

So when Pistol called the world his oyster "which I with sword will open," they caught his drift immediately: Oysters are everywhere; they're tasty—and some even have pearls; all you need do is open them.

The gift of a long life expectancy has created countless opportunities for today's retirees to make social, cultural and economic contributions previous generations never dreamed possible.

What a crime it would be to waste them for lack of a sharp instrument.

Call it what you will—retraining, reskilling, upskilling, or lifetime learning—keeping your blade sharp is a prerequisite to fulfillment in your final years on Earth.

So get off your ass and get busy acquiring a few new skills.

The world's your oyster.

Still.

Elizabethan pocketknife, circa 1600
Courtesy Shakespeare Birthplace Trust 

The Filthiest Word in the Language

Retirement is the filthiest word in the language.

— Ernest Hemingway

Some words should be retired.

Retired is one of them.

Just as we no longer call anyone "colored" or "retarded," we shouldn't call anyone retired.

The word means, to most people, "purposeless."

Hemingway told his biographer and friend, A. E. Hotchner, that retirement was like a terrible death. 

"The worst death for anyone is to lose the center of his being, the thing he really is," Hemingway said. 

"Whether by choice or by fate, to retire from what you do and what makes you what you are, is to back up into the grave."

"Retired" means purposeless: half-dead, half-gone, half-forgotten.

Over the hill. Out to pasture. Lingering about with one foot in the grave.

Retirement, indeed, is the filthiest word in the language.

Lonely

 

If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Solipsism—the belief that nothing exists except my self—would feel comfortable were it not for the fact that beliefs are social in nature.

And yet we often feel alone sometimes, and frighteningly so. 

The lockdown has heightened the feeling.

Despite solipsism's logical impossibility, loneliness has held center stage since Ancient times.

It's a key part of the picture of the world drawn by poets, lyricists, novelists, and philosophers.

Theologian Paul Tillich called loneliness our "destiny."

"Being alive means being in a body—a body separated from all other bodies," he said. "And being separated means being alone."

Psychiatrists worry that our "hyperconnected" state is making us even lonelier.

Mobile phones and computers are amplifying our tendencies toward solitude, anonymity, isolation, social distancing, and the willful avoidance of others.

Those behaviors, in turn, are increasing the instances of mental disorders like anxiety, depression, and paranoia.

Psychiatrists call this phenomenon the "Internet Paradox" and suggest that social media isn't social at all, but antisocial.

Social media is worsening our craving for loneliness.

The Internet Paradox could explain the sharp rise in severly abusive comments appearing on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

It could also explain the sharp increase in impulsive and aggressive behaviors on our streets and public forums.

CES: the S Stands for "Superspreader"

America wants to get back to normal.

That goes without saying.

But why otherwise smart people would decide to hold a a mega-show like CES in the midst of the third wave of the pandemic merely to simulate normal defies explanation.

Perhaps the pressure from wishful exhibitors was too much for the show's organizer to bear. 

I won't pretend to know.

But I do know one thing.

Thousands of attendees will return home from the event infected.

They'll in turn infect others, who'll swamp the hospitals and deny beds to injury victims and the chronically ill.

And some of those infected will surely die.

All in the name of hope.

Hope, they say, is not a strategy.

Neither is killing your customers.

POSTSCRIPT: They also say, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Don't believe it.

Let's Nix the Shibboleths

Then they said unto him, "Say now Shibboleth," and he said "Sibboleth," and they took him and slew him.

— Judges 12:6

The Miami Herald last month called on progressives to stop using the word Latinx.

"Stop trying to make the term 'Latinx' a thing," the editors wrote. "The so-called 'Latinx community' doesn’t even want to be called Latinx."

It turns out 98% of Latinos don't like the word.

I don't care for it either.

It sounds like a brand of laxative. (I can see the tagline now: Latinx. Pity the stool.)

I don't care for shibboleths in general.

Shibboleths often begin life as genteelisms meant to foster goodwill; but they just as often devolve—quickly—into political passwords.

The word shibboleth (Hebrew for "corncob") comes to us from the Old Testament, where we're told that sentries in Gilead used shibboleth as a watchword, knowing their enemies couldn't pronounce the "h."

I pity the fool who couldn't say shibboleth. He was executed on the spot.

I remember recoiling in horror the first time I heard a speaker say Latinx—not because I had no toilet paper, but because I thought, "Oh, no, here's another angry group to worry about offending."

But enough already!

With the real threats to democracy posed by the right, it's time we speak plainly and candidly—without fear of causing offense.

All this precious progressive "rebranding" has gotten way-too Orwellian.

"Some people love to feel offended because it makes them feel important," novelist Oliver Markus Malloy said. 

"When your only tool is a hammer, suddenly every problem starts to look like a nail. And when the only time you feel relevant is when you claim to be offended, suddenly everything looks offensive.”

He's right.

Let's be blunt and to the point.

Let's nix the shibboleths.

Happy January 6th!

We’re an illiberal state because we’ve marginalized the liberals.

— Victor Orbán

 

How January 6th will be commemorated in the future depends on the outcome of the 2024 election.

If Trump or his clone wins the presidency, January 6th will replace July 4th.

Sadly, Trump's base, too stupid (yes, that's the word) to grasp European politics, will take no note of their savior's endorsement yesterday of Hungary's prime minister Victor Orbán.

Trump called Orbán a "strong leader" who's "done a powerful and wonderful job in protecting Hungary."

Orbán's record is a blueprint for the next Trump presidency. 

Orbán has:

• Replaced Hungary's Constitution with his own
• Rigged elections so his party wins every time
• Cut the number of Members of Parliament by half
• Packed the courts
• Fired thousands of "disloyal" government employees
• Taken control of all radio and TV stations
• Blacklisted citizens who criticize the government
• Created a secret police to fight "Muslim terrorists"
• Broken up protests using violence
• Sheltered billions of stolen dollars in phony foundations
• Rewarded government contracts to family and friends
• Siphoned EU funds to political cronies
• Nationalized universities, utilities, and parks
• Nationalized all Hungarians' pensions
• Eliminated welfare and unemployment insurance 
• Doubled the limit on paying workers for overtime
• Targeted immigrants by criminalizing immigrant assistance
• Targeted LGBTQ people through bans on depicting them 
• Muzzled academics who criticize the government
• Rewritten school textbooks
• Endorsed the supporters of Nazi Germany
• Pocketed untold billions of dollars of government money 

"The new state that we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal state," Orbán said in his 2014 state-of-the-union address.

That means only one thing: a "state that puts money in my pocket."

Happy January 6th!