Our Ingrained Responsibility to Stay Informed

Most people do not really want freedom,
because freedom involves responsibility.

— Sigmund Freud

It has become quaint in American to believe in responsibility.

You can avoid taxes, dodge military service, abandon your children, snub your neighbors and rob retailers—all while shirking any responsibility.

You can cheat your employer, scam customers, rip off investors and fleece donors—all while shirking any responsibility.

You can even become president and shirk any—and all—responsibility.

But as Americans, I believe, we do have one ingrained responsibility, a responsibility that we cannot shirk: to stay informed.

It's a civic and a moral responsibility, no matter how we eventually might use it, to gather and digest accurate information.

To do any less—to remain content with a litany of lies, inanities, and propaganda—is to remain a chump, a sucker, an idiot, and an ignoramus.

We have far too many of these sorts of nincompoops—the so-called "low information citizens"—for our nation's wellbeing.

I for one am disgusted with them.

They're like spoiled little kids, afraid they'll be frightened or saddened by fairy tales that haven't already been read to them a hundred times or more. 

Jack Nicholson-style, they can't handle the truth—and are willing to forego freedom, rather than acquire and accept information when it runs counter to their fantasies.

Unable to discern fact from fiction, they're allowing their lives—and, worse, the lives of their fellow Americans—to be ruled by profit-seeking charlatans.

And even worse yet, these dunces are blind—oblivious to the real-world consequences of their willful ignorance. 

By supporting charlatans, they're unwittingly accelerating the erosion of human rights and civil liberties—rights and liberties our forebears struggled to gain for us. That blindness represents the very apotheosis of irresponsibility and poor citizenship; and an assured dead end for our democracy.

But asking these dimwits to "connect the dots" between their ignorance and its outcomes—to accept blame for the suspension of our personal freedoms—is a waste of time and energy. 

I'd sooner ask my cat to solve a quadratic equation.

Above: Battle Flag by Andrew Wyeth. Tempera on wood. 30 x 22 inches.

I am the American Voter

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the 

collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

― H.L. Mencken

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

But that's as far as I go.

All that "one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" stuff that follows is socialism.

Jesus would never approve that shit.

Besides, socialism is the reason gas is so pricey.

I spent $110 yesterday to fill the Ford F. 

F is right!

It's all the Dems fault—them and the Blacks and all the other freeloading coloreds.

Oh, and the child molesters. Can't forget them.

Go back to where you came from, I say (but not aloud). Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Why can't we all just get along?

I'll tell you why.

Too many people want their own bathroom.

What's wrong with men's room and women's room?

And women—don't get me started on women.

I'll never forgive Jane Fonda.

Never ever ever.

I am the American voter.

Cartoon: Dave Whamond

Supreme Justice

A brief note to urge mothers to drop their unwanted children at the doorstep of Amy Coney Barrett. You can obtain her street address from Ruth Sent Us. She loves foundlings.

Up

The Uncola.

— Advertising slogan

In 1919, St. Louis adman Charlie Grigg saw big money in soda pop.

So he quit advertising for sales and joined a beverage company.

An innovative guy, before long he invented two successful soft drinks for the company, "Whistle" and "Howdy."

But it was his third invention that made Grigg's name.

In 1929, Grigg—now heading his own beverage company—introduced "Bib," a name he would change seven years later to "7 Up."

The "up" in 7 Up came from lithium, a mood-enhancing substance used to treat depression in the early 20th century.

Grigg added tons of it to 7 Up, to distinguish it from other lemon and lime pops.

A well-known picker-upper, lithium was a popular ingredient in patent medicines at the time; and doctors would advise depression-sufferers who could afford it to vacation at spas near lithium-rich springs, where they could drink and bathe in the mind-altering waters.

Grigg’s formula was perfect.

His timing was also perfect: 7 Up appeared just two weeks before Black Tuesday, the event that triggered—no pun intended—the Great Depression.

Sales of 7 Up soared.

Consumers believed Grigg's claim that the pop buoyed flagging spirits (7 Up is a "savory, flavory drink with a real wallop," his ads said).

They also liked to use 7 Up as a hangover cure (it "takes the ouch out of grouch," the ads insisted).

Grigg's invention became the third best-selling pop in the world—until the federal government intervened.

In 1948, the feds banned lithium in all foods and beverages, determining it to be a cause of birth defects, kidney failure, and death.

Without lithium, 7 Up's sales tanked.

But in 1968, with the help of ad agency J. Walter Thompson, 7 Up staged a comeback.

JWT tapped into the counter culture, labelling 7 Up the "Uncola" and positioning it in ads as if it had been concocted by The Beatles.

The agency hired designer Milton Glaser—famous for his Bob Dylan poster—to create campaign graphics and rented thousands of billboards alongside America's busiest highways, where college kids would be sure to see them.

JWT also launched a TV campaign that featured a genial Black actor who explained why kola nuts were inferior to lemons and limes.

The ads worked so well, 7 Up's sales skyrocketed. 

The pop reclaimed its rank as the third largest-selling soft drink and at the same time became inextricably linked to America's "rebellious youth."

By the 1990s, however, those youth were in their 50s, and 7 Up became, in the words of one Wall Street analyst, "what old people drink."

Today, the brand has less than 1% market share.

Above: The Seven Ups by Robert Francis James. Oil on fiberboard. 8 x 10 inches.

Exceptions

 Exceptions are so inevitable that no rule is without them—except the one just stated.

— Eugene Rhodes

Among Ralph Waldo Emerson's many contributions to Philosophy Americana is the oft-cited "Law of Compensation."

You get what you give, it states in a nutshell.

"Nature hates monopolies and exceptions," Emerson says. 

"There is always some leveling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on the same ground with all others."

If only this were true.

It's not.

Nature may hate exceptions, but exceptions—the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate—always win the day.

Always.

Consider these injustices:

• Pretty people are paid 15% more than plain-looking people.
  
  
• Blonde women are paid 7% more than brunettes and redheads.
  
  
• Educated workers of color are paid $10,000 less than their white colleagues.
  
  
• Rich people enjoy lower income tax rates than other earners.  
  
  
• Poor people die in wars; rich people do not.

Try all you might to level the playing field, exceptions will always emerge to take the lead. 

And so rich parents cheat to get their kids into Ivy League schools; advantaged whites fabricate degrees and credentials; and the super-rich lie to the IRS about their income.

Emerson notwithstanding, the Law of Compensation applies to schmucks only.

Exceptions are exempt.

No one has better depicted this truth than Woody Allen in his 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanors.

In Crimes and Misdemeanors, a rich ophthalmologist (played by Martin Landau) arranges the contract-killing of his mistress, only to escape any consequence, while a smart, devoted documentary filmmaker (played by Allen) must kowtow to a slick, fast-talking TV producer, only to lose his love to him.

The exceptions win. 

The nobodies lose.

C'est la vie.