Vin Crosbie's Personal Blog

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These Next Four Years

Vin

If the choice in the 2024 U.S. election had been Harris versus Romney, or vs McCain, or vs Bob Dole, or vs George W. Bush, et. al., in other words, a political contest between two honorable candidates and respected policies, then I could accept the advice of the many MAGA supporters who now triumphantly cackle, “Accept the decision of the American people!” (Should I spotlight the blatant hypocrisy of these same MAGAts who still won’t acknowledge Joe Biden’s absolute and thoroughly proven 2020 victory over the now Convicted Felon, a popular vote victory in which Biden won the popular vote by 7,059,422 votes cast, which is more three-times the MAGA-claimed “absolute mandate” victory margin of the Convicted Felon’s paltry (2,289,255 votes) victory margin over Harris in 2024? Indeed, Biden received more than half of all Americans.

I have no reluctance at all acknowledging that the winner of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election is a Convicted Felon, who won popular vote by slimmer margin than Jimmy Carter did in 1976 (and won by less than one-tenth the popular vote margin that Herbert Hoover did in 1928), Indeed, as I mention under the ‘Mandate’ section below, the Convicted Felon (1) won fewer than half of all votes cast for president in in 2024 and (2) more American voters in 2024 voted against the Convicted Felon than for him during the 2024 election (see the incontrovertible simple arithmetic in the ‘Mandate’ section below).

What I do have trouble with is that a minority but plurality of American voters, like toddlers, willfully or ignorantly stuck their fingers into the electrical socket in the dim hopes that doing so will improve their lives.

I’ve recently heard some MAGAts claim that the Convicted Felon’s election victory by a minority yet plurality of American voters ‘proves’ that he is the correct choice; that he is the righteousness one; and that any criticism now of the Convicted Felon indicates not that the people who voted for him were wrong but that any critics of him are. Such MAGAts delusionally forget that a similar minority yet plurality of voters elected Benito (“I am a man ruthless and energetic enough to make a clean sweep to revive the Italian nation) Mussolini during a fair election in 1921; elected Adolph (“I can say here with pride that the party has proven itself mightily”) Hitler during a fair election in 1932 to lead Germany; elected Juan Peron in Argentina in 1966; and elected Hugo (“I am not Marxist, but I am not anti-Marxist. I am not communist, but I am not anti-communist”) Chavez during the internationally-determined fair 1998, 2000, 2006, and 2012 elections in Venezuela. Did their election victories proves them correct, righteous, or beyond criticism? History has long proven that a wrong choice, an evil man, even a convicted felon (Hitler, convicted and imprisoned in after his 1923 coup attempt), can win fair election. And history also proves that disaster follows. What could possibly go wrong?

So, let’s examine the following self-evident, unequivocal, and easily proven abysmal facts and reality of the 2024 U.S. presidential election — which are unlike any in of the 58 previous presidential elections in U.S. history. I dare any MAGAt to attempt contradicting or negating these:

The Self-Evident, Unequivocal, Easily Proven, and Verified Facts

  • A minority but slim plurality of American voters reelected as president a criminal awaiting sentencing who several months ago a dozen randomly selected American citizens, each of who was deemed qualified and acceptable by the Felon’s attorneys and each of who heard the evidence against him and his defense, 34 times unanimously voted to convict of that many felonies. For more than 250 years, generations of teachers, priest, rabbis, Sunday school instructors, and judges have taught Americans not to trust convicted felons. That untrustworthiness is why convicted felons are barred from serving in the U.S. military, in civil service jobs, in licensed professions, etc. The Americans who in 2024 voted for a convicted felon willingly shat on those hallowed teachings and traditions. No prior U.S. president in history has even been convicted, nonetheless indicted, of any felony. They were honorable men.

    (I know at least one of the Felon’s supporters who claims that these 34 felonies were “obscure” and “trumped up” and shouldn’t be taken seriously. The lackadaisical and reckless fool never bothers to spout verifiable facts. Had he checked the New York State Courts website, he would have learned that more than 9,500 of felony indictments, of which 34 the Felon was convicted, have been issued during the past ten years — an average of nearly 1,100 per year. By comparison, fewer than 900 murder indictments are each year in that state. Thus, murder is factually and demonstrably a more “obscure” indictment than any of the 34 indictments for which the Felon was convicted.)
  • The multiple Felon earlier that year also had been found to be a sexual abuser by another court in his native state. Indeed, more than 19 other women have publicly accused him of sexual assault of the type about which boasted in the 2015 Access Hollywood ‘Grab Them by the Pussy’ audio tape.
  • The convicted Felon moreover is still facing more than 40 other felony indictments in Georgia (a U.S. state in which the Felon’s personal attorney himself lost a $148 million lawsuit for telling lies about election workers.
  • The convicted Felon also has been barred by yet another court in his native state from ever again managing a charity in that state “due to a pattern of criminal activity.”
  • A convicted felon who in 1972 no less than the Republican administration of President Richard Nixon sued for racism discrimination. (The hundreds of pages of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s evidence against the Felon are readily easily accessible in the FBI’s public online archive).
  • A Convicted Felon who began his political career by spouting the racist ‘birther’ lie that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. — a racist lie that was easily, roundly and totally debunked.
  • The Convicted Felon is the most prolific lying politician in U.S. political history, according to fact-checking organizations such as Factcheck.com, Politifact, and the Washington Post, as well as according to Canadian and British fact-checking organization. All of those lies have been verified as lies. Neither MAGA nor other Republican organization have ever been able to verifiable accuse any Democrat politician of anywhere near the Convicted Felon’s magnitude of lies. (One of the Convicted Felon’s supporters told me that “all politicians lie.’ Perhaps that’s true (I haven’t met all politicians; perhaps he has) However, there is an astounding difference between telling a few lies and spewing a nearly constant diarrhea of deceit (more than of 30,000 lies, according to the Washington Post.)
  • The Convicted Felon is notoriously the only U.S. president ever to be impeached twice yet his supporters re-elected him.
  • Indeed, the Convicted Felon is ranked by historians of U.S. presidencies as fourth worst among the 34 men ever elected to that office.The Convicted Felon meanwhile deliriously or fatuously ranks himself as possible the best president ever, as he says in his speeches.
  • The Convicted Felon created what American political scientists have recently been calling the ‘Big Lie’. Within days of losing the 2020 Presidential Election, he was informed by his own staff and campaign officials that he had lost, yet during the more than four years since he has continuously lied to the American public that he had won, despite there being no evidence whatsoever to back that lie. William Barr, the Convicted Felon’s own U.S. Attorney General, has sworn under oath that the Convicted Felon’s lie was “Bullshit!”
  • The Convicted Felon likewise repeatedly reneged on his public promises to release his tax returns. In 2016, he stated that he would release his tax returns if he won that year’s Republican presidential nomination. Once winning that nomination, he reneged on his promise. He publicly made that promise again in 2020 but again reneged. And he also made that promise during 2024 and, of course, reneged on it. He is the only president or presidential nominees during the past more 50 years to refuse to release his tax returns; and is the only one to repeatedly lie when promising to release those, but then to repeatedly renege on that repeated public promise.
  • The Convicted Felon fomented a riot on January 6, 2021, during which thousands of his supporters (many of whom he had been informed were armed with guns and knives) smashed and bashed their way into and sacked the U.S. Capitol Building, the very symbol of U.S. democracy. The riot led to the deaths of five people and injured more than 170 law officers. The riot he fomented was to thwart the legal electoral functioning of the U.S. Constitution. More than 800 of the Convicted Felon’s supporters have been arrested, stood trial in the courts, and were convicted convicted of felonies (most of whom were imprisoned). Now the he has won the 2024 presidential election, the Convicted Felon has publicly stated that he will issue a federal pardon to them.
  • The Convicted Felon has stated that if he wins this year’s election, he intends to be “a dictator on Day One.” No U.S. president in history has ever stated such an unconstitutional intent.
  • The Convicted Felon has been described as a “fascist” and “the most dangerous man in America” by the U.S. Army four-star general who was Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of the Staff (the most senior military officer in the U.S.) and the Convicted Felon’s senior military advisor during the Convicted Felon’s first term in office. Another U.S. Army four-star general who was the Convicted Felon’s White House Chief of Staff during that term also has called the Convicted Felon “by definition a fascist” and “a want-to-be dictator”.
  • The Convicted Felon has publicly stated that he plans to use the powers of the federal government to “seek retribution” on his political enemies. No U.S. president in history has ever stated such a nefarious or unconstitutional intent.
  • The Convicted Felon was condemned as dangerous by more than 700 former U.S. national security officials, including his own former White House National Security Advisor
    The Convicted Felon failed to receive any endorsement from any previous Republican U.S. president, from any previous Republican party nominee for president, or from any Republican former U.S. vice president or Republican party nominees for vice president.
  • The Convicted Felon had nominated and worked with 44 White House and Cabinet officials during his first term in office, but 40 of those 44 – including the Convicted Felon’s own former vice president during that term –refused to endorse him during 2024. They know him too well and how unfit he is intellectually, morally, and temperamental to continue in any political office.
  • As for the Convicted Felon’s 1987 best-selling book, Art of the Deal, its actual ghostwriter Tony Schwarz, won’t endorse him either. Schwarz in 2016 told National Public Radio, “I helped to paint Trump as a vastly more appealing human being than he actually is. And I have no pride about that.” Schwartz added, “One of the chief things I’m concerned about is the limits of his attention span, which are as severe as any person I think I’ve ever met.” Schwarz said that the idea of a president in an “incredibly complex and threatening world who can’t pay attention is itself frightening.” And that Trump’s insecurity “makes him incredibly reactive whenever he feels threatened, which is very, very often.”
  • The Convicted Felon is so recklessly deceitful and absurdly imprudent that during his only debate with Kamala Harris he idiotically claimed on national television that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating citizens’ dogs and other pets. “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.” His absolutely baseless and idiotic claim was immediately fact-checked and debunked by the moderator, and later by government officials (Democrats and Republicans) in Ohio. Within weeks and ever since, no evidence whatsoever of his absurd claim (or for that matter, his claim to have won the 2020 Election) has ever been found. There should never be anyone in the White House who has sole control of thousand of hydrogen bombs should but who make national claims or grave decisions on the basis of juvenile and evidence-less Internet rumors. When you elect a clown as president, the White House becomes a clown circus.

Any one of these 20 outrages would have disqualified an American political candidate during the 235 years since George Washington was elected the first President of the United States. That millions of American citizens would either willfully or ignorantly vote for someone who factually perpetrated all 20 is an abomination in the nation of ‘George Washington cannot tell a lie’ and ‘Honest Abe’ Lincoln. In our current dystopian reality, scores of millions of American voters either willfully or ignorantly shat on almost a quarter millennium of hallowed teaching and American traditions regarding crimes, deceits, incompetents, and risk.

A Surgical Removal of Ethics or a ‘Back Alley’ Job?

Were those millions of MAGA voters’ sense of morality and ethics surgically removed? Or were these as ‘’back alley’s jobs? Many MAGAts bizarrely claim that all 20 of those abominations listed above are truffles, nothing, or entirely fabricated situations, and that Americans who are outraged by those abomination are themselves psychologically suffering from something MAGAts name ‘Trump Denial Syndrome’ (‘TDS’). There is, of course, no such syndrome in any psychological or sociological manual, textbook, or reference book at all. Instead, ‘Trump Denial Syndrome’ is a form of gaslighting, The American Psychological Association, the Oxford English Dictionary, and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary define gaslighting as a deceiver’s attempt to falsely convince someone that their outrage at the deceiver’s misconduct is instead a form of psychological illness rather than normal and rational outrage at the misconduct. In other words, anyone who claims someone is suffering from Trump Denial Syndrome is himself actively engaged in that deceit.

You needn’t consult a general, admiral, or any expert about international diplomacy to know that handing to a Convicted Felon the sole control of the United States 5,044 hydrogen bombs is the blitheringly stupid action of mob of fools. Particularly after the top general who had been his military advisor called the Convicted Felon “the most dangerous” person in America; after general, plus the one who was the Convicted Felon’s White House Chief of Staff, also have called the Convicted Felon a want-to-be “dictator”; after more than 700 U.S. national security officials have condemned the Convicted Felon as “unfit” to be president again; and after 40 of his 44 own former White House and Cabinet officials, including his own vice president, have refused to endorse his election.

It is not a coincidence that polls show that many, if not most, American citizens who voted for the Convicted Felon in 2024 did not do well in school; that his voters general have lower educational levels than voters for Kamala Harris have. Nor is it surprising that polls show that MAGA supporters have trouble distinguishing between real facts and misinformation and that they prefer superficial or simplistic solutions for complex problems which have solutions that require nuances, intricacies, or knowledge of history.

Indeed, the U.S. is a nation with perhaps too many movies about potential wrongdoing by mobs of its citizens. Films such 12 Angry Men in which an eleven jurors in a murder trial agree that the accused is guilty, but are ultimately rightly convinced by a lone juror (portrayed by Henry Fonda) that the accused is actually innocent. Or the Ox-Bow Incident (also starring Fonda) in which an entire town lynches three men they think have killed one of the town’s citizens, only then to discover that the dead citizen is alive. Or High Noon in which a sheriff (portrayed by Gary Cooper) is surprised to discover that none of his town’s citizens will take their moral responsibilities to help him defend himself against a killer. So, it is not hard to Imagine a movie in which someone who has been proven to be a criminal, someone who has blatantly lied that he hadn’t in 2020 been thrown out of office by a clear majority of Americans, and who incited a riot in which thousands of his supporters to smash their way into the very symbol of American democracy and sack it in an attempt to thwart the functioning of the U.S. Constitution, would claim to be the people’s leader. Where is the modern Henry Fonda, Gary Cooper, et. al., to stop him and his mob?

A “massive mandate” is what the Convicted Felon and the MAGA minions screech that they have won. Moreover, they claim the election of the Convicted Felon someone proves or validates that he was the correct choice. Yet neither did he win a mandate nor did his victory validate anything about him. Indeed, if you

believe that MAGA ‘logic, you’ll have a hard time explaining how when Pontius Pilate gave the people of Jerusalem a choice to free either the preacher Jesus or the murderer Barabbas, the people chose Barabbas. All three Christian Gospels agree about that (Mark 156, Matthew 27:15, John 18:39, and Luke 23:17). A modern outcome of that that occurred in the United States on November 4, 2024. Don’t forget that if the plurality in an election vote that the world is flat or that two plus two equals three, that certainly doesn’t mean the world is flat, that three is two plus two, or that up is down, or that wrong is right. It would be moronic to think so.

What “Massive Mandate”?

“Massive mandate”? First of all, most American voters in the 2024 Election voted against the Convicted Felon. According to the final popular vote count by the Associated Press, Kamala Harris received 75,019,257 votes, Green Party candidate Jill Stein got 782,528 votes, independent candidate RFK Jr. got 756,393 votes, Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver got 641,289 votes, and other candidates got 388,787 votes. In other words, a total of 77,588,254 American voters didn’t vote for the Convicted Felon while 77, 303,573 did vote for him, a difference of 284,681, which is more than twice John F. Kennedy’s victorious margin over Richard Nixon during the 1960 U.S. Presidential Election.

Second, the Convicted Felon failed to get fifty percent of the popular vote. And his meager 1.5 percent victory margin in the popular vote was the 54th victory margin among the 58 presidential elections in U.S. history. Compare him to other recent presidents or his opponents:

  • Hillary Clinton won a 2.1 percent victory margin against him in the 2016 election popular vote. Thus, Hillary won a 1.4-times larger popular vote margin against than the Convicted Felon than he won in the 2024 election. (He has tiny hands.)
  • Joe Biden won a 4.5 percent victory margin against him in the 2020 election’s popular vote. Biden also won more than 50 percent of all votes, which the Convicted Felon never has. Not only is that an actual mandate and with three-times the popular vote victory margin of the Convicted Felon in 2024.
  • Jimmy Carter’s two percent popular vote victory margin in the 1976 Election, during which Carter unseated Republican U.S. President Gerald Ford, was greater than the Convicted Felon’s margin in 2024
  • Barack Obama’s 7.2 percent popular vote victory margin over his Republican opponent in the 2008 election, or his even Obama’s 3.9 percent victory margin in 2012. Obama’s 2008 victory margin was nearly five-times the Convicted Felon’s in 2024. Even Obama’s 2012 victory margin was more than 2½-times the Convicted Felon’s in 2024.
  • Bill Clinton’s 5.6 percent popular vote victory margin in the 1992 election was nearly four-times the Convicted Felon’s in 2024 and Bill Clinton’s 8.5 percent popular vote victory margin in 1996 was nearly six-times the Convicted Felon’s in 2024
  • If you want to see actual massive mandates, consider Ronald Reagan’s 18.2 percent popular vote victory margin in 1984, Lyndon Johnson’s 22.6 percent in 1964, or Franklin Roosevelt’s 24.6 percent in 1936. Even hapless Herbert Hoover won a 17.4 percent popular vote victory margin in 1928 less than a year before the U.S. economy collapsed into the Great Depression.

And the Republicans in the 2024 election won the narrowest majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in nearly 100 years, winning even fewer seats there than they had prior to the election.

The established facts and these comparisons prove that the Convicted Felon – who failed to gain more than half the votes cast in 2024 and who won a 40 percent smaller popular vote victory margin than had Jimmy Carter in 1976, doesn’t have much of a real mandate. And only a fool would call his election a “massive mandate” when compared to actual massive mandates in American presidential election history.

Heil Kakistocracy!

So, what has already resulted from the dystopian 2024 election of a Convicted Felon?

He has long boasted that he “hires only the best people.” Let us for the moment forget that 40 of those 44 ‘Best People’ people as his Cabinet secretaries and White staff during his first term refused to endorse him in 2024 (including the refusal of his own Vice President!) Let’s instead state the facts about some of the ‘best people’ he is now nominating to serve as Cabinet Secretaries or White House staff. They themselves are clear evidence that what the Convicted Felon really means by ‘best people’ is his creation of a kakistocracy (Oxford English Dictionary: “government by the least suitable or least competent citizens of a state”) in the U.S., rather than a democracy:

  • The Convicted Felon’s abortive nomination of former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz for United States Attorney General—a nomination that shocked even Republicans throughout the Capitol. Earlier this year, the firebrand Gaetz narrowly escaped a criminal indictment for drug-fueled sex parties in which he is alleged to have committed the statutory rape of a minor. The U.S. Justice Department decided that it didn’t have sufficient evidence to convict Gaetz in court ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ on charges sex trafficking and statutory rape. However, the bipartisan (i.e., Republicans and Democrats) U.S. House of Representative’s Ethics Committee voted earlier this month to release its lurid report about Gaetz, a report which is based upon evidence compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and by the Committee’s own hearings and interviews with witnesses. Its report states the “substantial evidence” that Gaetz engaged in the statutory rape of a minor (the girl, who a junior in secondary school, and two adult women who witnesses this sex, swore so under oath), use of illegal narcotics, and tens of thousands of dollars in payments to prostitutes for sex. “The Committee concluded there was substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress,” This is the Convicted Felon choice of ‘best person’ to be the chief of the United States’ Justice Department and federal law enforcement agency. Fortunately for the United States, Gaetz withdrew his name from nomination just prior to the report’s release.
     
  • The Convicted Felon then nominated former Attorney General of Florida Pam Bondi to be U.S. Attorney General. In her role of Florida Attorney General of Florida, Bondi’s office had informed the now Convicted Felon that Florida planned to sue him for the fraud of  his ‘Trump University’ scam (the Convicted Felon’s native State of New York did sue him about the fraud, a lawsuit that resulted in the now Convicted felon being forced to refund $30 million to the scam’s victims). However, the threat of a Florida lawsuit against him disappeared shortly after the now Convicted Felon made a $30,000 donation to Bondi’s election campaign fund. Bondi was later one of his defense attorneys during the first of two impeachment trials.
  • The Convicted Felon’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy, a conspiracy theorist, vaccine denier, admitted former heroin addict for ten years, and the victim of a brain worm, has also been publicly condemned by the Kennedy family as unfit for public office. He has no medical, nutritionist, or scientific credentials whatsoever; and is found of telling stories about his transporting and leaving animal carcasses in New York City’s Central Park and ahis meetings with alleged sex trafficker and statutory rapist Jeffrey Epstein and convicted rapist Bill Cosby, among other reprobates. I call him a racist because he believes that the COVID-19 virus was designed to be tolerable to “Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews”. As for his denial of vaccines, the United Nation’s World Health Organization reports that vaccines have saved more than the lives of more than 154 million lives worldwide during the past 50 years. No evidence whatsoever has been produced to back Kennedy’s claim that vaccines cause autism. Thus, the Convicted Felon believes Kennedy is the ‘best person’ to take charge of the U.S. Public Health system.
  • The Convicted Felon’s nomination of TV talk show doctor Mehmet Oz as Director of the national Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which administers those programs to some 150 million Americans. Oz is a dual citizen of both the U.S. and Turkey and thus the first foreign national ever nominated for a White House position. When Oz ran for a U.S. Senate seat from Pennsylvania two years ago, no less an authority than the 179-year-old Scientific American magazine stated that “Dr. Oz shouldn’t be a senator—or a doctor” because “his brand of misinformation has already tarnished medicine” and “in the halls of Congress, he’d do much worse.” The magazine noted that Oz has “built a tremendous following around his lucrative but evidence-free advice. … His candidacy is a reminder that tolerating and/or enabling celebrity pseudoscience can have serious and enduring consequences. Much of Oz’s advice was bunk before the pandemic, it is bunk now, and there is no reason to assume it won’t be bunk after.” Moreover, a study by the British Medical Journal concluded that fewer than half the claims made on The Dr. Oz Show were backed by “some” evidence, and that fell to a third when the threshold was raised to “believable” evidence.
     
  • The Convicted Felon’s nomination of Fox News Weekend co-host Pete Hegseth for U.S, Secretary of State. Hegseth has no experience whatsoever running any organization, nonetheless the largest in the U.S. government. (Nor has he any experience hosting ‘Fox News Weekdays’!) Unlike all previous U.S. Secretaries of Defense this century, Hegseth has no experience or formal training in military strategy, international affairs, or running large organizations. Hegseths moreover admits that he paid a woman to withdraw her sexual abuse allegations against him.
     
  • The Convicted Felon’s nomination of former Congresswoman and Fox News fill-in host Tulsi Gabbart as U.S. National Security Director, who would be in charge of all of the United States’ international intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency. Tom Rogan, the foreign policy editor of the conservative Washington Examiner states that Gabbard is an “ideological sympathizer” of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, adding that Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence could endanger the safety of the United States. Gabbart is a prolific a fan of Russia dictator Vladimir Putin and has been accused of spreading of Russian propaganda and misinformation. Republican William Webster, a former federal judge who is the only American ever to be both director of the CIA and the FBI, has written the U.S. Senate about her “profound lack” of intelligence experience stood in contrast to the seasoned leadership needed for the role. “Effective management of our intelligence community requires unparalleled expertise to navigate the complexities of global threats and to maintain the trust of allied nations,” Webster wrote. “Without that trust, our ability to safeguard sensitive secrets and collaborate internationally is severely diminished.” Despite all that, the Convicted Felon somehow thinks she is the ‘best person’ to run the CIA and all other U.S. intelligence agencies.
  • The Convicted Felon’s nomination of conspiracy theorist Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Patel sells his own brand of ‘K$H’ branded merchandise, including supplements that he says detoxifies the body of the negative effects COVID-19 vaccines. He is the author of a children’s picture book titled The Plot Against the King, in which children are taught about a massive government conspiracy against ‘King Donald.’ He is also the author of an non-children’s book titled Government Gangsters, a partial memoir in which he criticizes the ‘deep state’  and lists 60 people who, he believes, are members of this ‘deep state’ (including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, U.S. Attorney General and Obama era Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, Robert Mueller, previous Trump presidency U.S. Attorney General William Barr). Patel has claimed that the federal government was behind the January 6, 2021, riotous attempted coup, a claim that has since been totally rejected by the bipartisan Congressional report about that event. Barr wrote in his own memoir of the first Trump presidency that Patel would become FBI director only “over my dead body.” Former Director of the FBI (under Presidents Carter and Reagan) and former Director of the CIA (under Presidents Reagan and Bush senior) William Webster wrote the U.S. Senate that Patel’s “record of executing the president’s directives suggest a loyalty to individuals rather than the rule of law — a dangerous precedent for an agency tasked with impartial enforcement of justice.”
  • The Convicted Felon’s nomination of Linda McMahon as U.S. Secretary of Education. She served as Director of the U.S. Small Business Administration during the criminal first term in the White House and has been a donor to his 2016, 2020, and 2024 presidential campaigns. McMahon has absolutely no experience or training as a teacher, pedagogue, or academic, except for a period of a little more than 12 months on the State of Connecticut’s Board of Education, a position she resigned shortly before the Hartford Courant reported that she had lied claiming that she had a teaching degree. McMahon and her husband Vince, founder of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), producers of fake sporting events, are currently being sued by several former young men who worked WWE and claim that they were sexually abused there, that the McMahon knew this, and did nothing to stop it. Vincer McMahon himself is currently under investigation by the FBI and Connecticut State Police based on a lawsuit by Janelle Grant (a friend of mine) who claims that he sexually abused and kept her as a sexual slave for himself and other WWE executives. (Why do so many of the Convicted Felon’s ‘best people’ have allegations of sexual assault in their backgrounds?)
  • The Convicted Felon’s nomination of entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivak Ramaswamy to run a new federal agency he has concocted, the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (‘DOGE’, which probably not coincidentally is the name of Musk’s cryptocurrency company, ‘Doge Coin’). Musk donated $277 million to the Convicted Felon’s 2024 election campaign. Musk’s companies currently receive tens of billions of dollars in government subsidies annually, creating a glaring conflict-of-interests in his nomination. The Washington Post this year reported that Musk, who entered the U.S. on a student visa, founded his fortune by working in Silicon Valley while not attending any classes, an immigrant violation of a U.S. student visa. The conspiracy theorist Ramaswamy claims that the January 6, 2021, riotous attempted coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol was “an inside job” organized by the federal government and that federal agents directed the September 11, 2001, terrorists attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. He has stated that the president should rule by executive degree. He has pledged to fire 75-percent of all federal employees and has stated that the federal voting age should be raised to 26 (which would disenfranchise nine-percent of all U.S. voters).
  • The Convicted Felon’s nomination of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security. In her memoir entitled No Going Back, Noem boasts that her killing her pet dog and her pet goat by shooting them in their heads when she no longer had any use for them demonstrated her sense of commitment to make tough decisions. However, animal shelter and animal rights advocates responded that her commitment into a psychotherapists care would have been a better decision. In 2018, Governor Noem released a campaign to fight methamphetamine narcotics abuse in her state. She officially named the awareness campaign, “Meth. We’re on It”. In her memoir, Noem also writes about her meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jung-Un, something that in reality neither happened nor was even planned. Noem likewise in her memoir also that she was once slated to meet with French president Emmanuel Macron. The French government has responded that it had neither invited Noem nor had any record of a scheduled meeting with her. Or as I once told Mao Tse-tung, “We all make mistakes!”

If those are the ‘best people’ for those jobs, then the United States of America must be a Third-World banana republic. In reality, there are likely hundreds – if not thousands – of other people better qualified for those senior U.S. governmental positions.

The Doubly-Impeached Circus Returns

What beings after January 19, 2025?

  • The Convicted Felon has announced that once he is again in office the Oval Office, he will immediately begin to deport up to 11 million undocumented immigrants. That’s right, once the Convicted Felon – who himself is awaiting sentencing for committing 34 felonies, returns to office, he will immediately begin deporting millions of people for breaking the law. Yes, what an unintended sense of irony he has! Although the Convicted Felon was given a trial in court, but he will refuse to let the U.S. government hold any hearings, nonetheless court trials, for the 3,738,341 people who were legally allowed into the U.S. while awaiting even immigration hearings (1,740,424 of whom have already filed formal asylum applications in which they claim they are fleeing from political or sectarian persecution in their native countries (Syria, Libya, El Salvador, the Ukraine, etc., nonetheless court trials. Thomas Homan, the Convicted Felon’s appointee as ‘Border Czar’, has already announced that the policy of family separation (parents separated from their children) will resume, a policy that President Biden ordered ended. The Convicted Felon has vocally claimed that illegal immigrants cause crime waves and inflated housing prices in the U.S., as well as both living on welfare and stealing American citizens’ jobs. In the world of reality, however, the Federal Bureau of Investigate has been reporting for decades that illegal immigrants are 40 percent less likely to commit crimes than are white American born in the U.S. (the example: the Convicted Felon himself); the U.S. Health and Human Services Administration reports that undocumented immigrants don’t receive unemployment benefits; nor is there any evidence that do U.S. housing prices appear to be affected by the tenements in which many, if not most, undocumented immigrants live. Several Nobel Prize-winning American economists, in addition to the pro-business Economist magazine, have stated that the Convicted Felon’s mass deportation will not only cost billions of government dollars but have a disastrous result on the U.S. economy. Nevertheless, the Convicted Felon plans to follow through because he made that promise during his campaign.
  • The Convicted Felon also has publicly announced that he will begin imposing high tariffs on foreign nations, falsely claiming that foreign nations rather than American companies pay the tariffs. Anyone who has ever passed an Economics 101 course knows that foreign nations never and don’t pay tariffs; that it’s American companies that import goods, parts, or products do. Economists estimate that the Convicted Felon’s tariff plan will cost American companies such as Walmart, Costco, Sam’s Club, Lowes, etc., hundreds of billions of dollars and increase the average American household’s costs by $2,500 to $5,000 annually. For those reasons, Republicans have opposed tariffs for more than a century. Traditional, real Republicans still do. The Prime Minister of Canada, the United State’s major trading partner, has said that the Convicted Felon’s tariff plan could “devastate” the Canadian economy (the U.S. already charges Canada higher tariffs than Canada does the U.S.). The President of Mexico, the second largest trading partner of the U.S., also oppose the plan. An estimated 40-percent of the produced sold in U.S. supermarkets is grown in Mexico; most U.S. pickup trucks are built in Mexico; and Mexico’s Modelo lager is the top selling beer in the U.S.
  • The Convicted Felon also has announced his intention to overturn the federal government’s policy of hiring and promoting workers on their objective merits rather than loyalty to any political party or politician. More than 100 years ago, President Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, promoted and helped enact through Congress this ‘Civil Service’ meritocracy which the Convited Felon now plan to destroy. The Convicted Felon has said that instead plan to use the criterion of loyalty to him as the new basis for hiring and promotion in the government. The last Western nation leader to enact such a plan was German Fürher Adolf Hitler in 1933.
  • The Convicted Felon also has announced that he plans to use to U.S. Department of Justice as a means to seek “retribution” on his political enemies, reversing that department’s post-Watergate policy of political neutrality and objectivity. Only one previous U.S. president has ever abominably created a political ‘enemies list.’ However, Richard Nixon did so in secret then resigned the presidency in disgrace.
  • The Convicted Felon also has announced that he wants to U.S. to renege on its Panama Canal Treaty, which Presidents Carter and Reagan enacted with that nation. The Convicted Felon wants to U.S. to retake control of the Canal, even if by force. And the Convicted Felon has announced that he wants to purchase Greenland from Denmark, despite the fact that throughout this decade the Danes and Greenlanders have said Greenland, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark is not, nor even will be, for sale. Denmark is a fellow NATO nation and one which believes that Greenlanders themselves should control their own destinies. The Convicted Felon says he will not rule out military force to acquire Greenland or the Panama Canal. (What a concept: a U.S. military attack on the Danish province of Greenland would be an attack on Denmark, a Founding Member of NATO. Article Five of the NATO Treaty mandates that any military attack on a NATO nation is to be considered an attack on all NATO nations, including the United States of America. So, should the Convicted Felon order a military attack on Greenland, he would automatically trigger Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, the Netherland, North Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, and the United Kingdom declaring war on the U.S., plus the United States theoretically declaring war on itself!)
  • The Convicted Felon also has announced that he intends to reduce military aid to the Ukraine, which Russia invaded nearly three years ago. Every Republican and every Democrat who has been U.S. President during the eight decades since World War II has adamantly opposed Russian aggression or invasions of other nations. In 1994 in Budapest, the President of the United States, Russia, Belarus Kazakhstan, the Ukraine, and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, signed an agreement stating that all of them agree that each is a separate and sovereign nation and that none of them would invade the other. Russia murderously breeched that agreement first when it seize the Ukrainian provice of Crimea in 2014 and later again when it invaded the Ukraine in 2023. In the 1960s, U.S. President Kennedy, a Democrat, and in the 1980s President Reagan, a Republican, were noted for their condemnation of Russian international aggression and backing of aid for nations that Russia has aggressed. Unlike his 13 predecessors, the Convicted Felon, who has complemented of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin more than any other American politician (nonetheless president) in history, has announced his intention to reduce arms shipments to a nation that has been murderously invaded by Russia.

Navigating the False Narratives

To navigate the Convicted Felon’s dystopian kakistocracy, I currently take guidance from three diverse analysts:

  1. Douglas Massey, professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University, who wrote, “Trump won a clear victory, in a free and fair election, in both the Electoral College and the popular vote. A majority of American voters seems to have embraced his dark message of a nation in decline, with its false narrative of a failing economy, rising crime, predatory minorities as well as an existential threat from left-wing radicals.” Massey noted that, “Trump’s campaign was openly racist, xenophobic and authoritarian and his supporters appear to be willing to jettison democracy in support of an autocratic demagogue who promises to ‘fix everything’ while pandering to their angers, resentments and prejudices.”

    Massey bluntly predicts that, “Once in power with a supine Republican-controlled Congress and judiciary, Trump will govern despotically as a populist based on his uninformed and increasingly delusional understanding of the nation and its challenges, wreaking havoc on the American political economy and the global political order.
  2. Francis Fukiyama of Stanford University, the former neoconservative political theorist who wrote the 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, in which he argued that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free-market capitalism may signal such a combination is the ultimate in humanities sociocultural evolution, believes the Convicted Felon is a threat, “to the rule of law. He’s been very clear in the last few months and weeks that he’s really out for revenge. He wants to take revenge on all the people that he believes have been prosecuting him and or persecuting him. And I think that this is where Schedule F [the Convicted Felon’s proposal to politicize the civil service] really matters.” Fukiyama expects Viktor Orban of Hungary to provide for the Convicted Felon, with “this kind of steady, slow erosion of one check and balance against executive power after another.”
  3. Heather Cox Richardson, Professor of History at Boston College, perceptively notes that despite the apparent cohesion of the MAGA minions, “Civil war has broken out within the MAGA Republicans. On the one side are the traditional MAGAs, who tend to be white, anti-immigrant, and less educated than the rest of the U.S. They believe that the modern government’s protection of equal rights for women and minorities has ruined America, and they tend to want to isolate the U.S. from the rest of the world. They make up Trump’s voting base. “On the other side are the new MAGAs who appear to have taken control of the incoming Trump administration. Led by Elon Musk, who bankrolled Trump’s campaign, the new MAGA wing is made up of billionaires, especially tech entrepreneurs, many of whom are themselves immigrants.

    “During the campaign, these two wings made common cause because they both want to destroy the current U.S. government, especially as President Joe Biden had been using it to strengthen American democracy. Traditional MAGA wants to get rid of the government that protects equality and replace it with one that enforces white male supremacy and Christianity.

    “New MAGA—    which some have started to call DOGE, after the Department of Government Efficiency run by Musk and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy—wants to get rid of the government that regulates business, especially technology, and protects American interests against competition from countries like China.” Richardson points out that the New MAGA wing, stridently advocate increased immigration by people immigrants skilled in technologies, yet the traditional MAGA wing abhors all immigration and demands that those skilled jobs go to white Americans like themselves despite their having inferior qualifications for the jobs compared to immigrants.

A Warning from Benjamin Franklin

So, what do I plan to do and say and expect during these next four years?

Now that a stupid, gullible, or malfeasant minority yet plurality of American voters have recklessly waded into a political swamp, I expect reptiles to feast, good government to rot away the greedy hands of the Convicted Felon and his atrociously unqualified and incompetent nominees and appointees, the U.S. economy to sink into the mire, and international chaos economic and political to result. I expect dictators Vladimir Putin, Xi Jingping, and Kim Jong-Un to be emboldened by the Convicted Felo election. They will markedly increase their aggressions.

During the next four years, the Ukraine will fall to the murderous Putin.

Xi Jingping will, at worst, attempt to invade Taiwan and, at least worst, make the South China Sea a Chinese tollgate for the economies of Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, New Zealand, and Australia. Xi Jingping knows that as China’s population ages declines due to the legacy of that nation’s former ‘one child’ policy, China’s economy will stop growing and contract, and by 2030 he might no longer have the political strength any more to launch an invasion of Taiwan, which is the only way in which he can keep his promise to the Chinese people that Taiwan will again become an integral part of China under his rule. U.S. Intelligence Agencies have publicly reported that Xi Jingping has told the Chinese military that they must be prepared by 2027 for an invasion of Taiwan. His clock is ticking.

And I expect Kim Jung-Un to break free of any constraints Russia and China have had on him, and to invade South Korea. I expect he will do this after Russia conquers the Ukraine. I think he would then do if and when China were to launch an invasion of Taiwan. He knows that the U.S. and its allies would be so hard-pressed defending Taiwan, so that the U.S. and its allies would have then have great trouble simultaneously launching a full defense of South Korea. Moreover, if Kim Jung-Un invades South Korea, I think that he would be much more likely to use tactical nuclear weapons there than Russia would in the Ukraine or than China would in the Pacific against the Americans defending Taiwan. If uses such weapons, tens of millions of Koreans from both sides of the current Demilitarized Zone would die, as would tens of millions of Japanese downwind of the blasts.

How the Convicted Felon, a narcissistic, impulsive, elderly man with attention-deficit disorder, whom America’s top military officer has already called “unfit” for office and “the most dangerous man” in the nation, and whom more than 700 U.S. national security executives condemned, would react to such awful events to be seen. (I expect than any of the 13 other U.S. president since World War Two would have done a much better job than he will.) As someone who as a child was, along with my classmates, made to practice ‘Duck and Cover’ nuclear defense drills in elementary school, I am fortunate nowadays in that my wife and I have another domicile off the shore of West Africa. The facts I’ve compiled here about the Convicted Felon and his kakistocracy make me fear for my native country’s physical survival, as well as that of the world.

According to legend, during the writing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787, a Philadelphia hostess named Elizabeth Willing Power asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” The 2024 election indicates that the American people can’t. These next four years will tell.

During these next four years via social media, I will vociferously continue to point out not only the feckless Convicted Felon’s deceits, misdeeds, criminality, and incompetence, but also hold the very people who voted for him directly to blame for all that and its consequences. Without them, clearly none of these abominations would have happened nor any further would. If you voted for the Convicted Felon, then you’re responsible for what he does. Indeed, if you take ‘credit’ for him now, then you will certainly be to blame if anything bad results. Be forewarned that I, among others, will absolutely let you know.

The Red Pyramid

Vin
red-pyramid-of-dahshur-egypt
©Vin Crosbie 2024

The Red Pyramid, constructed 2575–2563 BCE (4600 years ago) by Pharoah Sneferu. Located at the Dahshur necropolis, 55 kilometers south of Giza, Egypt. Photo taken November 3, 2024.

All But Tut (Tutankhamun, That Is)

Vin

The long-delayed Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), originally scheduled to open in 2013 and house more than 100,00 artifacts from Ancient Egypt, including the complete collection from the tomb of Pharoah Tutankhamun, finally opened on October 16th — except for the complete Tutankhamun collection. That, for the time being, remains at the old Egyptian Museum downtown at Cairo’s Tahir Square.

Last year at this time, Emma and I and our Saudi friend Tariq, who resides in Cairo, were given a private tour of the GEM’s central atrium, a tour that the GEM operated as a trial run before its grand opening. It was wonderful, whetted our desire to see the GEM’s thousands of artifacts. With 81,000 square meters (872,000 square feet) of floor space, GEM is the world’s largest archeological museum and is located adjacent to the Great Pyramids of Giza.

So, Emma and I have now decided to return to Egypt next month and see it. We’ll invite our friend Tariq. We’ve now renewed our visas. This will be our fourth trip to Egypt since 2022. We are gradually becoming old Cairo hands.

Why to Unfriend and Alienate Some People

Vin

I avidly and sincerely plan to lose some social media Friend’s and acquaintances this month: I expect that perhaps 30 or 40 of my current 944 Facebook ‘Friend’s and maybe another 50 or so on X (‘Twitter’), Instagram, Threads, and other social media platforms, will ‘Unfriend’ or ‘Block’ me Most of these people will be upset by me or, at best, feel alienated. Some of these are people who I have known since my childhood.

I don’t mind political differences and discussions about contentious issues. I grew up with a father who was a Boston Democrat and a mother who was from a Connecticut Republican family. Each of their votes cancelled out the other’s. Moreover, they owned and operated a 140-year-old daily newspaper whose editorial pages [had] to take stands on issues of public controversies. And a fundamental factor was that anything their daily newspaper printed had to be verifiably true lest someone sue them for libel and, if such a lawsuit were successful, my parents lose their business and livelihood. That legal requirement to be truthful is a factor that the average person doesn’t face when expressing his opinion about controversial issues. But it shaped me.

Why in the world would I endeavor to lose friends, angering or alienating anyone?

So, why should I endeavor to lose any social media ‘Friend’ or follower?

Because people who intentionally or knowingly lie recklessly or evilly erode their communities, be it a physical or an online community. In other words, I have a fundamental problem with three categories of deceivers:

  • Racists.
  • People who knowingly lie or circulate others’ lies as if truth.
  • Reckless fools who don’t care whether what they say is true or false.

Why do I endeavor to lose social media ‘Friend’s and acquaintances who are racists? I’ve no difficulty answering that. Racists are liars because they condemn entire races or religions or nationalities, despite knowing what anyone who has walked more than a thousand paces beyond their crib learns: that there are good people, as well as bad people, among every race, religion, or nation and that the good significantly, often extraordinarily, outnumber the bad. A particularly evil dynamic of racism, in person or online, is that the most prolific racists are otherwise affable, rather than irascible, people. That’s because irascible or cranky people make few friends, yet affable racists tend to make many more friends (particularly at times when they aren’t being racist) than irascible racists do.

Why do I endeavor to lose social media ‘Friend’s and acquaintances who knowingly lie or knowingly circulate others lies? Because such deceivers pillage and ruin society. They lie for either personal gain, prestige, or political power. I, however, live in a nation that reveres ‘Honest Abe’ Lincoln and how ‘George Washington could never tell a lie.’ For more than a quarter of a millennium, teachers, priests, pastors, rabbis, imans, and judges have taught Americans that a lie is a sin, calumny, deception, or crime; that liars are untrustworthy; and that liars and lies divisively undermine and destroy communities.

That’s also why I endeavor to lose social media ‘Friend’s and acquaintances who recklessly don’t care whether what they say is true or false. Their recklessness fertilizes the liars’ lies, cause the gullible to start thinking that there is no way to know the true, and that perhaps truth doesn’t exist. Indeed, a common evasive by liars is they ask, “Well, how do you know what I say isn’t true? Who really knows? I think that it’s what you say that isn’t true!”

However, truthful people know that the previous four thousand years of civilizations have given us two major methods and means to establish what is truth and what is a lie.

The judicial system is one such method. It can be flawed:  a guilty person sometimes goes free or an innocent person gets convicted). Estimates of such errors range from one to five percent of cases. It’s thus a method with an approximate 95 to 99 percent accuracy rate, not unlike the estimated accuracy of medical cancer diagnosis. If with such an accuracy rate you were diagnosed to have cancer, would you seek medical treatment? Or would you recklessly believe or claim that you didn’t have cancer? Most mature, rational people would seek treatment, realizing that doing so is the safest course of action.

The other means to establish the truth is known as scientific method.  If repeated experimentation always leads to results confirming a premise or claim, and no experiment produces contrary results, then that premise or claim is considered true. In both the judicial and the scientific methods, verifiable evidence and verifiable testimonies are crucial. If all the evidence and testimonies support a claim and no evidence/testimonies dispute it, then the claim is considered true. Civil courts require that the preponderance of evidence/testimonies to back the claim; criminal courts require that the evidence and testimonies back the claim beyond a reasonable doubt. And authentic scientific method requires that the information backing the claim not only be verifiable but reproducible by everyone else who tests its. This is how science, medicine, engineering, and the judiciary work. It is how the modern world was built.

So, starting this month, I’m no longer ignoring or in any way countenancing racists or liars. Better to expose and crush the vermin, even if they are social media ‘Friend’s or acquaintances. Particularly if they are social media ‘Friend’s or acquaintances.

For instances:

Former U.S. President Donald Trump, a convicted felon awaiting sentencing, has for the past four years claimed that he that he was ousted from office due to rampant voting fraud and that he ‘won’ the 2020 election. Yet, during the four years since that election, Republicans and many others have searched the approximately 3,300 U.S. voting districts for any notable evidence of voting fraud. No such evidence has been found. More than 50 federal and state lawsuits filed by Trump supporters have been thrown out due to lack of any evidence being produced by in those courts’ jurisdiction. Trump’s own campaign staff has testified under oath that they told him within a week of the election that he had conclusively lost. Even William Barr, Trump’s own U.S. Attorney General, stated under oath that Trump’s claim was “Bullshit!’ Yet the convicted felon Trump continues to repeat his thoroughly debunked ‘Big Lie’. He is a liar. I’ve perhaps dozens of my social media ‘Friend’s and acquaintances who nonetheless either still believe against all evidence and all those courts that Trump’s lies are the truth. They believe that their espousal of Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ is their opinion. Yet their untruth is a lie, a deceit; not an opinion at all. They are liars.

Second, Climate Change deniers. More than 99 percent of professional climatologists state that human-caused pollution is worsening the world’s climate. Sure, Fox News can search for, cherry-pick, and interview the single percent of experts who disagree with that. However, that 99 percent of experts is a more convincing number than even that which this nation’s judicial system can produce. Moreover, those 99 percent of experts have verified their conclusion to a ‘Five Sigma’ level, a statistical gauge meaning there is only a one-in-a-million chance that they are wrong. The one percent of climatologists can verify their dissent at all. So, anyone who is a climate change denier is most likely either a sophomoric, woefully gullible, or else deceitful.

Third, what should I do with a ‘Friend’ who knowingly and willfully repeats a known lie as if it were truth? A few years ago, I had a gullible ‘Friend’ posted something political on Facebook that I knew factually was untrue. In a comment to his post, I showed him the link to the evidence debunking what he posted. “Thanks!”, he replied, “I didn’t know that.” However, yet another ‘Friend’ then commented, “Well, if it isn’t true, it should be!”. And the next day that other friend third ‘Friend’ posted the falsehood on his own Facebook timeline as if he didn’t know it was false. His action told me volumes about his lack of ethics and morale character!

Finally, what if that other ‘Friend’ also posts something blatantly racist, something condemning an entire race or religion? Racism isn’t an opinion; it is an expression of hate. Why should you or I have a ‘Friend’ who posts racist content? Does you having known him since childhood excuse his conduct? Of course, not. What if you just met him for the first time now that he posted something racist; would you ‘Friend’ him. Probably not unless you are someone who countenances racism. Why have ‘Friend’s and acquaintances on social media who lies, spread other’s lies, or post racism?

You shouldn’t.  I no longer will.

[Photo above of Irving Tressler’s 1937 book ‘How to lose friends and alienate people’, a spoof of Dale Carnegie’s 1927 book, ‘How to win friends and influence people’.]

The Fetid Stench of America’s Newest Racism

Vin

The words in red above, bookending someone’s racist posting on Facebook, are mine.

Only if they donned white cotton robes and matching conical hats, then set life-sized crucifixes afire, could the fecal scum who concocted, posted, and ‘Like’d this despicable posting on Facebook be more satanically racist. If you find what I write here to be blunt, Known that its bluntness is justified. I won’t tolerate racism.

The October 7, 2024, terrorist attack on Israel by the political party Hamas of the Gaza Strip, an atrocity that killed 1,139 Israeli citizens, absolutely was a Crime Against Humanity (as were the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the United States during 2001) and Hamas must be eradicated (like Al Qaeda was).

  • Yet when during the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland 1,890 civilians and 1,049 British soldiers died nobody said, ‘Everything I ever needed to learn about Christianity, I learned in Northern Island!’
  • Likewise, after the Thirty Years War, when Protestants and Catholics killed 8 million of each other, nobody said, ‘Everything I ever needed to learn about Christianity, I learned during those three decades!’
  • Nor after Europeans murdered 1.7 million residents of the Middle East during the five invasive ‘Crusades’ did anyone state, ‘Everything I ever needed to learn about Christianity, I learned between during those five invasive massacres!’
  •  Nor, more recently, when the NAZI government killed 7 million civilians during the Holocaust, nobody but racists would have said, ‘Everything I ever needed to learn about Germans, I learned in between 1933 and 1945!’

No, all those statements are demonstrably racist. As clearly are the scantily-educated white men (gee, isn’t it always?) who concocted, posted, ‘Share’d, or ‘Like’d, this excremental graphic on Facebook.

Do these rabidly racist mental runts believe that all 2.2 million Palestinians who live in Gaza attacked Israel on October 7th last year? Including the 1.4 million Palestinian women and children in Gaza?

Do they know that in 2006 the Hamas political party of terrorism violently overthrew the Gaza’s previous government? And that, much like the Russian-occupied eastern European nations during the Soviet Era, all subsequent Gaza ‘elections’ under Hamas terrorist have been staged by Hamas?  Were the people of Armenia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and the Ukraine, themselves responsible for the crimes of Lenin’s and Stalin’s Soviet Communist Party?  Do the human shits who posted this graphic think that the German people themselves were, rather than the NAZIs, were culpable for the Holocaust?

Yet the diarrhea these racists spew blames all of the world’s 1.9 billion Muslims, 25 percent of the world’s population, for what a the estimated 60,000 Hamas party members (that’s Israel’s estimate of their number) among the 2.2 million Palestinians living in Gaza. That’s only 2.6-percent of the Gaza’s population, a percentage probably not coincidentally similar to the 3 million to 6 million Protestant-Americans who were members of the Ku Klux Klan (that’ the FBI’s estimate, which was 2.5-percent of the United States’ population of 123 million then) during mid-1920s; Klansmen who killed thousands of African-American citizens.

The execrable racists who concocted, posted, ‘Share’d, or ‘Like’d this monstrous posting on Facebook, probably consider themselves good or devout Christians–much like so many of the white Baptist ‘good ole boys’ who were Ku Klux Klansmen. Yet those Klansmen back then and these turds who posted this graphic now clearly aren’t really Christians.

Jesus Christ himself lived amid many different religions, such as Canaanites who worshipped idols of Baal and Ashtoresh, Samaritans (a religion still existing today), and polytheistic Romans. The Christian Gospels, known in Arabic as the Injīl and described by the Qur’an as one of the four Islamic holy books, record Christ’s interactions with a Roman Centurion with a sick servant (Luke 7); the Roman governor Pilate (John 18-19); a Canaanite woman with a sick daughter (Matthew 15); a Samaritan leper grateful for his healing (Luke 17); a sinful Samaritan woman at the well (John 4); the allegorical Good Samaritan (Luke 10); and many unnamed sick and demonized from the Palestine and Syria who were most likely not Jewish (Matthew 4 & 8; Mark 3 & 7). According to the Gospels, in none of these interactions did Jesus condemn theirs or anyone else’s religions. Christ’s reactions to people of other religions was always to aid them and if they sinned, or even crucified him, to forgive them.

By contrast, the walking scum who concocted, posted, ‘Share’d, or ‘Like’d this posting on Facebook are demonic in their spewed hate condemning all Muslims worldwide.

The Muslim holy book, the Quran, states that Jesus (‘Isu’ is Arabic) is the Messiah who will return to Earth at the ‘end of times’; overthrow the Anti-Christ; and judge all souls. Christ is revered by Muslims as the penultimate prophet of Islam. In fact, the Quran has more references (each reverent) to Christ than to the Prophet Muhammed.

I happened to be in Cairo on October 7th when Hamas attacked Israel. Egyptians, most of who abhor Hamas, were horrified at the attack, as were the Qataris, Saudis, Emiratis, Kazakhs, and Moroccans I know. Horrified, too, were most Bahrainis, Jordanians, Kuwaitis, Turks, Malays, and other Muslims around the world. When on that tragic days I saw this shitty posting on Facebook, I thought, ‘What imbecilic sick fucks! Hamas would love the hate such racists incite.’ The American racists have probably never met an actual practicing Muslim. Moreover, they might be fans of Muhammed Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabar, Shaquille O’Neil, Mehmet Oz, Dave Chapelle, Ice Cube, Mike Tyson, model Bella Hadid, or other American Muslims, yet hypocritically shit on each those by posting this fecal graphic.

An irony of their posting is that, although they might claim not to be antisemitic, these moronic racists don’t realize that antisemites they by definition are:

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a Semite as:

A member of any of the peoples mentioned in Genesis 10:21–31 as descended from Shem, one of the sons of Noah, traditionally interpreted as including the Hebrews, Aramaeans, Assyrians, and Arabs.

Likewise, the American Merrian-Webster Dictionary defines a Semite as:

  1. A member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern Asia including the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs.
  2. A descendant of these peoples.
  3. A member of a modern people speaking a Sematic language (Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Amharic).

So, behold the hateful filth behind this racist, even anti-semitic, posting on Facebook!

If I were to state that I know racists, you might think that I was arrogantly boasting that I’ve expertise identifying racists. No, the unfortunate reality is I’m simply stating that I have friends and acquaintances who are demonstrably racists. You’re seeing one of their Facebook postings pictured above. For the past third of a century, I’ve been a paying member of the Whole Earth [E]Lectronic Link or WELL (i.e, why my personal email address is @well.com), a seminal online discussion forum whose motto is ‘You Own Your Own Words’. I take responsibility for the bluntness of my words in this blog post and for point out the unmistakable racism in the Facebook posting pictured above. Likewise, they must admit their unmistakable actions. Stating something racist isn’t an opinion. Stating something racist is a demonstrable expression of hate.

Not surprisingly, I know these racists because I went to secondary school with them. It was during elementary and secondary schooling that I first heard racism. As a product of a Catholic parochial elementary school, I had rather sheltered childhood (although, thinking in retrospect, I’m now surprised that the nuns there didn’t actively teach against the evils of racism). At their homes, some of my classmates’ parents would sometimes say things that were racist. Yet as a child then adolescents, I thought perhaps what they said was simply an adult’s opinion of people who looked or worshiped differently than that adult did (the mill town of some 14,000 people where I grew up, its mills employing mostly immigrants, contained 37 churches, temples, and a synagogue, but no mosques). Yet by the time when I graduated from secondary school, I’d learnt that racism isn’t an opinion but one of the most common manifestations of hate and that the ever-aging adolescents who spout that hate aren’t truly adults intellectually, psychologically, or emotionally. Ever since I’d left secondary school and became an adult, I’ve chosen new friends and acquaintances who aren’t racists.

Attending my secondary school graduating class’s 40th and 50th reunions ten years ago and last years doused me back into contact with some of the muck which I’d thought that I’d left those many decades ago. I discovered that 40 to 50 years after our secondary school graduation, they stunted during that time. What a waste of time and a near lifetime of experiences. When after secondary school graduation at age 17, I left that mill town in which I grew up, I was naïve to think that all of my classmates would continue learning throughout their lives. Although some did, other rotted and became even more prejudiced or racists than their parents were.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised by that some of my former classmates posted or ‘Like’d the Facebook racist graphic pictured above. Five years ago, yet another of my former classmates posted a political falsehood on Facebook. In a commented on his posting, I provided incontrovertible evidence that the posting was untrue. That other classmate replied, “Thanks, I didn’t know it was untrue.” That was when one of my former classmates whose name appears in the racist graphic above interjected a comment, “Well, if it’s not true, then it ought to be!” The next day, he then posted the falsehood on his own Facebook page as if it were true, knowing it was false. His interjection and actions those five years ago taught me volumes about his amorality, his lack of ethics, and his stunted and hypocritical character.

Indeed, ‘All I Need to Know about Him, I learned on that One Day.’

If you’ve got a Facebook friend who is this demonstrably racist, ask yourself why. Are friends with him or her because you’ve known the person since childhood, secondary school, or college? That doesn’t justify tolerating racism. You shouldn’t tolerate open racism from anyone, lest by your silent acceptance of it, you and abet their satanic hate.

The Top-Ranked Steakhouse in North America

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Cote Korean Steakhouse, New York City

As when someone claims to have the best barbeque (BBQ), churrasco, brai, or whatever in your own nation they call grilled red meat, claiming to be ‘the best steakhouse’ generally are fighting words!

I was surprised today to see an Instagram post by Chef Eric Ripert, co-owner of the Michelin three-star rated Le Bernadin, long rated annually as the #1 ranked overall restaurant in North America, who was stating that Cote in Manhattan is now rated as the #1 steakhouse in North America and the #4 steakhouse in the world. Those ratings are by WorldsBestSteaks.com. Cote (“coat”) has been awarded one Michelin star. Even more remarkable, Cote is a Korean cuisine steakhouse.

Well, hold my Stetson! The #1 ranked steakhouse in the nation that invented barbeque is an Asian cuisine restaurant? I generally think of grilled red meat as American or Australian barbeque, South American churrasco, or South African brai. Yet here is a 26-minute video about Cote.

I suspect its top ranking is justified. Look at Cote’s dinner menu (click this hyperlink). For examples:

  • The twelve-item ‘Butchers’ Feast’: Gogi Cha (beef bone consomme), Ban-Cha (pickled seasonal vegetables), Scallion Salad, four cuts of USDA Prime & American Wagyu beef (or Japanese Wagy if you pay UD$34 more), Red Leaf Lettuce with Ssam-jang, Savory Egg Souffle, two Stews with rice, and Vanilla Soft-Serve ice cream with soy sauce caramel, for US$74 per person.
  • Or the Steak Omakase for US$225 per person! An Omakase, a Japanese term, is where the chef chooses how many course and what you eat according to his own choices of what he thinks are the best things to cook that day.
  • Or the Kimchi Wagyu ‘Paella’ for US$35, which is Kkaldhugi kimchi, Wagyu beef fried rice, and a soft poached egg.

I’ve been to Peter Luger’s, Smith & Wollensky’s, Kean’s, Morton’s, etc. However, I think my next New York steakhouse trip will involve chopsticks.

Ignorant and Unchristian ‘Christian’ Racists

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Conventional wisdom warns not to start talking about religion in establishments where alcohol is on tap. Correspondingly, self-preservation advises even more strongly not to respond to someone who does start talking religion in bars, pubs, and other drinking establishments. So, how does one react to a despicable fool like the one whom I encountered two months ago at a tavern along Route 67 in Connecticut ? He was loudly expressing his hate and his ignorance of religions (including his own, too) while thinking that he was Christianity.

“I hate Muslims!”, he bellowed to everyone and no one in particular at the tavern’s bar that evening.

When he arrived, I had overheard him telling the barmaid that he was a building contractor in the town. He was a muscular, formidable figure who had probably spent at least ten years lifting bricks, lumber, and construction equipment at building sites. As my friends will tell you (and my wife probably confirm), I’m not someone who feels bound by conventional wisdom nor even self-preservation. At least, not when open expressions of hate and racism are involved near my town, in my nation, or anywhere else for that matter. So, from my seat three stools and ten feet away, I loudly asked, “Why?”

I don’t think he expected anyone to respond or ask about his loud holler of hate. However, he readily answered. Appraising me, he spit out, “Because they hate Jesus!” That is when I noticed the crucifix he prominently wore.

Did I respond to that? No.

Why not? My reasons why not are these: Perhaps he is a competent contractor. Maybe he is an amenable person when not drunk. Perhaps he also is a good husband and a doting father. I don’t know for sure. However, I have no doubt that he believes he is a pious and devout Christian. I, however, have learned through seven decades of experience that there is no point in attempting to change the minds of zebras, donkeys, mules or other forms of ignorant jackasses. Particularly, when they are drunk.

Moreover, no amount of evidence or facts (by which I mean verifiable, readily provable, mutually-agreeable, court-admissible evidence and facts; and not anecdotal ‘evidence’, unverifiable ‘facts, or a cherry-picked mention of an outlying expert who is clearly contradicted by the huge preponderance other experts in that field) nor persuasive reasons will penetrate the thoroughly empty cerebellum of someone who cluelessly attempts to masquerade his atrocious prejudices under the guise of a religious faith.

First, allow me to raise a personal note. I was remembering him yesterday while standing in a taxi line on an island about 250 kilometers (150 mi.) off the coast of Northwester Africa. In the line next to me were two Muslim women. I’ve done business in nearly a dozen Muslim nations and have Muslim friends from yet another half dozen more nations. I’ve vacationed, even honeymooned, in Muslim nations. I doubt this fool in a Connecticut tavern has ever met a Muslim or visited any of the world’s 57 Islamic nations. In my travels, I’ve been privileged to visit mosques, ranging from the ancient Al-Azhar of Cairo (founded in the year 970) to the ultramodern Asy-Syakirin of Kuala Lumpur 8,000 kilometers (5,000 mi.) further east. I’ve read the Bible, the Q’uran, the Hindu Rigveda, some of the Torah, and many of the Buddhist sutras and text. These experiences have guided me to know that this drunken moron in a Connecticut bar is characteristic of a clan of racists who I’ve become all too familiar in modern life, particularly in my own nation: racists who pose as Christians.

So, let us test his prejudiced and opinion, from first the perspectives of Christianity, then that of Islam.

The Christian Gospels are crystal clear that Jesus lived, worked, and interacted with a wide variety of people of other religions. For examples, the polytheistic Roman occupiers of Palestine; idolator Syrians and Canaanites who worshipped Baal or Ashtoreth; and Samaritans, whose religion was similar to that of Jesus’s own Jews in that they followed the Torah and believed in a coming Messiah. (By the way, the Samaritan religion still exists). The Gospels describe his interactions with a Canaanite woman with a sick daughter (Matthew 15); a Samaritan woman at a well (John 4), a Samaritan leper (Luke 17), and the ‘Good Samaritan’ (Luke 10); a Roman centurion with a sick servant (Luke 7); and many sick and demoralized people from Syria and Decapolis who likely weren’t Jewish (Matthew 4 and 8; Mark 3 and 7). Unlike this reprehensible fool in a Connecticut tavern 2,000 years later, Jesus hated none of those non-Christians. He hated no one. Nor did he condemn or rebuke them. Nor argue or debate theology with them. Nor tell them that their religions were wrong. He led by his own example, thereby using what the Quakers 1,800 years later would call ‘quiet persuasion’.

Now, if I was a racist zealot who wanted to dismiss all that, I perhaps might attempt to distract from the issue by claiming that none of those ancient religions was Islam, which didn’t arise until six centuries after Christ. I don’t think this racist turd in 2024 would be dimly intelligent enough to attempt such a line of argument, but let’s now imagine that he had.

Many non-Christian religions founded since Jesus walked on Earth revere Jesus for performing such good works and for speaking the sermons that the Gospels report. In the Druze religion, Jesus is honored not only one of God’s important prophets but considered to be the Messiah who will return to Earth at the ‘End of Times’. Similarly, the Baháʼi religion considers Jesus to be one of many manifestations of God, while rejecting the Christian doctrine that he was an actual divinity. Yet of all non-Christian religions founded since Jesus’s teachings, Islam is the most to revere him.

In Islam, Jesus is called in Arabic Isa and his Gospels, themselves holy books in Islam, are call the Inil. Isa (Jesus) is Islam’s penultimate prophet; the messenger of God; and the Messiah who at the ‘End of Times’ will return to Earth, overthrow the Anti-Christ, and rule thew Earth. Indeed, the Q’uran mentions Isu (Jesus) by name 25 times, which is more often than it mentions Muhammad.

Islam differs from Christianity in that it consider Isa (Jesus) to have been a mortal human, albeit one divinely chosen to spread God’s message. Most Muslims believe that Isa (Jesus) wasn’t killed during his crucifixion, but that God made it appear so to his enemies and that God afterwards ascended him into heaven where Jesus is still alive. Despite those differences, the Q’uran and the New Testament agree about most aspects of his life and his teachings. Muslims and Christians believe that he was miraculously born without a human biological father by the will of God, and that his mother, Mary (Maryam in Arabic) is among the most saintly, pious, chaste and virtuous women ever. The Quran states that Isu (Jesus) was able to perform miracles through the will of God, including being able to raise the dead, restore sight to the blind, and cure lepers. One miracle attributed to Jesus (Isu) in the Quran, but not in the New Testament, is his being able to speak at only a few days after his birth, in order to defend his mother from accusations of adultery.

Does all that sound like Muslim’s hate Jesus?

No matter how much he might claim to be a Christian, what a thoroughly ignorant and hateful turd was the guy I encountered in the Connecticut tavern. He was demonstrably ignorant not only of Islam but of Jesus’s renowned teachings of tolerance and love for others.

Do you know anyone like him who claims to be Christian yet preaches hate for Muslims?

Unfortunately, I’ve encountered too many in recent years. This one was noxious when drunk. I’ve however encounter many of them who are quite affable when sober. They are worse. The affable one lack intoxication as any sort of excuse for their racism. Although few people like, condone, or tolerate a racist who is mean or irascible, unfortunately too many tolerate an affable one. Yet is affability any excuse for racism, prejudice, and hate? No, of course not. What if a friend or acquaintance from childhood or adolescence has grown to become a racist? Should he be tolerated. Absolutely not. If a racist is affable or was a childhood or adolescence friend and you tolerate his hate and prejudice, you aid him in spewing it.

And if a racists claims to be a devout Christian, you needn’t the heavens to part and a divine voice warn you that you’re dealing with not only someone hateful and prejudiced but a most evil hypocrite, drunk or sober, kneeling in church or relaxing at a tavern or country club. Any racist does the Devil’s work.

Faro de Maspalomas

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6yLf80sj6M

Although I’ve owned an aerial camera drone, a DJI Mavic Air, for the past five years, I recently replaced it with the far more powerful, smaller, lighter, and more far-ranging DJI Mini 4 Pro. Meanwhile, laws about flying drones in North America or the European Union have considerably tightened.; so, I am now studying for my United States pilots license, which would allow me to fly the drone in many regions where amateur flights or unlicensed flights are prohibited. In the United States, I live fewer than 100 metres west of outside a restricted airspace, which means I can fly unlicensed only east of my property. At my home in the Canary Islands, Spain’s airspace restrictions are so tight that not only is flying a drone unlicensed in my city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria prohibited, but so too is virtually the entire eastern half of Gran Canaria island. I spent last weekend vacationing at the southern tip of the island, an area where unlicensed flights are allowed. This gave me a chance to briefly fly my Mini 4 Pro from the balcony of my hotel on a glorious Saturday afternoon. Here is a six-minute clip from that flight. It’s not an entirely smooth flight, as I’m still experimenting with adjustments to the 250-gram drone’s balance and flight controls. However, this video clip does provide great views of first the Lopesan Boabob and he Lopesan Costa Meloneras resort hotels, as well as the lighthouse of Maspalomas (‘El Faro de Maspalomas’).

Durian, Durian, Durian!

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Although my wife prefers mangosteens, I love durians. In case you don’t know what those are, you’re in huge company. One of the side-benefits of travel is learning about fruits not native to you continent or even your hemisphere. Durians and mangosteens, which are southeast Asian fruits, are superb examples. Neither of these fruits ship well over long distances, which is why you find them almost only in Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Indonesia. Although durians are often called the ‘Kings of Fruit’ and the most delicious fruit in the world, you won’t find them everywhere in Southeast Asia. Durians are also have the most repulsive smell of all fruits, so Singapore bans them from being served or eaten in public places.

The New York Times today published a homage to durians. Or rather why the People’s Republic of China nowadays imports US$6.7 billion of durians each year. I recommend this story.

What do durians taste like? Wikipedia quotes the 19th Century British explorer naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace: 

“This pulp is the edible part, and its consistence and flavour are indescribable. A rich custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy. It is neither acidic nor sweet nor juicy; yet it wants neither of these qualities, for it is in itself perfect. It produces no nausea or other bad effect, and the more you eat of it the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact, to eat Durians is a new sensation worth a voyage to the East to experience. … as producing a food of the most exquisite flavour it is unsurpassed.”

What is a durian’s smell? Wikipedia quotes the 21st Century travel writer Richard Sterling:

 its odor is best described as pig-excrement, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away. Despite its great local popularity, the raw fruit is forbidden from some establishments such as hotels, subways and airports, including public transportation in Southeast Asia.”

It is perhaps one of nature’s greatest practical jokes that the ‘King of Fruits’ smells like a dead one!

My wife and I first encountered durians two decades ago in Malaysia, one of my favorite nations. Since then, I’ve been able to find durians served in a Vietnamese restaurant in upstate New York (yes: how that location makes sense is another question). And I’ve been able to find them on sale in the Westchester County outlet of the Asian supermarket chain H-mart. As The New York Times article describes, however, these are likely durians that had been cryogenically frozen before shipping to North America. They lacked full delight of durian taste, unlike those in Southeast Asia. Nonetheless, if you are a North American, try them nonetheless. It is too bad that durians and mangosteens don’t travel well!

Mangosteens, also a fruit my wife and I first encounter in Malaysia, are my second-favorite fruits. These small apricot-like fruits are delicious. Yet unfortunately like durians, are almost impossible to find outside of Southeastern or Far Eastern Asia. If you can find them, you’ll immensely enjoy them.

Travel outside of your nation or continent and try the foods and fruits there. I doubt you’ll be disappointed!

Trump is a Symptom, not the Problem Itself

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To understand why Trumpism is merely a symptom of a larger predicament, first consider that today’s children will see more technological, scientific, Industrial, business, and societal changes during their lifetimes than any previous generation in human history. Futurists for several decades have been documenting after the fact that the pace of such changes has been accelerating since the start of the Industrial Revolution. That pace has now begun skyrocketing due to developments such as computerization,  global connectivity,  artificial intelligence, genetic medicines, etc. Indeed, as the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus sagely observed 2,500 years ago, change is the nature of things and that the only constant is change.

Is that a problem? Well, change tends to make many, if not most living things anxious, even uncomfortable. Anxious animals defensively retreat into their burrows, nests, caves, etc. And anxious humans can similarly retreat into, if not nests, cave, or burrows, traditional values or nostalgia for a time before or without the change.

Certainly, some changes can be harmful. However, not only does change cause evolution, it likewise tends toward progress. Organisms don’t devolve. Human history during the past 500 years demonstrates increasing progress: such as ending slavery, emancipating women, democracies replacing monarchies or even more authoritarian forms of government, sciences and medicine elongating longevities and eradicating ancient diseases such as the plague, smallpox, polio, etc. Who adapts, and particularly takes advantage of change, best survives and flourishes.

But there is a contrary corollary. We shouldn’t be surprised that the people who tend to be most anxious when faced with change are those who are least able or willing to adapt and thus who most complain and resist change. They are also those who are most likely to be seduced by demagoguery against change or who claim that was past is best. Enter Trump, Putin, Modi, Bolsonaro, et. al.

Centuries ago when the pace of change was gentle, if even perceptible, these natural dynamics might have been less. Yet now that technological dynamics such as ‘Moore’s Law’, quantum mechanics, artificial intelligence, etc., have exponentially increased the pace of change, the sheer numbers of people who either can’t adapt, or not as easily as perhaps in the past, exponentially increases, too. Demagogues find willing audiences.

And as the pace of change continues to accelerate, perhaps an evolutionary hurdle is reached? If our technologies are now advancing faster than our adaptation to the changes they bring, what do we do about or how do we aid those among us who have trouble or can’t adapt? Aren’t they within their rights not to adapt? Or are there situations or cases in which their resistance to change or adaptation tramples the rights of those who embrace change? These questions need to be encountered and answered, because change is the nature of things.

‘Red’ vs. ‘Blue’ Map of the 2020 U.S. Election

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Politically conservative simpletons in the United States of America are fond of posting on social media maps of the nation that have each county colored either red for a Trump victory in 2020 and blue for a Biden victory that year. They like to do that because it colors the U.S. mostly red for Trump. And it is true that Trump won more than 2,500 counties and Biden fewer than 500 during that election.

What the simpletons either don’t realize, forget, or ignore is that not all counties in the U.S. are equal. Trump indeed won thousand of largely empty or sparsely populated U.S. counties. Yet although Biden won few than 500 counties, he won those where not only most U.S. citizens live but in which 70-percent of America’s economy resides. Trump overwhelming won Texas’s Loving county (population: 54) but Biden overwhelmingly won Los Angeles county (pop.: 9.9 million),

It is infantile for politically conservatives to post colored maps showing that Trump won a greater geographic aggregate of the emptier counties in the U.S.. Elections are instead won by gaining the greater number of citizens’ votes, which Biden did during 2020 by more than seven million votes (equal to more than 109,000 Loving county’s). However, if it makes simpletons feel better to post such maps, give them all the red and blue crayons they need. I expect a similar outcome from the 2024 election.

You Won’t See U.S. or European Airlines Staffs Doing This

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A frequent international traveler, I often post about how bad U.S. airlines have become and how European are starting to decline, too. The contrast between airlines from the Americas and Europe and those from the Middle East and Asia has become stark. Skytrax has long published the most objective and reputable ranking of the world’s airlines. Only one airline from outside the Middle East and Asia ranks among Skytrax’s Top Ten in the world: Air France. Moreover, no more than one airline from Europe and the Americas ranking in that top ten is usual. In recent years, Lufthansa had ranked in the Top Ten but no longer does; not more than one airline from the Americas or Europe has in decades; and in many years none does. Skytrax hasn’t picked its Top Ten for 2024, but atop its Top Ten last year were: Singapore, Qatar, ANA (All Nippon Airlines), Emirates, Japan Airlines, Turkish Airlines, Air France, Cathay Pacific of Hong Kong, EVA (Evergreen Airlines) of Taiwan, and Korean Airlines. Although a pedant might claim that Turkish is a European airline because it’s based in Istanbul west of the Bosporus, its service is distinctly Middle Eastern (meaning very good). Although their small airline, Drukair, isn’t rank by SkyTrax, the people of the Kingdom of Bhutan, a nation which uses a civic metric called the Gross National Happiness Index to judge itself, could make a case that it has the friendliest service in the world. Judge from this five-minute video from them. You won’t see the employees of Delta, British Airways, Latam, or Olympic doing this.