It’s easy for us to forget that we are all participants in a society that is constantly morphing, for better or for worse. As individuals, we create the civilization in which we and our desendants will live.
Take a long look at the photo here and ask yourself: is this the world we want to create?
It’s interesting how many of the world’s great minds regard traditional education as “mental programming” or “forced conformity.”
Could you or I have come to the knowledge we now have by teaching ourselves to read, and then going through books on math, science, history, art, music and so forth? It’s not inconceivable, but it sounds like a long slog, and one that would take a ton of determination. (more…)
Happy 278th birthday to Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence.
As part of his role as a Founding Father, Jefferson noted: “There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents… The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provisions should be made to prevent its ascendancy.”
I’m sorry, good sir, but such provisions were never made, and now we have a congress that is essentially owned by the super-rich.
There is talk of a wealth tax, which, of course, would need to be approved by these employees of the super-rich. Doesn’t look promising.
In response to this discussion of political correctness, blogger/novelist Steve Vachss writes:
Hi Craig, You make excellent points. There are, however, a few different kinds of PC language. Some are insulting putdowns simply intended to intimidate someone who has erred in not using the popular form at a given time. (more…)
An old friend and business associate, Steve Vachss, is now a blogger and novelist. His current piece on political correctness and cancel-culture includes:
Professional surveys indicate that 60 to 80 percent of Americans reject PC language or cancel-culture. Most people cannot understand why news media, government leaders, and celebrities insist on accepting and promoting PC and cancel-culture. (more…)
What Jon Stewart is saying here is absolutely true, which is why it’s both stupid and insulting when the Blue Lives Matter people say that progressives hate cops.
No, we don’t. We simply want them to stop murdering unarmed black people.
I guess I’d never looked at it like what’s shown in the meme here.
One way to assess an ideology is to quantify how likely you and others are to die from it.
On average, the U.S. suffers a mass shooting more than once per day. So just who are these shooters?
Well, here’s who they are not: desperate immigrants escaping life-threatening danger, who just walked across 1500 miles of desert in Northern Mexico with their children. They’re also not educated, decent, productive, rational, loving people (i.e., progressives and moderates).
There almost all poor, uneducated, anti-science, conspiracy theorist, Trump-supporting, white racist gun nuts, who think of themselves as patriots by redressing a stolen election and the corrupt power of the liberal elites. They also, somehow, self-identify as Christians.
Today’s United States is a society that mass produces these people. This must cease.
The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson Sorkin writes, “It’s tempting to see the Gaetz affair as the last shudder of the era of Donald Trump, but the political culture that the two men represent won’t easily be swept away.”
That’s for sure. There is still a huge market for government run by brash, mean-spirited racists who have little if any regard for the truth. Fox News attracts 26 million people every week. That’s not going to change, regardless of what happens to Gaetz. (more…)
Depends on what is meant by “we.”
Most people are completely aware that what we’re doing to our environment is creating huge damage to us as individuals.
Corporate greed, on the other hand, which is completely out of control, is all but blind to environmental degradation.
Is there anything attractive about Pence as a presidential candidate? He has the charisma of a five-pound bag of fertilizer, and his views on things like gay rights are from the early/mid-20th Century, when homosexuality was punished by imprisonment or chemical castration.
