The Dog Whistle Gone Astray There are several phrases that have been making the rounds for the past few years in the political pundit community. I hear them repeatedly on MSNBC and they always jangle my sensibilities for some reason, most likely due to their recent overuse. The one I really don’t like is “gaslighting”. It means to cause someone to question their sense of reality. It comes from a play Gas Light produced in…
The Next Generation They say now that humans first appeared on earth some 300,000 years ago. They seem to have “scientifically” estimated that Adam and Eve came on the scene about 150,000 years ago (I have no idea how that calculation is even possible). The last ice age started about 12,000 years ago right after a comet of significant proportions hit the earth about 1,000 years prior. They say this was an extinction-level event that…
Declaring War Today, the Department of Justice began its court proceedings against Steve Bannon for his role as one of the leaders of the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol Building. Bannon, the ultimate devotee of the notion that any publicity is good publicity went on the record saying that he and his like were using this indictment as a red flag to signal that they are now going on offense against the Biden Administration…
Autobiography We went to go see Kenneth Branagh’s new film, Belfast. It chronicles the youth of a Protestant boy growing up during the strife of the religiously war-torn Irish city. The message is quite stark and clear, growing up amidst religious strife is no fun. The young boy is presumably Branagh at about age nine. His father and mother are Belfast natives who live on a street near where they were raised in working-class Belfast.…
Self-Defense I am watching the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and have just witnessed his testimony on cross-examination. The court has just taken a ten minute break because this eighteen-year-old defendant who shot three people in Kenosha last August, broken down crying as he tried to describe the events that involved his shootings. His defense is clearly oriented towards describing this young man, who was seventeen at the time of the incident, as young and innocent and…
Guns or Butter There is a classic economics model and a graphical curve that represents the trade-off between the economic production of guns or butter. The phrase has come to represent the societal standards of how fiscal expenditures should emphasize defense spending versus social programs. The term originates from around the time of WWI when the U.S. faced an uncomfortable shortage of gunpowder, specifically because it did not control the production of necessary nitrates, which…
Immigrants Everywhere This morning, two of my friends, Kevin and Roger, are on a motorcycle ride in Mexico that they wanted me to join them on. My teaching obligation made that impossible, but that hasn’t stopped them from sending me their usual array of inane texts with sophomoric humor and political undercurrent. This morning they are preparing to head back home so I got a string of emails making fun of how much money they…
It’s the Economy, Stupid There is much discussion in the air about how to keep the economy strong. This is always a big topic at any time, but I think it is fair to say that it is almost the only issue that really affects everyone. Issues like abortion may be an example of a non-economic issue (though I bet someone could draw a loose connection), but whether we are talking about infrastructure, immigration, defense…
Perishable I am sitting here on election night, 2021 and it just so happens that Kim and I watched a documentary on Gettysburg. We were just looking for something to fill in after a movie (Cast Away) that ended about an hour before we generally like to head off to bed. We did not choose it for any politically-motivated reason. And yet, the last part of the documentary focused entirely on Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.…
Traveling to Enlightenment We went to see the new Ridley Scott movie The Last Duel last night at the local Angelika Film Center. Once again, it was very lightly attended with a mere 8-10 people in the well-appointed theater. The film is set in 1386 or so and chronicles what was the end stages of the Middle Ages in Europe. The movie makes reference to the economic hardship to noblemen and their estates by virtue…