Defying Gravity

If a bridge collapses, a Mercedes drops as fast as a Hyundai.

— Al Franken

Republican dogma notwithstanding, wealth never trickles down. 

Never.

Yet, despite the fact William Jennings Bryan exposed trickle down's fallaciousness 125 years ago, Republicans insist it does.

Wearing wearisome disguises, this idiotic article of faith resurfaces every time a Republican opens his or her fatuous mouth.

But money isn't subject to the law of gravity.

When it goes up, it never comes down. 

Unless forced to.

Last week we learned the super-rich pay no taxes, reconfirming the fact that wealth never trickles down; at least, not through our tax system.

Republicans' reaction to the news: good for them! They're smart cookies!

Why anyone but a trust-fund baby would vote Republican escapes me. 

They must be brainwashed by their betters. 

As Lenin observed, "The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them."

The good news is: we're on the brink of another New Deal, courtesy President Biden.

Naturally, Republicans are incensed. 

It puts the Trump tax cut at risk.

"Republicans say tax cuts pay for themselves," writes Al Franken in Rolling Stone. "They never do. How about we try something that actually does work?"

Franken, like Biden, proposes taxing the rich to pay for Biden's new deal.

"Perhaps you’ve noticed that the rich have been getting a lot richer for quite a few decades now," Franken writes. "And as the rich get richer, our country seems to be falling apart."

Which, if you've been outdoors lately, you know is true.

Since Reagan's presidency, the federal government has neglected the country's infrastructure, targeting tax dollars instead to weapons and Wall Street bailouts.

As a result, dynasties—a source of power never foreseen by our Founders—have blossomed.

Biden's new deal would tax those dynasties in order to update our dilapidated bridges, roads, water mains, power plants, parks, schools, railways, and seaports—a diabolical plan, if there ever was one.

Pure socialism! scream brain-dead Republicans.

Maybe it is. But the fact remains, wealth never trickles down. 

Never.

Like gold, wealth has to be extracted.

And why not?

"The fact is that every bit of what President Biden proposes is in everyone’s best interest," Franken writes.

"If a bridge collapses, a Mercedes drops as fast as a Hyundai."

But is It Scalable?

There are no accidents in life.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

I'm sick of algorithm-writers trying to manipulate me.

They suggest who I should follow (like Tomi Lahren, someone I loathe); what I should say (they autocorrect "You're my honey" to "You're my hiney"); when I should shop ("It's time to add more data"); and where I should go ("Belize awaits you!" So does Hell.).

It seems no matter where I turn, an anonymous algorithm-writer—likely to be wrong about my wants—has his grubby finger on the scale.

Even book-writers—some, anyway—are trying to manipulate me, by "click-farming" their way onto Amazon's best-seller lists.

Book-writers hire Chinese click-farms to fake Kindle downloads of their books, which Amazon counts as "sales."

A couple thousand Kindle downloads, which today would cost about $400, can put a book—even one with no previous real sales—on the top of Amazon's Top 10 charts.

The fake Kindle downloads also feed Amazon's "Books you may like," suggested purchases served by—what else?—algorithms.

Whatever became of scrupulous writers? Writers who trusted to the originality and incisiveness of their books to boost sales?

Writers of books like Being and Nothingness.

Written by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, 722-page book examines the experiences of individuals from the standpoint of radical subjectivity.

Weighing precisely one kilo when published in Paris in 1943, Being and Nothingness sprang to the top of the best-seller list, to the author's surprise.

Who were all these Parisians in the midst of the Occupation so eager to read a philosophical investigation of human existence?

They were grocers, it turned out. 

Grocers were using the book on their scales to replace the one-kilo lead weights that had been confiscated by the Nazis, to be melted down for bullets.

America's Most Hated Man

We were fighting for an idea, and somebody who realized that had to say it and keep on saying it until it was believed.

— George Creel

Before there was foxification, there was creeling.

Named for adman George Creel, the flack who ran White House communications during World War I, creeling means to repeat a lie incessantly, expecting listeners to buy it—which they usually do. 

Propaganda experts also call Creel's trick the ad nauseam tactic.

Creel made no effort to disguise his creeling, which he defined as "propaganda in the true sense of the word, meaning the propagation of faith.”

Lacking the broadcast technology Fox exploits, Creel relied largely on an early form of brand advocacy to weaponize his palaver.

He dispatched a 75,000-man army of public speakers he called "Four-Minute Men" to "meet customers where they are"—or were, in 1917.

The Four-Minute Men would stand up in the nation's movie theaters between reel-changes—which took four minutes in the day—and mouth the White House's lies.

They lied about German atrocities, the fairness of the draft, the urgency for rationing, and the value of US savings bonds, over and over and over.

Creel supplemented his army of brand advocates by distributing millions of garish posters, booklets and films that demonized the enemy and glorified us, insisting, "America must be thrilled into unity."

To do any less, Creel believed, was to let the Germans win.

"The printed word, the spoken word, motion pictures, the telegraph, the wireless, cables, posters, signboards, and every possible media should be used to drive home the justice of America’s cause," he said. 

"Not to combat disaffection at home was to weaken the firing line.”

Historians haven't been kind to George Creel, calling him, among other things, a "warmonger," "petty tyrant," and "irredeemable villain"—even though his intentions might have been patriotic.

But, well intentioned though he be, Creel perfected the propaganda tool that bears his name—creeling—and handed it to the dybbuks at Fox.

For that, we can hate him.

Some Things are Nonnegotiable

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.

― George Orwell

In The New York Times this week, conservative columnist David Brooks observes that the gospel of woke has already reached the remainder shelves, its freshness expired.

The proof, he says, lies in the fact that corporate America has co-opted it.

Corporations have the uncanny ability to productize progressive ideologies, Brooks says, "taking what was dangerous and aestheticizing it."

He cites the example of a nearly laughable pamphlet for math teachers, A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction.

The pamphlet urges teachers to shun "racism in mathematics."  

"White supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms when there is a greater focus on getting the 'right' answer than understanding concepts and reasoning," the pamphlet says.

"Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates objectivity," and objectivity is racist.

Objectivity is racist, the pamphlet insists, because it's paternalistic, provoking fear and self-hatred among math students unaware of the correct answers.

Brooks might find this stuff silly and harmless; I don't. 

There are tens of thousands of teachers imbibing this swill.

Mathematical truth—what philosophers call realism—is apodictic, immutable and—as harsh as it sounds—nonnegotiable. 

Mathematical truth may be the last bastion of white supremacy, but I'll defend it to the end. 

Otherwise, truth is only that which is trouble-saving.

Do you want your grandkids crossing bridges engineered by snowflakes unable to add two plus two?

Not me.

Woke Me When It's Over

A sixth grader's father has caused a tempest in uptown Manhattan by mailing an angry letter to the 650 parents whose kids are enrolled in Brearley, an elite private girls school that costs $54,000 a year to attend. 

Recipients of the letter include Chelsea Clinton, Tina Fey, Drew Barrymore and Steve Martin.

"Our family recently made the decision not to reenroll our daughter at Brearley," wrote Andrew Gutman. 

"We no longer have confidence that our daughter will receive the quality of education necessary to further her development."

Gutman went on to say the school "has completely lost its way."

"The administration and trustees have displayed a cowardly and appalling lack of leadership by appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob, and then allowing the school to be captured by that same mob," he wrote.

The mob Gutman had in mind: the advocates of woke.

Last week I attended my first woke training course. 

I'm embarrassed to say I almost fell asleep.

The silliest portion of the training, by far, came when the presenter shamed herself for describing things as "crazy," pledging never again to use a word offensive to psychotics. 

Her self-mortification generated a couple dozen red-heart emojis and prompted one participant to pledge never again to describe things as "lame," a word offensive to cripples.

As far as the training went, he took the word right out of my mouth.

Woke's roots lie in French "post-structuralist" philosophy, which claimed that truth and righteousness are the solely property of the marginalized.

Many great philosophers contributed to post-structuralist thought.

But sadly, in the hands of hacks, their contribution to Western thought has devolved from insight to idiocy.

Woke training is inane.

Worse, it's a form of rhetoric philosophers call "moral grandstanding."

"Moral grandstanding is the use of moral talk for self-promotion," says philosopher Brandon Warmke. 

"Moral grandstanders have egotistical motives: they may want to signal that they have superhuman insight into a topic, paint themselves as a victim, or show that they care more than others."

Rather than mending society, moral grandstanders' soapboxing is divisive.

"Moral grandstanding contributes to political polarization, increases cynicism, and causes outrage exhaustion," Warmke says.

Moral grandstanders are also "free riders," Warmke claims. 

"They get the benefits of being heard without contributing to any valuable discourse."

Andrew Gutman's letter, although harsh, comes, I believe, as a predictable gut-reaction to moral grandstanding by Brearley.

"I cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin, but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs," Gutman told The New York Post.

While worried about his daughter's "indoctrination," what actually set Gutman off was the school's insistence he attend woke training, which he called "simplistic and sophomoric" and likened to Mao-like rehabilitation.

Too bad he didn't realize he simply could have napped through the training. 

Please, woke me when it's over.

Short People

They got little hands and little eyes

And they walk around telling great big lies

— Randy Newman

"Cancel culture" isn't new.

It's been around since Dicso.

In 1977, singer-songwriter Randy Newman was cancelled for "Short People," a novelty tune that rose to Number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart and became a gold record.

"Short People" so enraged the thought police, it was banned from the radio in major cities like New York, Philadelphia and Boston. 

A Maryland legislator introduced a bill prohibiting the song's airplay statewide.

"'Short People' has run into a wave of protest almost unique in the history of popular music," The Washington Post wrote at the time. 

The composer even received death threats. 

"Newman will be lucky if he reaches April Fool's Day without rope burns around his neck," The Post wrote.

The song, of course, was a tongue-in-cheek condemnation of bigotry; but morons took Newman's satire literally.

"His real mistake was to give this particular poem a catchy melody and a bright, upbeat arrangement that won it a lot of exposure on radio stations that specialize in brainlessness and appeal to brainless people," The Post wrote. 

"There, amid the endless jangle of disco tunes, the song stood out like a giraffe at a convention of frogs."

"They got grubby little fingers and dirty little minds," Newman's final stanza concluded. 

"They're gonna get you every time."

Pleasant Valley Sunday

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday, charcoal burning everywhere.

— Gerry Goffin

Facing a $1.3 billion defamation suit, Donald Trump's wormy shyster Sidney Powell now says "no reasonable person would conclude" her claims of election-rigging "were truly statements of fact."

Yet, thanks in part to Powell, 64,829,709 adult Americans believe Trump won and are backing bills in 33 states designed to suppress Democrats' votes in the future.

What's wrong with them? How can they be—to borrow Powell's defense—so unreasonable?

A logician would say they're guilty of the fallacy known as the argument from incredulity.

These 65 million adult Americans claim that, since they can't believe Trump lost, to say he did is simply false. 

Their flawed reasoning looks like this:

1. We can’t explain or imagine how this thing—Trump's loss—can be true.
   
   
2. If we can't explain or imagine how the thing is true, then it must be false.
   
   
3. Therefore, this thing is false.

Their second premise is clearly unsound. (I can't explain or imagine, for example, how a paper cut can be worse than a knife cut; but I don't therefore deny that it is.)

Why 65 million adult Americans can be so patently illogical is mystifying—until you consider the Pleasant Valley pseudo-reality in which they live.

As conceived by philosopher Josef Pieper, a pseudo-reality is a deliberately maintained "fiction," a pathological interpretation of reality. 

A pseudo-reality allows anyone who lives in it to shape the world to suit his biases, and to accommodate others who, like himself, can't accept the world as it is.

A pseudo-reality is, in effect, a playground for psychopaths. It can persist, Pieper says, only as long as the kids outside the playground—in other words, the normal kids—don't challenge it.

Writing in the 1970s, Pieper's prime example of a pseudo-reality was Nazism. 

Today's prime example is the GOP. 

Its members are all delusional psychopaths, water-carriers for a destructive lie. As such, they cannot be logical. 

Because logic only applies to the real world.

No Time for Fascists

Nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge

from an association between us.

— Bertrand Russell

Social media provides no sanctuary from fascists. They lurk behind every rock.

An example.

I'm a new member of "Steven Wright Quotes," a Facebook group that recycles the "best of" the quirky standup's material.

Fascists have joined the group for the countless opportunities it offers to comment on Wright's old gags—even though they're apolitical.

Lines like, "I planted some bird seed; a bird came up," and "I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize."

Facebook is funny 24/7; but I don't have that much time.

And I have less time for fascists.

In 1962, the head of the British Union of Fascists, Sir Oswald Mosley, invited the philosopher Bertrand Russell to debate. Russell declined by letter:

Dear Sir Oswald,

I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one’s own. 

It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterized the philosophy and practice of fascism.

I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from an association between us.

I should like you to understand the intensity of this conviction on my part. It is not out of any attempt to be rude that I say this but because of all that I value in human experience and human achievement.

Yours sincerely,

Bertrand Russell

So, you might ask, how do you spot a fascist?

It's easy.

Based on the work of historian Robert Paxton, a fascist is:

• Obsessed with community decline and his own victimhood
  
  
• Obsessed with the need for "cleansing" lower social groups
  
  
• Obsessed with plots and the need for redemptive violence
  
  
• Obsessed with the tropes, metaphors, code-words, and jargon he learns from fascist propagandists
  
  
• Obsessed with the need for a national chieftain, who alone can incarnate the nation's historical destiny
  

When you encounter a fascist, do not engage; because, as Russell said, "nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge."

UPDATE: Since publishing this post, I have dropped out of "Steven Wright Quotes." The administrators cannot keep up with the fascists who leave their Troglodytic comments there.

White Noise

When these black fiends keep their hands off the throats of the women of the South, the lynching will stop.

— Rep. Thomas Sisson

I despise Sen. Ron Johnson.

He postures as a "maverick," when he's merely a chickenshit White Supremacist who thinks it's gutsy to preface race-baiting with "this could get me in trouble."

Were he brave, he'd speak with candor, as Rep. Thomas Sisson did a century ago during the Congressional debate of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. Instead, he employs tropes.

Fortunately, Sen. Bob Menendez has called Johnson out on the Senate floor.

"I get no one likes to be called racist, but sometimes there's just no other way to describe the use of bigoted tropes that for generations have threatened Black lives by stoking white fear," Menendez said. 

"For one of our colleagues to cast those who attacked the Capitol as harmless patriots while stoking the fear of Black Americans is like rubbing salt in an open wound."

The gutless Johnson has denied he race-baits, saying, "There was nothing racial about my comments, nothing whatsoever.

"This isn't about race. It's about riots."

Sheer disingenuousness.

Imagine Rep. Sisson saying, "Lynching isn't about race. It's how Southerners practice knot-tying."

Crawl back into Mom's rectum, Sen. Johnson. 

We're sick of your white noise.

Hardened

To conquer a nation, first disarm its citizens.

― Adolf Hitler

After the Las Vegas sniper took out 60 concert-goers three years ago, Bill O'Reilly called the killings "the price of freedom." 

"Government restrictions will not stop psychopaths from harming people," he said.

To protect ourselves, according to O'Reilly, we need guns, the more—and more lethal—the better. 

"The Second Amendment is clear: Americans have a right to arm themselves for protection. Even the loons."

The two latest mass shootings prove to me that, for fascists like O'Reilly, freedom is dear—and life, cheap.

That's a degree of callousness most Americans find hard to swallow.

Callous, by the way, was borrowed seven centuries ago from the Latin callosus, meaning "thick-skinned." 

Callous means "unfeeling" and "hardened in the mind."

Callousness is a personality trait, I've noticed, among all fascists. 

Psychologists say it stems from self-loathing.

They're probably right.

Attractive Nusiance

I count religion but a childish toy and
hold there is no sin but ignorance.

— Christopher Marlowe

After his arrest this week, Atlanta gunman Robert Long told police he merely wanted to wipe out temptation.

His vicar has said Long's actions were "the result of a sinful heart and depraved mind" and "completely unacceptable."

Bull.

While liberals ballyhoo about pistols and prejudice, I don't hear an outcry against the real culprit: Christianity.

It's time to outlaw it.

"The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad," Friedrich Nietzsche aptly said.

Long found the world ugly and bad, and merely tried to better it. 

His only real crime was childishness.

Fortunately, there is solid ground upon which to ban Christianity: the doctrine of “attractive nuisance."

Dating to 1841, the doctrine holds a property owner responsible for a child's injuries when the owner fails to eliminate a "nuisance" that lures the child to trespass.

Attractive nuisances typically include swimming pools; artificial ponds and water fountains; trampolines; treehouses; merry-go-rounds; building equipment and debris; discarded appliances and cars; and unsecured animals.

In the case of Victims v. Long, the vicar of Crabapple First Baptist Church (as well as Long) should be found guilty. 

Long pulled the trigger, yes; but the vicar lured him into doing so, by dangling the "attractive nuisance" known in his trade as "eternal salvation." 

The Crabapple First Baptist Church should be shuttered and demolished, and the congregation's assets awarded to the plaintiffs.

For once, let's get to the root of things.

Poison

Fox News' latest conservaturd: the decision by the estate of Dr. Seuss to stop printing six of the author's books represents "cancel culture at silliest."

"A whole bunch of childhood legends are suddenly being put on cultural trial," Fox commentator Howard Kurtz says. 

"Past generations produced artists and politicians who upheld ideas that are utterly unacceptable today. But we have more important things to do than constantly trying to whitewash every book and show produced by our flawed past."

I'm happy to chide the champions of witless wokeness. But Kurtz and his network—as always—are dead wrong.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises made its decision not because it wants to "cancel" its sugar daddy (why would it?) but because, as a spokesperson said, the six discontinued books "portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong."

But, racist zealots that they are, Kurtz and his network refuse to admit kids are influenced by books—and that some of those books are poison.

As caring parents, we keep poisons out of kids' reach for good reason. And poisonous books, too.

Consider, for example, The Poison Mushroom, a children's picture-book published by Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher. 

Used in German classrooms between 1938 and 1945, The Poison Mushroom enjoyed a vast, captive audience until the Nazi's defeat and the Allies' "denazification" initiative.

The book explains how, just as it's hard to tell a poisonous from an edible mushroom, it's hard to tell a Jew from a Gentile. 

The Poison Mushroom teaches kids to identify Jews through their purported actions: they abuse servants; kidnap, molest and murder children; rape pubescent girls; torture animals; cheat naive customers; and worship money and Karl Marx.

During the Nuremburg Trials, one jurist called The Poison Mushroom "obscene."

Given the strong resemblance between Julius Streicher's and QAnon's beliefs, I wouldn't be surprised to see Kurtz and his network next rail against last year's "cancellation" of The Poison Mushroom by Amazon.

Perhaps it's time to cancel Fox News.

Who Will Mourn the Confederate Dead?

Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,

Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause!

                             

— Henry Timrod

Last year, 160 Confederate memorials—19% of the Confederate memorials across the South—were removed from public view, according to the AP. Meanwhile, cities and states removed the names of Confederates from hundreds of streets, schools, public buildings, parks, and forts. 

“These racist symbols only serve to uphold revisionist history and the belief that white supremacy remains morally acceptable,” Lecia Brooks, chief of staff of the Southern Poverty Law Center, told the AP. “Exposing children to anything that falsely promotes the idea of white superiority and Black inferiority is dehumanizing.”

But cancelling the Confederacy rankles the unreconstructed, who, despite the words and actions of contemporaries, insist the American Civil War was not about preserving slavery, but the "rights" of White Southerners.

Yesterday, Representative Liz Cheney, the maverick Republican from Wyoming, begged her party to assert “we aren’t the party of white supremacy” in the wake of the January siege of Capitol Hill. "You saw the symbols of Holocaust denial, for example, at the Capitol that day; you saw the Confederate flag being carried through the rotunda, and I think we as Republicans in particular, have a duty and an obligation to stand against that, to stand against insurrection.”

But she's alone in her opinion.

Who will mourn the Confederate dead?

The GOP. Racist to the bone.

Best Explanation

In order to learn you must desire to learn, and not be satisfied with what you're already inclined to think.

― Charles S. Peirce

Victimhood and illogic drive many American tragedies, as they drove Nashville Bomber Anthony Quinn Warner to target AT&T on Christmas Day.

Films like "Silkwood," "Erin Brockovich" and "Radium Girls" teach us that all industrialists are avaricious and amoral victimizers, and that to stand up to them—as the Nashville Bomber did—is heroic. 

And conspiracy theorists, knowing illogic is our tragic flaw, teach us that to believe is to know, when it's not.

One conspiracy theory afflicting us now—the one that consumed the Nashville Bomber—holds that the industrialists behind 5G are killing us. Cigarette-makers killed their customers, after all, so why wouldn't AT&T?

Proponents of the theory claim that all wireless radiation is deadly, but that the research which proves it has been willfully ignored. 5G, proponents of the theory say, is the deadliest of all. Once deployed, it will expose people for the first time in history to a steady shower of super-fast millimeter waves, and cause hair-loss, memory-loss, sterility, cancer, neurological disorders, genetic damage, and even structural changes to the human body.

But physicists know a lot about wireless radiation, including millimeter waves. 

Millimeter waves—like all radio waves—carry little energy compared to other forms of radiation, and cannot damage genes or upset metabolisms. Millimeter waves are for all purposes inert, and will travel uninterrupted through human bodies—as well as the rest of the universe. If you want to worry about possible damage to yourself, you're better off worrying about your exposure to light: a single visible-light photon has a trillion times more energy than a millimeter-wave photon.

If the proponents of the 5G conspiracy theory don't strike you as paranoid, consider that some believe 5G, besides causing cancer, is a "Chinese plot" against America; that 5G is of a piece with vaccines, fluoridation, genetically engineered food, and fracking; and that 5G, designed by Bill Gates to reduce the world's population, transmits Covid-19.

The 5G conspiracy theory is an example of flouting what philosophers call inference to the best explanation. 

According to that principle, when faced with a question, you choose the theory that best explains the available data. You don't choose a theory that ignores the data, presupposes other data, adds a bunch of data, or invents data out of whole cloth.

If you're rational, when your kitchen appliances all stop working at once, you infer that a fuse blew in the basement. 

You don't infer—although it's possible—that a secret cabal of Chinese manufacturers has coordinated, to the precise second, the mass failure of your appliances; that the cabal seeks only to victimize American customers; that it's covering up its ability to plan mass, simultaneous product failures from the West; and that Bill Gates must be on the payroll.

Pulpits and Poohbahs

While today we would say something's "great" ("GameStop is great!") Ragtime-era folks would say it's "bully" ("GameStop is bully!").

So in 1904, when Rev. Lyman Abbott was invited by then-President Teddy Roosevelt to preview an important speech, Roosevelt confided, "I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit!"

In a chronicle of the meeting, Abbott recalled Roosevelt's words and described his bully pulpit as a license to build Americans' support for reform, while tearing down opposition to it.

Abbott's pubic mention of Roosevelt's words made the term famous overnight.

But today "bully" is a pejorative; and behind today's bully pulpit stands an actual bully—a corrupt conman who's using his platform to promote treason and panic timid supplicants.

However, access to the bully pulpit doesn't in itself turn a bully into a poobah.

The bully must do that to himself.

Poohbah—meaning a "pompous big shot"—was coined in 1895 by Gilbert and Sullivan when they composed The Mikado. 

The two songsters liked the flatulent sound of the word, later claiming it derived from every tin-pot dictator's way of dismissing a new idea by saying "Pooh!" or "Bah!"

Poohbah leapt overnight from the stage into British parlance, but didn't catch on in the US for another 31 years, when A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh first appeared.

Helter Skelter 2.0

Fifty years ago, we recoiled in horror at the mesmeric abilities of a devious, two-bit con who'd concocted a fable about an impending civil war—a fable so powerful, it incited mass murder. 

The fabulist was named Charles Manson; his fable, "Helter Skelter." On the strength of the fable, a California judge condemned Manson to death, although he'd steered clear of the killings.

Another con is at large today. The fable he spins is as crazy as "Helter Skelter" and—to suggestible followers—just as compelling.

Will the law allow him to remain at large?

Time to Abridge Bullshit

The people shall not be deprived of their right to speak, write or publish their sentiments.

— James Madison

Although the Senate rewrote Madison's draft of the First Amendment before its ratification, no one questioned that free speech is a natural right in 1789.

Six decades earlier, a young Philadelphia printer, Ben Franklin, had said as much. "When men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard," he wrote.

Franklin didn't worry that some opinions are wrong, because "when truth and error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter."

Free speech is a bedrock principle, as American as apple pie. Or is it?

The Founding Fathers never watched reality TV, where falsehoods trump the truth. Had they, the First Amendment might read: 

Congress shall abridge the freedom to bullshit.

I hate to say it, but our reality TV-star president has forced America to abridge bullshit. As we've seen—like raw milk, angel dust, and flammable pajamas—bullshit is bad for you. It ought to be outlawed.

Liberals will flinch at this suggestion, I know; perhaps some conservatives, as well. Tough. We're neck deep in a national emergency, brought on Trump and his despotic stooges and abetted by the traditional and new media's addiction to fair play.

It's time Trump's league of bullshit artists were muzzled.

And not only muzzled. 

It's time—lest we forget—they were tarred for their chronic bullshit.

If they're not branded as liars and propagandists, they'll resort to "communicative silence" (kommunikatives Beschweigen)—the convenient path closet Nazis took after World War II, when these German "patriots" permitted Hitler's narrative to persist, albeit in the shadows.

To Trump, Pence, Pompeo, Navarro, McEnany, Limbaugh, Hannity, Carlson, Graham, McConnell, Jordan, Cruz, Gaetz, Johnson, Hawley and the rest of your ruthless, insurrectionary gang: It's time to shut up, time to fade away. 

Before we're trampled by your herd of incels, we will repress you and tar you, because you pollute public discourse with your unrelenting bullshit.

74 Million Cop Killers

If you were blind, you wouldn't be guilty.

— Jesus Christ

If you're among the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump, you're not blind to what you've done.

You have aided and abetted the murder of US Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick.

You claim you're for law and order, but you're really a bully, a lawbreaker, a cop killer.

You are a fascist.

You say you're a conservative, but you support a radical strongman. 

You're anti-establishment, anti-liberal, anti-socialist, exclusionary, and nationalistic. 

You think you've been victimized and, by dint of genes alone, that you're superior to everyone who's different from you.

You're a fascist.

In the 1940s, people like you threatened Western civilization. My parents and their families fought and suffered, to put an end to that threat.

Now it remains for the democracy-loving portion of my generation, and my children's, to put an end to the threat you represent.

Rest assured, we will.

NOTE: Fascism derives from the Italian fascio, meaning "bundle." In Ancient Rome, the fascio symbolized power. Mussolini borrowed the word to name the "Blackshirts," the militia he founded. The Blackshirts specialized in roaming the streets, beating and murdering political opponents.

Helpless

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

— Reinhold Niebuhr

Psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich believed that fascism is the result of bad parenting.

Parental abuse, neglect and repression combine, Reich said, to produce fascists, deeply warped individuals who are "apprehensive, shy, obedient, afraid of authority, and good and adjusted, in the authoritarian sense." 

Fascists are, in addition, incapable of finding love and sexual satisfaction. Today we call such frustrated people incels.

Donald Trump and his followers are proof of Reich's beliefs.

Sadly, there's little, if anything, we can do to change the minds of Trump's followers. Their parents shaped them years ago to fall into line behind authoritarians. They may deserve pity; but not tolerance. They're helpless, loveless, diabolical, and—for the most part—beyond our reach. Our best course it to cede them that bleak corner of the playground where the civilized rest of us never wish to tread. Alaska comes to mind.

"The more helpless the 'mass-individual' has become, owing to his upbringing, the more pronounced is his identification with the Führer," Reich said. 

"The reactionary lower middle-class man perceives himself in the Führer, in the authoritarian state. On the basis of this identification he feels himself to be a defender of the 'national heritage,' of the 'nation,' which does not prevent him, likewise on the basis of this identification, from simultaneously despising 'the masses' and confronting them as an individual.

"The wretchedness of his material and sexual situation is so overshadowed by the exalting idea of belonging to a master race and having a brilliant Führer that, as time goes on, he ceases to realize how completely he has sunk to a position of insignificant, blind allegiance."

God help us, and grant us the serenity to accept what we cannot change.