I’ll have more of these, and there is some tangential discussion below, but these are the first few that come to mind. With the possible exception of the final one, they aren’t likely to be pursued by either the legacy media or red/blue partisans.
USA
DOGE is an Oxymoron: Unchecked “Democracy” is the Problem
Unlike the private sector, where operational efficiency is necessary to survive, the public sector is and always has been inherently inefficient. But that’s not the main problem. Think of federal public polices justified as being in the “public interest” as a building. On the upper floors are the best of them, the merely inefficient. At the mezzanine level are those suffering from extensive waste, fraud and abuse. On the ground floor are policies and programs rife with self-dealing and crony capitalism. Down in the basement is the “temple of virtue” where taxpayers are sacrificed to multiple ideological isms.
DOGE is peeking inside the locked doors on all four levels. As DOGE exposes “Dirty Deeds, Done Dirt Cheap,” politicians cry foul, as “they were implemented (by us) democratically. To paraphrase Churchill, “democracy is less bad than totalitarianism,” but, he might have added “generally worse than competitive private markets.” At this stage in US democracy, DOGE revelations have lost some of their shock value as commonplace, and politicians emphasize their good intent. DOGE needs to demonstrate that “good intentions” often lead to bad outcomes, and do not justify corruption in any case.
DOGE alone can only win a few skirmishes against Congress and its massive army of rent-seekers feeding off their largess. With public understanding and support, the Trump Administration could bring about more permanent structural changes that provide greater voter control.
Life is a Competition
Americans love sports, from 5 & 6-year-old soccer leagues through high school, college and pro teams, where the competition to succeed is intense. Pro sports is a business, as the recent Luka Donic trade to the Lakers reminds us, with winners and losers. It is incredibly “democratic” as millions of fans choose what players to follow, games to attend or stream at the posted price, and owners respond continuously to fan expectations. The competition is subject to a massive set of complicated rules and limitations enforced by referees and judges whose integrity is subjected to coaches’ challenge, instant replay and fan fury. That reflects the system of checks and balances that a competitive private market incorporates.
Now imagine a pro sports league designed and governed by the most honest and altruistic national politicians. They would deem it unfair to pay some athletes more than others, or to exclude the weak or physically impaired from the competition. Winners would be determined by political deal making in smoke-filled back rooms. Prices would be determined according to “ability to pay” and ticket purchases would be mandatory whether or not attending the games, with revenues first flowing through party coffers. Fans would be told who to root for and losing teams and cities would be declared winners so as not to result in hurt feelings. Voting against this system would result in your team being designated the loser but you would still be required to buy the tickets. That’s a metaphor for our current “altruistic” federal democracy.
Reaching for the Alien Shore
So, about those drones. Treating the current social contagion as a subset of the ongoing “UAP” fad, how are we to evaluate the obsession with extraterrestrial aliens? Lest my output appear misleadingly prodigious, I wrote most of what follows in late summer 2023 and have modestly updated it for our situation as of (very) late autumn 2024. The organization of this post is an attempt at a hierarchy from most immediate/local to greatest space/time extent.
NOTICE! In compliance with the Manifoldian Transparency Pledge of 2024, which I just thought up:
- this thing runs > 8k words, reading time potentially exceeds 30 minutes, and that doesn’t account for
- lots of math and possible inducement to wander off down various rabbit trails invoked thereby (besides the homework/syllabus assignments), which you may or may not regard as part of the fun; and
- not to overlook the obvious, I will address the concomitant obsession with foreign infiltration, and OCD contamination phobia in general, in at least one separate post.
Around America in 27 Days and 8,396 Miles
Way back in the 50s and as Lex would say, “when I was a wee nubbit”, we had a Beagle named Sam. And like most Beagles, he loved to roam whenever the chance presented itself, such as a front door not closed fast enough. When that happened, the task to retrieve him fell upon me. I would chase him down the street of our Studio City neighborhood and at that young age learned there was only one thing that he liked even more than roaming – food.
Schadenfreudelicious
Two weeks and a bit more after election day, and the meltdown, panic, and dismay among the progs, the establishment media, and the entertainment world continues. I’m taking an unworthy pleasure in reading reports of panic and back-biting among partisans of the Harris/Walz camp and the noisy laments of their cis-gender or bi significant others. I’m also taking a savage pleasure in reading about or viewing evidence of the dismayed realization among the managerial class in certain industries dependent economically on the choices of the general public – that conservatives and Trump voters buy shoes, too. Also movie tickets, newspaper and magazine subscriptions and other consumer goods.