I had two blogs I wanted to post today, but it’s been zip and zoom and zap since early morning. Commitments, appointments, distractions, demands. Then every time I think I have a moment to sit down, something interrupts.
Now I’ve got half an hour before an appointment. Let’s see if I can sneak some links into that time, and come back later (cross fingers) for post two.
- Jeffrey A. Tucker on the epic battle to control our thoughts.
- Naturally, the CIA has an official Chief of Disguise. A former holder of that office made a short video about her craft. Freedom Outlaws, pay heed!
- Cory “Spartacus” Booker gets accused of sexual assault by a gay left-winger. Evidence? Well, apparently more than Christine Blasey Ford had.
- Okay, cutting off foreign aid’s not a bad idea. But is anybody else bothered by the fact that Trump thinks countries should be able to keep their citizens from getting out?
- Is political discourse getting nastier because we’re literally getting more stupid (thanks to the Internet)?
- She ran four experiments to break her social-media addiction. Here what worked.
- $10,000 toilet seats — and $1,280 coffee cups. Nope, the Pentagon hasn’t changed a bit.
- His son was being bullied. Instead of getting mad or complaining to Authoritah, he had a talk with the bigger kid in question.
- Taking Halloween costumes to the next level.
- Garage sale holder teaches a petty wanna-be buyer a meaningful lesson in both bargaining and human decency.
The “people are getting stupider” meme has been around for a while. Perhaps. But I think the reason politics is getting nastier is that there is a lot more at stake. The article says that in the 1980s only 15% of demopublicans and republicrats hated each other. While the government was huge and had tendrils is most places then it is now an all pervasive monster. Who is in charge really matters. Matters beyond anything else to a lot of people. So much so that hatred is where it leads.
I hadn’t thought about the fact that a more powerful central government forces people to have real concerns. Surely that raises the stakes in elections. The dumbing down of the American public is a well recognized phenomenon among those paying attention. Sir John Glubb, in the section titled “XXI Civil dissensions” on page 12 (his numbering) noted that such dissensions are hallmarks of a civilization in its last stages and that the Byzantine Empire despite a dominating external threat continued with its civil wars until the empire was lost. http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf Were it a collapsing USSR I could break out the popcorn, but I certainly can’t for this.
https://i.imgur.com/78g2Oim.gifv