DISASTERS ABROAD AND AT HOME - 1

1. THE WORLD




It is fairly obvious to people outside of the Biden administration that the Iranians are behind the vicious, savage attacks on Israel, which has justly responded accordingly in what is likely to be an ever-expanding war. Only now do they say they stand unwavering with Israel, notwithstanding the dangerously diminished capacity of our military to help as we are stretched thin around the world. 




 In re-establishing the Obama policies of bolstering Iran in return for “cooperation,” to the detriment of our allies in the region, they have only brought about yet another catastrophe on the world. The destruction they engineered in this country is bad enough, but even worse is how they have managed to botch virtually everything everywhere else in the world. They managed, to our everlasting shame, and without consulting with our allies, to get away with the obscenity of the Afghanistan debacle they caused, as well as green-lighting a “small incursion” by the Russians into Ukraine. 




They cut off Netanyahu, the most dynamic and effective leader in the western world, and insulted and alienated our Arab friends, whose relations and cooperation with Israel had been warming thanks to the Trump-inspired Abraham Accords. Then they debased themselves by going back and begging the Arabs to mitigate the oil crisis they themselves had created. 




The prime beneficiaries of all of this has been the Iranian mullahs, who clearly fear and seek to disrupt Arab-Israeli cooperation. If we had stuck to our principles  the popular uprisings in Iran might have succeeded had we provided aid and encouragement. Instead no help or support was given, leaving the evil regime intact and empowered. Instead of seizing the opportunity ourselves, it is the Iranians who have done so in the vacuum we have left, and there will be no peace in the region unless and until that menace is eliminated. They again outmaneuvered the Great Satan.




This fumbling weakness and inconsistency has resulted in a far more dangerous and unstable world than the one they inherited. It is also now clear that the Chinese Communists will never have a better opportunity to seize Taiwan given that we are now getting bogged down in wars in Europe and the Middle East while our military capabilities have been seriously degraded. There is virtually no chance at the present time that we can prevent this. Whatever you may think of Donald Trump, none of this would have happened under his stewardship. 




This administration will likely now backtrack and do the opposite of what they were steadfast in before now that the wind has conflated into a hurricane, and yet once again they may be able to spin this to their advantage and obscure their seminal role in generating it all, just as they have on the border.  But what is desperately needed is a clear and consistent strategy to oust the mullahs once and for all. Unfortunately that is probably beyond their capabilities, no matter what they may now say, but at least Netanyahu has the presence of mind to not trust them. Consequently he is the one who is going to be determining the direction of things thanks to the confusion and lack of clarity in our present regime, which will now be too sheepish to buck the congress and Israelis on these matters, and that is not a bad thing. 

What if the Roman Empire never fell? How would this change most of our history today?

(Here is some history you probably never knew. I quickly drafted this response to a Quora question, but thought it might be of more general interest).

The Roman Empire did not fall until 1453, when the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople. Emperor Constantine had moved the capitol to the Greek city of Byzantium because of its excellent geographic, strategic, and central location, calling it New Rome, although at that point the empire was then split between eastern and western halves until the west collapsed in the fifth century. Subsequently renamed Constantinople, it then became the center of the world and continued long after the city of Rome itself declined sharply as the locus of empire shifted. Attempts, sometimes successful, were made to reclaim parts of the west. Indeed the name of the city itself continued until the cataclysm of World War I.

In addition, Justinian was the last Emperor to use Latin rather than Greek, which prevailed for another eight centuries, or far longer than Rome itself. There was never a “Byzantine Empire.” That was a far later German concoction in order to legitimate their own “Holy Roman Empire, which, as Voltaire once said, was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, What actually existed, as I have suggested elsewhere, was not something “Byzantine,” but rather a Greco-Roman Empire that lasted for a millennium. This is still confused and not well known due to the ignorance and prejudice of northwestern Europeans towards the south.

Thus, the Roman Empire did not fall or disappear the way you have been led to believe. In fact, if the empire began with Augustus, the Rome-based portion only lasted for a bit more than four centuries, while the Eastern Roman Empire continued for another thousand years, and all the people in the empire, including the Greeks, referred to and considered themselves Romans until the very end. The empire itself was polyglot as it always was, but the dominant language was Greek. Thus, while the “Middle Ages” or medieval period happened in the west, which was still backward, that was not the case in the east, in what in fact was the bulk of the empire, which continued a thriving, but heavily Christianized civilization. Thus, in the year 1000 Constantinople had a population of over a million people.

The original Roman Empire was far better at practical things, particularly organization, administration, functional engineering, etc. than the quarrelsome Greeks, who otherwise brilliantly developed and dominated culture, art, science, philosophy, etc. Romans provided the critical stability, legal and social infrastructure that was previously lacking in an otherwise largely Greek world that had been established by Alexander and his successors. As a result, Roman law, justice and organization provided the framework which sustained an otherwise largely Greek cultural entity.

The empire would not have fallen had it not been for the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) which, instead of going to Jerusalem to fight Muslims attacked other Christians via Venetian ships and encouragement. The barbarian Knights/Crusaders literally destroyed the city of Constantinople, pillaging and worse, burning down much of the city while the Venetians, at least having some artistic sense, carted off a lot of treasures that you still see in St. Marks to this day. The crusaders took over what was left of the city setting up their own “empire” for a few decades until the Romans finally reclaimed it, but in a much-weakened state. Thus, by the time the Turks finally conquered the city in 1453 with new long-range cannons, there were only about 50,000 people left there. That is when the Roman Empire finally fell, in its Greco-Roman-Christian incarnation.

Given true history then, if the empire hadn’t fallen it is quite possible that Greek would still be the common language, you might be speaking it, and the European world would be very different. The “old” nations of Europe after all, have only existed for around five centuries. They really ascended after the fall of the City and the “renaissance” that followed, (another retroactively coined term), instilled to a considerable extent by Greek refugee scholars who fled to the Italian city-states, which welcomed then as teachers, given their thirst for knowledge and ancient manuscripts.

Many other things would be different, starting with religion. In the empire the church was subordinate to the Emperor, and less powerful than in the west, where given the power vacuum, the Bishop of Rome, or Pope, was able to claim supremacy. Consequently, if the empire had continued the church would not have had so much power, and it is likely there would never have been a Protestant Reformation. Regions would have had their own Patriarchs. There is no way to know how geography would have taken shape, given uncertainty as to how far the empire might have reached, or how competent it would have been, but at its maximum it could have stretched over all of Europe. Alternatively, it could have been smaller, as it continued to fend of endless barbarian invasions from the east, allowing other powers to emerge in the west anyway, but possibly without the virulent nationalism that eventually developed and led to catastrophic wars and mass murder in the last century.

Much would depend on whether the empire could regain Italy, which was essential to the emergence of modern Europe. (In 1500 Italy was richer than all of western Europe combined and more culturally advanced). Since it was then divided into competing city-states in the fashion of ancient Greece, that might have transpired if the empire was relatively free from barbarian invasions. Slavs, at least in the south were already being absorbed before the fall of the empire and thus would likely still be integrated. Unknowns are how the Russians, or more importantly the Germans might have emerged. But generally, the empire had always done a great job of absorbing and integrating other peoples, until the rise of Islam.

If the empire had remained strong it is unlikely that the Arabs would have conquered what was then European Christian north Africa and Egypt, or even much of what is now called the “middle east,” which would have remained Christian and Roman, linked to the west via Constantinople. The empire took the brunt of Muslim invasion, thus protecting the west for centuries, and if not for the Fourth Crusade could have grown stronger and more powerful and Europe would not have been threatened or invaded. In addition, Persian culture might still exist, possibly as yet another empire.

Greek rationalism did not disappear as the church in the east largely reconciled itself with it and focused on spiritual matters. Consequently, the church would not have been able to significantly thwart scientific progress.

Europe, including a good portion of the east would still dominate the world. and remain centered in Constantinople. They would likely still have found the Americas, but development might have been different, possibly without African slavery, among other things. The culture would be more advanced and sophisticated, but economic growth might not be as robust, given a different emphasis and outlook, and without a “Protestant ethic” but rather a sort of merchant mentality. Higher education might not have been found in universities as we know them, but rather closer to the academic format of the ancient world, more focused on the development of the mind and learning.

Ultimately we cannot know because of vicissitudes of one-man rule. There can be a great ruler and then a terrible ruler. You can have a Marcus Aurelius or a Caligula. So given different personalities there is no way to know, and that can be precarious and lead to instability or conflict until someone else consolidates power. What we can learn clearly from history is the less power we surrender to others over us the better off we are.

Finally, the Fourth Crusade was clearly the worst disaster in western history even beyond World War I if only because the latter might never have happened if the empire hadn’t fallen. Such a general and vague question can lead to endless possibilities and alternatives, but in the end all that is left is what actually happened.

THE LATE JAMES BUCKLEY WAS A GREAT HUMAN BEING

James Buckley, who recently passed away at age 100 was the finest gentleman I ever met. He improbably was elected Senator from New York on a Conservative Party ticket due to a three-way race after an earlier unsuccessfully attempt I also worked on. This was at a time when the party was thriving due to his brother Bill’s earlier NYC Mayoral race, (another three-way contest, which had the unfortunate result of electing John Lindsay Mayor). At the time the Republican Party was still dominated by “liberal” or Rockefeller Republicans, so the Conservative Party was established to provide an alternative, and quickly became the third largest party in the state.

Bill was acerbic at times, but the older brother rarely uttered an unkind word about anyone, and was a thoroughly decent human being. It still makes me angry to recall the remarks of the sore-loser Democrat candidate, one Richard Ottinger, who griped that at least two out of three people voted for “decency.” There is great irony in the degree to which he was so off-target in the case of this good and gracious man, and to just whom the word “decency” really applied, But that was how the left continuously tried to demonize and delegitimize conservatives in those days, to no avail.

Unfortunately these days you rarely encounter anyone with Jim Buckley’s class and demeanor, especially in the upper reaches of power-holders. He was not driven by personal ambition, nor did he crave power, which enabled him to be refreshingly detached, thoughtful and principled. That is the kind of person we desperately need in office in today’s shallow, coarse, and dumbed-down political environment. He lived a long, honorable, and fulfilling life, and what can better be said of a man?

SMOKE SIGNALS

The recent super smoke particles coming down from Canada a few days ago that smothered us here on the East Coast illustrates the folly of the climate change cult. Some less intelligent people were claiming this was due to global warming, when forest fires are in fact a recurring natural phenomenon and no such connection has been established. 

I think it shows us two things: 1. A nuclear attack anywhere is going to affect everyone everywhere as it permeates the atmosphere. Something far away can still reach you. 

2. More importantly it is insane to keep self-destructing over “climate change” when just one big volcano could easily blanket the earth completely and significantly lower temperatures for years, and of course volcanos are completely natural phenomena.  It has happened many times in the past, including in recorded history. There are plenty of volcanos around the world that could pop at any time and change the whole climate trajectory. So it was that volcanos on the other side of the world ushered in the “little ice age” in Europe. In recent times we have been fortunate enough to have not experienced a super-volcano. But sooner or later another one will occur, people will be bundling up heavily, the sky will darken, and crops will fail. 

The only people benefiting from this climate hysteria are the green crony capitalists gobbling up many of your tax dollars when not sending them off to China, where they could care less about climate. It is one of the greatest scams in history. 

Furthermore volcanos are only one natural phenomenon among many that could radically change things. It is folly to prepare for many decades in the future based upon current assumptions. That is simply "presentism," and consistently wrong. What exists today will be gone tomorrow given constant change. It is going to take a lot of effort to undo the damage they have done our environment with shortsighted green projects like windmills that are killing millions of birds, and probably more and more whales as well. The hardest part is reversing the brainwashing that has been going on for the past few decades. Kids today have swallowed this whole and accept it as gospel, when it is full of holes. When this all becomes more obvious many, many people are going to be angered by the extent to which they have been bamboozled.  

Photo my wife took from our house on the Long Island Sound.

AN IGNORANT, MIS-EDUCATED, SEMI-LITERATE CULTURE

As an addendum to the latest Cleopatra flap, I find the coverage of the "controversy" even more depressing in supposedly serious media, across the board. I have read article, after poorly written article, by journalists abysmally ignorant about history and worse not at all interested in seeking the truth. We have a country where even people coming out of the "best" schools cannot write a coherent sentence, and who are only dimly capable of distinguishing between facts and feelings. The latter is what drives things for them.  How does something square with their worldview on “racism?”  If inconvenient, they simply ignore the truth and go with a fictional narrative they find more congenial. What matters today is not the truth, nor the facts, but rather the spin, or “narrative” that prevails. This world of distortion permeates everything from the White House to the local news. 

 

But when it comes to Cleopatra, we are referencing one of the most well-documented figures in history. To suggest, as many have that, well, "we just don't know," is to deliberately obscure the truth to avoid hurtfully puncturing the racial fantasies of some people. Worse, I have read some obscure "expert" (the only one sought out by an idiot reporter) claim that even if she was Greek she couldn't possibly be "white," or fair, dismissing the world's leading Egyptologist (Hawass) suggestion that she might even have been blonde, when, in fact, people in northern Greece are often blonde and tall like Alexander, so it is certainly not beyond the realm of possibility. Instead, when the facts ruin the fantasy, it gets ridiculously redefined, so that the original Greek authors of European civilization are no longer considered European and thus no longer “white” in this crazy worldview.

 

The Egyptians are incensed because of attempts to depict them as sub-Saharan Africans or as being closely related to them. They are not, and even when very briefly ruled by black people of Kush or Nubians, those rulers had more aquiline features found in northeast Africa and had little more in common with West Africans, (from whom most American blacks are descended), than they would have had with Europeans. 

 

It is a sad commentary on the level of ignorance and credulity in contemporary society that several decades after Newsweek ran a cover with the ridiculous, and universally debunkeduestion “Was Cleopatra black?” there is even moreignorance today. It is a consequence of the self-hatred of radicalized “scholars” constantly aimed at poisoning and undermining our great western civilization, going back to its foundation in the Ancient Greek world through all subsequent periods culminating in the free world of today. 

 

Our heritage is not just being stolen; it is being destroyed. Our culture, as well as the entire western hemisphere is an offshoot of European civilization. The more they can obscure that the less we will know of who we really are, which is what has facilitated their attempts to remake and redefine us in accordance with the phony ideological group identities they have conjured up. But this cultural suicide being forced on us will in no way uplift supposedly marginalized groups, on whose behalf it is being proffered. It will only bring all of us down. While the “Anglosphere” has gone overboard on this, fortunately most of Europe, is not buying it, nor for that matter, is the rest of the world.  If we do not reverse this disastrous trajectory, our country will again, over time, come to be perceived as little more than a remote backwater populated by dimwitted people. 

 

There is no doubt in my mind that a 19th century high school graduate was more articulate and better educated than graduates of today’s universities. From the time I was teaching five decades ago to the present we have gone from dumb to dumber. Sure, there are, as there always has been, a small number of very bright people that really drive scientific, technical and intellectual progress for everyone else. But the leveling, “equity” ideology is increasingly destroying opportunities that enable such people emerge and excel. That costs everyone and we are left only with mass mediocrity. Without cultural restoration the point of no return will soon be reached. 

 

In that case America is over. 

 

  

CLEOPATRA: THE HISTORICAL REALITY

 It is a sad commentary on the level of historical ignorance that prevails today, especially in the USA, where gullible people easily respond to narratives that patently are not true. Thus it has become necessary to explain who one of the most well-known and documented figures in history was, due to myths that have been proffered about her without any foundation or evidence. The last Cleopatra, a name born by many predecessors, was simply not “black,”as most recently suggested by a Netflix “documentary” based upon falsehoods and wishful thinking. 

Cleopatra was ethnically Greek, descended from Ptolemy, one of Alexander the Great’s Macedonian generals who came to power in Egypt after his death. She was clearly not black.She was European. Nor was she even particularly dark. Macedonians from northern Greece are mostly fair-skinned. The city of Alexandria was founded by Alexander himself and run by Greeks (although with a multinational population), for three hundred years. It became the greatest Greek city in the Hellenistic world, where numerous brilliant scientists and philosophers did their work. Cleopatra was herself a brilliant woman who spoke several languages; in fact she was the first and only Ptolemaic ruler to bother learning the Egyptian language. She also strongly identified with Egypt, adapting its religion and many aspects of its culture in the Pharaonic tradition. Her affairs with Caesar and Mark Anthony were also political, as she strove to maintain the security of her wealthy country. But as is well known, she wound up on the losing side in a Roman power struggle where the Roman Republic was transformed into the Empire under Augustus, and so absorbed Egypt. 

 Alexandria is located on the Mediterranean Sea and was part of the Mediterranean world, as was all of north Africa. That region was in no sense “African” in the narrower sense in which the term is misused today to signify what is actually only sub-Saharan or black Africa. In addition to the great Egyptian civilization it was settled by Greeks, Phoenicians, Romans, and even Germans, who established the Vandal kingdom there. The population was in no sense black, nor were the local Berbers, some of whom to this day have blue eyes. Again the entire region was Mediterranean, and the Greco-Roman term “Africa” was originally used to refer to this region and its cultures- North Africa. 

Much of the falsehoods and confusion of today are based upon a truly idiotic fallacy, which is the notion that the term, now used to  refer to the entire continent of Africa, is co-terminus, equivalent, and  identical to black Africa. It isn’t, and indeed residents of the north vociferously object to being labeled black, especially the Egyptians. This rankles the really stupid producer of this Netflix travesty, who says that the Egyptians need to learn that they are in Africa, as though that somehow makes them black, which, as explained above is nonsensical. All across north Africa from Egypt to Morocco the population is simply not black, genetically, culturally or historically. This has been obscured, to a considerable extent by the Arab conquest and conversion to Islam, which detached the region from the intimacy it had with Europe. 

 So the result is a production based upon total ignorance and wishful thinking that is rationally unsustainable. In fact the scorn has been universal, from the Egyptians to even the leading scholar in Nigeria, who has called out this abomination for its deception, while pointing out that black Africans have many cultures of their own to be studied and appreciated. They do not feel slighted by the truth and make no such claims. Indeed everywhere else in the world there is a clear understanding of true history, except for grossly miseducated and gullible Americans. Recognition of the truth in no way demeans or diminishes black Americas. Stealing other people’s cultures is a sign of weakness and insecurity, not strength and no ones benefits from the promulgation of falsehoods. It only invites ridicule. Shame of Netflix for promoting these lies, misleading the public, and forfeiting any credibility. 

A new documentary by the world’s leading Egyptologist Dr. Zahi Hawass (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100044332304573) tells the truth based on historical fact, not fantasy. It is now viewable on YouTube. Looking forward to seeing it. It is also supposed to be on Amazon but I can’t find it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3_4mEuVONA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdGThahx5sE

 

THE PARTISAN PERSECUTION OF DONALD TRUMP

 It is now ludicrous to suggest that there is any longer an impartial system of justice in this country. It should be obvious to everyone in the partisan legal harassment of Donald Trump, especially in places like here in New York. In addition to the local Manhattan DA and state AG, he faced a ridiculous civil suit from a woman claiming he had in some way harmed her decades ago. The jury of ruled against him in short order to no one’s surprise. The question his whether there is any legitimacy at all to this legal system. 

There was and remains zero chance that Trump could ever get a fair hearing from a Manhattan jury. That was my own experience  over two decades ago under another kind of political attack when I realized there was no way I could get a fair verdict in Manhattan and had to settle for an agreement. These are people with a visceral hatred of Donald Trump and incapable of fair judgement due to ideological blinders. They see all aspects of life as political and so have politicized everything, thereby ruining everything. 

Does anyone think the verdict would not be different almost anywhere else in the country, or even elsewhere in New York?  Manhattan is out of touch not only with the rest of the country but even the rest of the city and certainly the rest of the state.This was the only borough that voted for some obscure left-wing woman instead of Mayor Adams in the Democratic primary. There is not a single elected Republican official left in Manhattan at the city, state, or federal level (where once there was a congressman, state senator, and a couple of state assembly and city council representatives). The Manhattan GOP once exercised disproportionate influence. Now it basically no longer exists. Unfortunately Manhattan media also dominates communications in this country, in their parochial worldview, warping perceptions of who we really are as a people. 

I had for a time hoped that someone else might be the Republican nominee for President, only because they might possibly win with a larger margin and lower the temperature, but now given the constant harassment by a legal system that no longer has much legitimacy left Trump may be the only one who is stalwart enough to rectify the situation and clean house. It is indeed ironic that throughout his entire term of office he never once abused his power or used the government to pursue political enemies, while the Democrats have been doing so constantly thereby undermining the entire justice system. Trump may be the only one to set things right; the only other possibility would be Robert Kennedy Jr. who is equally loathed by the establishment that is doing its best to marginalize or ignore him because they know that he, like Trump is willing to take on the rotten elite that is ruining this country and bring about real reform.

 I don’t think that Trump should have participated in any of this political  litigation. He should have refused to recognize the legitimacy of it, thereby unmasking the partisan rot and leaving the left powerless to do anything about it. Had he remained in Florida Governor DeSantis would never have extradited him to a hostile jurisdiction. By cooperating to any degree Trump is confirming the legitimacy of a rotten system that no longer has any. But for once he took the more restrained option, probably to avoid a total break at this time, but if he is elected again there is no doubt that he will clean house this time around. 

By so blatantly persecuting Trump the left has strengthened him immeasurably. It is time that other potential candidates step back and save their fire for another day, unless something really does reduce his viability, which seems less and likely, but in that case they could always step in later. But given the serious injustices being perpetrated at this time there must be solidarity. There was a chance that he might have faded away, but by so grossly and unjustly overplaying their hand they have restored him to the center of everything and richly deserve whatever consequences result. 

JUST PAYING TAXES IS A HASSLE NOW

I finally filed my Income Tax and I am livid; not because I wound up owing an unexpectedly large amount, but because I had to jump through hoops to get the return sent to the IRS, wasting nearly two days on what should be a simple process. But nothing is simple with this dysfunctional system anymore. 

I’ve been using TurboTax since it first came out in the last century, but never will again. The only reason I still have to buy it is thanks to living in New York, which has an income tax and worse still requires a long form with an endless number of asinine additions and subtractions on it, so it doesn’t have any equivalency with the now relatively simple federal return. 

Since the feds limited deductions for state and local and there’s too much potential hassle in claiming other items so I don’t bother. TurboTax then tells me I’m better off just using the standard deduction. Fine with me because I can’t have any audit problems like in the past, when in this supposedly digital age the IRS insisted on paper receipts for everything. Now this should have been as simple as it was in the past. 

Only it wasn’t due to bureaucratic lunacy. Here I am simply trying to pay what I owe but can’t because there was no way around a request for last year’s Adjusted Gross Income. They have our Social Security numbers, why the hell do they need this? So now I can’t file any way other than filing a paper return with a check unless I add that information. But I don’t have it because when I loaded the prior year file the TurboTax program for last year insisted on updating itself, and in the process zapped most of the information on my return. Unfortunately after looking everywhere I couldn’t find a paper copy, nor did TurboTax site have the information, leaving me stuck. 

Then I try to at least file my NY State return electronically because the state will only accept it in that format, only the program won’t let me because the fed hasn’t been filed. Okay, so at least the IRS has the return, right? Only when I try to sign in on the account I had established with them I find out that they have discarded old accounts and couldn’t be bothered with transferring the information so I am now required to set up a new one with something called ID.me.  

That process is sheer torture because you have to do all sorts of back and forth verification, and the information already provided won’t suffice because you have to then take a picture of the front and back of the license, and on top of that take a selfie of yourself. The assumption of course is that you have a smart phone. So here you have the government of the United States demanding a selfie, using that exact term. Not only is it insane, but it is potentially  repressive. But at this point I don’t care. Fuck them. They can’t do anything to me that hasn’t already been done and I have no reservations about expressing my contempt publicly. 

This is personal but it is also just the final straw for me  in ever increasing alienation from this government. It is rotten to the core, has lost all legitimacy, even as it forces its ideology on nominally private institutions as well, so that our freedom continues to evaporate and we find ourselves constrained by their lunacy. The regime must be replaced if we are to survive in any meaningful way as a free society.

Anyway, I was ultimately able to get access to the information I needed from my previous return, and was finally able to file and pay this really stupid, inept, rotten government. As I said I don’t mind paying but I deeply resent the intrusive hurdles and waste of time for the dubious privilege of paying them, but even that isn't simple anymore.

TIKTOK AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Due to the recent headlines about TikTok I decided to check it out. Most of what I saw was exceedingly stupid, but otherwise fairly innocuous, so I’ve become more skeptical about the claims of politicians. It is one thing if it in fact is a vehicle to enable the CCP to spy on us, in which case it might then be a threat. They are also tracking and collecting personal information, but so are all the other platforms, and at present they may be having enough trouble keeping track of their own people to bother much with ours. Otherwise, I can’t imagine much use for a collection of dopey videos. There may or may not be something more there, but the only way to find out is to do some serious research instead of shooting first and asking questions later.

 The more salient concern is what negative impact it is having on vulnerable, impressionable young people. But that feature of social media is hardly unique to TikTok, so the Chinese element may be irrelevant, apart from sour grapes from Silicon Valley over the success they have had. Instagram, which began as a place to share photos, has been transformed into a clone of TikTok, with identical short, mindless videos, and there are others, so the phenomenon would persist even if there were no TikTok.

 

Throughout almost all of history there was no “gap” between generations. Even in modern times, the 1960s, and possibly the 1920s were aberrations. Thus, we have the phenomenon of younger people still connecting with music that is five or more decades old.

 

But now there is something that really is different and barely perceptible to most adults. These kids have grown up with an almost integral connection to social media. The rest of us grew up with a variety of experiences and venues such as movies, television, publications, as well as far more interaction with the physical world. For these kids everything, all of it, is online, especially social media, which has resulted in a very different perception of the world around us as well as what matters. If you’re not “there” you basically don’t exist. The paramount path to notoriety now is there, not in other media, which has generated a horde of aspiring “influencers,” as well as outsized significance provided to the insignificant. 

 

If it was simply a different perspective it wouldn’t matter so much, but with a growing realization of how much real harm is being done, it is very consequential, if not critical. 

 

Social media has become a vehicle for boundless narcissism, not just for kids but for adults as well. In this world everybody is a star (which can also effectively mean that nobody is). When someone puts up a video of themselves doing silly, or routine things like exercising, frequently lip-synching with a dreadful soundtrack, they do so in the hopes of gaining recognition, likes, followers, and other forms of positive feedback validating their lives. But what happens to the vulnerable when the feedback is negative? Clearly it can be devastating. 

 

Even adults are not immune to this sort of exposure to the extent that they can bristle at any negative reactions to what they post. Thus, what social media fundamentally gives us, to the extent that we allow it to, is naked, exposed egos. For the young, or those with fragile egos, the consequences can be  catastrophic.

 

Yet much here is not new. Even in the earliest years of the Internet there was negativity via “flame wars.” A quarter of a century ago AOL provided essentially the same material as Facebook but arguably better. Then there was MySpace, where everyone soon had a Page, but with the technology of the time pages rich with graphics and blasting music incessantly, they took forever to load, so the plain, simple interface of Facebook left them in the dust. But both heralded something new- the real you. 

 

Back on AOL virtually everyone had a handle, not many real names were used, personal information wasn’t exposed, and there were few photos. Thus, you really couldn’t know who was and wasn’t real, but at the same time you were reasonably safe. Here may lie the crux of the matter and possibly the easiest solution to the social media conundrum.

 

Banning a service or attempting to control it all is neither viable nor desirable, with the possible exception of platforms. But if people were limited in their personal exposure, many problems would dissipate. Furthermore, under current conditions privacy has been shredded. As long as personal information is out there, or worse even promoted, problems will persist. What we really need to do, for the protection of the public, is simply limit the exposure of personal information, especially on public venues. If this were to come about there would likely be a healthy loss of interest, once “me” or “I” were out of the picture. Life then might hopefully return to normal.  

REFLECTIONS ON THE JANUARY 6TH RIOT AND TRUTH

This morning I saw a dingbat CBS “news” anchor airhead expressing outrage over Tucker Carlson’s January 6th revelations, which of course was echoed by the entire establishment media complex, along with some politicians demanding his show be taken down. But these are the same people who have continuously lied to us, repressed the truth, put an ideological spin on the facts, and have zero credibility left with the public. Even here they lied and distorted, basically charging that his report “lacked context,” and left out a lot of other things that happened, yet they could disprove nothing.

He never claimed that this was the whole truth about January 6, but that it was a part that was deliberately ignored and suppressed by the odious Jan 6th committee. Had they been truthful it would not have been necessary.  Had they not blatantly rigged the committee in a partisan fashion and allowed no representation from the other side, no cross-examination, etc., it would have been different. They even hired one of their collaborators from the ABC to prepare the show for them. It was a a propaganda exercise that needed correction. The media propagandists further threw of deceptions as some sort of evidence that hundreds pleaded guilty to whatever they were being charged with, because they a willfully ignorant about how the federal “justice” system actually works. If you are unfortunate enough to fall into the crosshairs of the US Attorneys you are screwed as the full weight and resources of your own government are turned against you, and you go broke if you litigate, or take a plea which most have to do because the system is so unfair. That is why they have a higher than 98% conviction rate-higher than the Soviet Union in its day. It is not because they are so good at what they do but because the system is rigged. 

Were the actions on that day justified? Of course not, but the distortion and suppression of the truth of the matter, the deliberate withholding of evidence, months of unconstitutional incarceration without any charges, add up to something far worse than the event itself. Those who reject this should honestly ask themselves what their thinking would be if it happened to people they sympathized with. We either have a single standard of justice in this country or we don’t have any justice, and right now the latter is the reality. 

But leaving all that aside, the most disturbing thing about January 6th, which they never investigated or questioned was how and why it was able to occur in the first place. They were only interested in going after Donald Trump, (who admittedly could have conducted himself much better that day), and scoring political propaganda points. 

There is a villain who bears the most responsibility for this event but it isn’t Donald Trump. It is Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi was responsible for police and security in this instance, and despite being given intelligence that there would likely be disturbances she refused to take any precautions or enhance security, even as the Capitol police pleaded for them. You never heard any of that from the sham committee or its media collaborators, along with repeating lies even now about people being killed that day, when in fact there was only one, Ashli Babbitt, a veteran, who was basically murdered by a trigger-happy officer even while she was right next to two other officers. They don’t say her name either. 

On top of that Pelosi then took the unprecedented step of rejecting any members from the minority party and instead handpicked only two renegades who reliably agreed with her party and pre-ordained position. The real purpose of the committee wasn’t even getting Trump, it was covering her tracks.  Is it at all credible that no one even raised these questions? It was a totally dishonest travesty, a show trial worse than anything that has ever occurred in this country, yet not an objective word was said about the warped legal atrocity being perpetrated by the incompetent media, who gleefully cooperated directly with one side in staging these hearings. 

The reality of the riot on January 6 is not at issue here, but rather how it has been handled, how so many outright lies and myths have been sold, how unjust the whole process has been, and worst of all how total incompetents botched the basic security of of the facility. Speaker McCarthy, Tucker Carlson, and Fox are to be commended for their efforts to get at the whole truth despite the vilification from that same media that doesn't want you to know the truth.