Spotlight On America

By Rich Kozlovich

Spotlight on America is a online newsletter highlighting articles that have appeared in America Out Loud, which I had the privilege of writing for and did some podcasts and radio shows in times past.  I stopped because it gets to be a job, and at my age, I really don't want a job.  However, I still consider that to have been a privilege.

Here are the articles they've highlighted this week. 

In spite of the outrageous claims by the Democrats and their lackeys in the media that Trump's destroying the economy, the economy continues to grow, yet the media continues to fuel anxiety.  As the author points states and asks:

A new mental health poll reveals a surprising and sobering truth: Americans are deeply anxious about money, their jobs, and the state of the country. Despite a robust economy and nearly 8 million job openings, 40% of employed Americans say they’re worried about losing their jobs. Business confidence is rising, but individual anxiety is, too. What’s causing this disconnect?........The Power of Fear-Based Messaging.........

Then we have:

Russiagate beats Watergate by a mile, but what about repercussions? - While mainstream media is trying to push other stories ahead of this one, it must be noted that this scandal was exponentially worse than the Watergate robbery, as it was designed to alter the direction of and interfere with the 2016 presidential election. While Nixon was on the way to a landslide victory over George McGovern, Hillary Clinton’s election and electability were in question for nearly a decade beforehand........

I would like to point out personal lives weren't destroyed by the Watergate crowd, and Nixon's only involvement was the later coverup.   There's every indication that Obama was the originator and director for this scandal, and many lives were destroyed by their lawfare illegalities in the process.  Someone needs to be held accountable.  

Is real "hope and change" on the way?  Prof. Pedro Blas González says, Finally, ‘hope and change’ is coming.  The author says:

Is there reason to believe that hope and change are finally coming to America? The underlying political, social, and cultural conditions of late postmodern life and society are morally corrosive and destructive of our capacity to cultivate the moral and spiritual higher ground of personhood. Social political demagogues know this and exploit it for power.  It was Blatant Ill-Will for America and Its People.............The aim of Obama and the globalists who helped place this obscure Marxist ‘community organizer’ in power was to bring the alleged capitalist beast that is America down to its knees, which they accomplished........

Let us not forget that Obama’s rallying cry for hope and change was to ‘fundamentally transform’ America. This meant dismantling American values and traditions piece by piece. Obama, the bourgeois, Marxist Gargantua who mysteriously descended upon America to save its people from oppressors, did just that..........If people can’t live with morality – only with the law – then let us ramp up the investigations.  Americans are paying attention, especially the young..............

The Democrat party is now the unofficial Communist Party of America, running outright communist candidates for government positions nation wide.  Lt. Steve Rogers calls out to the Democrat rank and file to Take your party back from the Communists.  Sounds good, but it ain't gonna happen.  We're no longer talking about the "loyal opposition".  They're the "disloyal opposition" trying to destroy the American identity, culture, economy, and eliminate the Constitution replacing it with the socialist tyranny of one party rule.  That's who the Democrats are at their core now, and that's not going to change.   For that to change would require them to become conservatives.  Don't bet the house on that happening. 

And finally, Is the Genius Act a back door to CBDC and financial control?  Blanquita Cullum asks:

Are your finances at risk under the new Genius Act? I discuss what this regulatory framework for stablecoins really means for your economic security.......Could this be a back-door to Central Bank Digital Currency and loss of financial freedom, or is it a solution for instability...

Truthfully, I haven't the vaguest understanding about bitcoin realities, but what I do believe is this as an opportunity for the government to at some point control buying and selling based on political and/or religious positions, we've already seen some of that with debanking issues around he world.  Is this about safety and stability?  Tyranny is often disguised as a need for safety and stability, and then as it grows it becomes so large and ubiquitous it's too large  and to powerful to do anything about it.  

What To Do About Drugs?

By Rich Kozlovich

Recently I saw an article by someone I have a great deal of respect for involving the legalization of drugs.  And like him, I’ve always been an anti-drug guy, and like him I’ve thought legalization could end much of the problems associated with drugs.  But it only took me nanosecond to pass on that as it really wouldn’t, it would increase them.  And of course the usual stuff about how Prohibition actually created organized crime in America.  It didn't, it was already here, it just made it rich.

Alcohol has always been a component of every culture that ever existed, and in fact is considered part of the food matrix in European nations.  It also can be consumed without addiction if used moderately, and won’t destroy the mind used in that form, and within 24 hours nothing of it will remain in the body.   It’s part of human culture, and culture is king.

These illegal drugs become addictive very quickly, alter the mind early, and there’s talk of genetic damage associated with some of them.  Legalizing them will increase use, poverty, misery, suffering and early death. 

As I thought about the legalization I determined the only way it would work would be adopting the policy that once someone went down that path, they cut themselves off from any financial/medical support from society, and let the cards fall where they may.  If they died as a result, that was the solution.  But we all know the bleeding hearts would demand all sorts of support for these people and the costs would skyrocket right along with the number of addicts.

When the communists took over China in 1949 they had, per ratio, the largest drug addicted population on earth, largely due to the efforts of the first drug cartel, the British Empire.  England had a massive trade imbalance with China, as the Brits didn’t have a thing the Chinese wanted, so Britain shipped in opium from other nations causing massive societal problems, which along with other things, triggered the Boxer Rebellion.

In five years the communists ended their addiction problem.  First, they ended importation of opium, put the dealers out of business, and I think they shot them, but my memory is cloudy on that.  They then arrested those addicted and put them through rehabilitation, at least twice, and I think a third time.  After that they were arrested as criminals, and while my memory cloudy on this, I believe they were either worked to death or shot.  And for a leadership responsible for the murder of tens of million of their citizens, killing drug addicts would be no big deal to them.

The same kind of thing happened to end the black marketeering in China the late 70’s.  They kept warning society there would be terrible consequences if it didn’t end.  It didn’t, so they arrested those involved and shot them.   I doubt if either of those scenarios ended those problems entirely, but there was a vast reduction in both.

There’s no easy solution to end drug addiction in a society.  If they really want to seriously reduce it they have to ignore international boundaries and kill all the suppliers and dealers, and then put the addicted into work camps/prison permanently.  

Since that won’t fly in America, it won’t go away as long as there’s an economy to support it!  That leaves increasing the penalties for those involved just to keep them off the streets, and if they commit crimes while under the influence of drugs, the penalties should automatically be doubled, and depending on the crime, that should include execution.  None of that will happen either as the bleeding hearts are probably users.

The illicit drug trade is so lucrative they'll risk anything, even the Mafia in America succumbed as the money was too huge to ignore.  

The Dominican Republic chased a cocaine carrying boat for 12 hours and found 1.5 tons of cocaine, which would have translated into between $37.5 million to over $300 million depending on purity, and that was small potatoes as the Dominican Republic seized more than 46 tons of drugs last year, which would have translated into billions.  

And that kind of money buys protection, not only from the thugs they hire, but also from police, military, judges, and politicians, and in countries like Mexico, they're can easily be considered a shadow government filling society with fear and intimidation.  If the penalties aren't severe enough, there will be no control.

Don't Worry, Be Happy, is Just a Song. It's Not Reality

By Rich Kozlovich

In my opinion Bobby McFerrin is an extremely talented guy as Wikipedia states:

McFerrin often switches rapidly between modal and falsetto registers to create polyphonic effects, performing both the main melody and the accompanying parts of songs. He makes use of percussive effects created both with his mouth and by tapping on his chest. He is also capable of multiphonic singing.

What put him in the world's spotlight was his song, "Don't Worry, Be Happy", and it was really catchy, I liked it.   But did you ever pay attention to the lyrics?  Let's outline the problems in his song he says there's no need to worry about:

......if there's "trouble in you life if you worry you make it double"...... ain't got no place to lay your head.....somebody came and took your bed.....the landlord say your rent is late he may have to litigate.....ain't got no cash.... don't worry, be happy.  

His answer to all of that is, "Don't worry Be happy."  Well as a catchy happy tune, and I don't have a problem with that.  But as advice for life, telling someone who's homeless and broke to be happy because none of that's worth worrying about doesn't fall under the category of good advice.  

What triggered this commentary is I'm now seeing writers who seem to embrace that "don't worry, be happy" mentality posting articles telling the world not to worry, everything will work out in the end, a golden age is in the offing, I especially hate the "everything will turn out right in the end" clabber.   People say that all the time as a way to encourage friends having difficulties in life, but do they really believe it?  If they do, they shouldn't. 

I’ve been writing for over twenty years now, and I had the good fortune to have some some now passed writer friends like Dr. Jay Lehr, with whom I co-authored articles, and Alan Caruba who was among the first to allow me to publish his works and was a big encouragement for me.  Both of whom were just a bit older, and had a generally more optimistic view of the future than I. It’s a generational thing. 

They grew up during the depression and WWII, and saw the outcome, and reasonably believed Americans can overcome anything and everything.  I was the beginning of the boomers, and I didn’t agree because this isn’t the America they grew up in, an America that created their short term optimism.  Historically, it’s not good long term vision, and the promise of an upcoming golden age is delusional. 

I consider myself a pessimistic optimist. I hope and work for the best, but I anticipate the worst. And more often than not, that’s what humanity ends up with. Look around the world and the 20th century history of Asia, the Middle East, South America, and Europe, and it’s not been a happy history.

Socialism, and environmentalism, in all their manifestations, have sacrificed hundreds of millions in pursuit of their agendas, and Islamists have probably sacrificed more over it's almost 1500 year history, and now all three are converging and assaulting the world's population in an insane desire to control every aspect of human life.

The elite are working diligently to create a modern feudal system with the elites and the peasants, where the peasants won't be allowed to grow their own food, but the peasants will be allowed to eat bugs.  The peasants will live in clustered communities with no cars, with only permitted travel.  There would be total control over buying and selling based on political and/or religious views, which is already being implemented in places like China, and at one point to a degree in Europe over covid vaccinations.  All of which will be controlled by agents of the state.  A feudal world filled with kings, peasants, and lackeys, but don't worry, be happy........ or else! 

The world is in crisis now, and the crises are growing daily.  Those historians who study and write about historical cycles all agree we’re in an end cycle right now, and all end cycles are filled with economic downturns and violence. When that runs its course a new cycle begins.  What the beginning of the new cycle will be like is impossible to say, and it’s unlikely I’ll be alive by the time the cycles start, but that’s history, and that history is incontestable.   It will play out again just as it has for thousands of years, with the historical pendulum swinging from one extreme to the other, with a small window of harmony between those extremes. But that harmony never lasts long.  

The Truth Isn't Unkind. It's Just the Truth

By Rich Kozlovich

One of the writers at  American Thinker posted an article entitled,  My daughter’s mean girls, saying how her 29 year old daughter's "wide circle of friends" use Facebook to stay in touch, but found she became a pariah when they discovered she voted for Trump.  Now  she's struggling to understand them and find common ground, and it's not working, and she's deeply hurt.  The author, her mother, is troubled not knowing how to help.   I responded in the comments section, and here's my response with some edits.

Okay, I have the answer for you, but you will have bear with me. 

Let’s lay some foundation with this:  Wisdom is the application of knowledge and understanding, and Winston Churchill is alleged to have said anyone under thirty who’s not a liberal has no heart.  Anyone over thirty who’s not a conservative has no intelligence. 

Here’s the way the brain works, and it’s in three steps.  

Step One:  Up until the age of ten or twelve, depending on who you read, the brain is structured in such a way as to understand languages.  That’s foundational.  

Step Two: Then the brain restructures itself to gather, store, collate, and correlate information more easily.   

Step Three:  Then the brain restructures itself again for the purpose of utilizing all that’s been learned, aka, understanding, and that doesn’t take place until after thirty.  But there’s a caveat to that.  The willingness to accepting the intellectual and emotional transformation, which is what Leftists refuse to do and never get past stage two, and which is why your daughter will never break through.

Leftists are nuts and any attempt to find that “bridge” is an effort in futility. By the standards of yesteryear your daughter is still a child growing up in a culture that's entirely too accepting, and too critical of traditional values, and culture is king. However, she’s on the border of step three.  Tell your daughter to just move on and find friends with whom she has shared values, and the sooner the better.

Thomas Sowell, who I think is one of the world’s finest thinkers, considered arguing with a leftist a complete waste of time.  And he’s right.  They suffer from a serious case of ignorance, and are arrogant in their ignorance.  Ignorance is fixed by learning.  Refusing to learn is stupidity.  You just can’t fix stupid.  Life is too short to waste it on stupid people, they’re just an unending source of torment. The sooner she grasps that and moves on the happier she will be, and after she’s in her thirties she’ll realize that.

In the mean while, ask her this. Would she marry someone who thinks and acts like these leftist friends? If not, then why would she want to have them as friends? 

I got a big thumbs up reaction from readers to that comment and this reply from Kay Fiset:

An excellent comment. Your advice concerning friendship is spot on. In our current climate, especially if you live in a blue state or city, it can still be difficult to find like-minded friends, but it’s a lot easier if you’re a Christian, IMO. Not that progressives cannot be found in Christian circles, but they do not predominate.  Many Christians do have another problem: they believe in being nice. Jesus was never “nice” because He always spoke the truth. He was kind and loving, but not nice. Niceness leads to gullibility, again IMO.

I was involved in my industry's affairs for many years, and the Executive Director of our national association, who has now passed, and who I actually liked, once said to me that I say unkind things.  I responded saying the truth isn't unkind.  It's just the truth.  And the sooner this young woman grasps and accepts the truth, the better her life will be. 

Let Me Get This Straight

By Rich Kozlovich

Copying and pasting pictures or cartoons from a site directly into my articles is often times impossible.  So, for years I managed to overcome that by saving them to my pictures file and then I could copy and paste them into whatever article I was working on.  Blogger, which owns all the Blogger blogs, and is part of Google, decided they would no longer permit that unless they could plant cookies in my computer and be given access to any cookies already there.  

Yeah, right, that just ain't gonna happen.  

So, that brings me to Powerline, a news site I follow.   They regularly run a snarky satirical Week in Pictures segment, and there’s some really good stuff there, which I can no longer duplicate, however, here's one of the cartoons I was able to find on line. 

 

So, I’ve put together this paraphrased article of what I consider the best and snarkiest pictures, which I've titled, "Let me get this straight." 

1. Everyone hates white people but everyone wants to move into communities dominated by white people.   
2. Muslims hate pork, beer, dogs, bikinis, and freedom of speech.  So why do they come to America?   
3. The left wants to confiscate guns.  So, how about first taking them from criminals, you know, like a test run?  
4. Rioters are burning the American flag screaming death to America and waving the flag of the country they desperately don’t want to be deported back to.   
5. The left “spontaneously” held "No King" demonstrates in cities all over the nation… and on the same day.   Did I mention spontaneous?  Yet they’re the same people who want bigger government that controls their health care, their pay, their speech, raises their children, controls their land, and their future.   
6. Now that Iran’s nuclear goals are toast that leaves only three Muslim nations with nukes.  Pakistan, France, and the UK.  
7. Before Trump bombed Iran’s nuke facilities CNN claimed that wasn't necessary because Iran wasn’t even close to making a bomb.  After the bombing they claim Iran can make a bomb tomorrow.   
8. Iran says they destroyed 14 bunker bombs with their nuclear facilities, and are calling that a victory.
9. What were the top four reasons why Democrats weren’t informed about the bombing ahead of time.  Alexandria Ocasios-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Raship Tlaib.
10. If the current media outlets were in business during WWII they would've insisted Hiroshima’s bombing hardly damaged the city.    
11. Far left actor Mark Ruffalo insists capitalism is failing us, killing us, robbing us of our children’s future.  So, since entirely too many are getting rich making movies, entertainment should be free, for the public good.  No one should profit from it, since that’s exploitation, and besides, entertainment is a human right.  So, let’s create a Department of Entertainment as a single provider with equal pay for actors and postal workers.    
12. What’s the most important quality men should look for in woman?  Double XX chromosomes. 
13. It’s being reported that the number of women afflicted with sexually transmitted diseases is skyrocketing, and racism and misogyny are responsible.

I'm adding two points that weren't in the picture parade, but they fit.  Rosie O'Donnell, who was never known for being trim and slim, now claims her overeating and over drinking is Trump's fault. So, are we to assume she was a slim drug free teetotaler before Trump was elected?  Interesting!  Is that more believable than saying rain isn't wet.  

Then there's Rep. Bowman who says the higher rate of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes in blacks is because of the stress they're under for being called the N word.   Not the stress caused by having a 70% illegitimacy rate, a huge percentage of single parent families, or their indulgence in illegal drugs, selling and using, overall criminal activity, penchant for violence, and bad diet. Noooo, it's name calling.   I'm not sure if that means being called the N word by other blacks or is it just whitey's fault?

Be Careful What You Wish For!

By Rich Kozlovich 

Editor's Note: This is an updated version of an article I published on June 20, 2023 which seems to be even more applicable now. RK

Going into the 2020 election the left, AKA, the Democrat party got what it wanted. Destroy the economy to get Trump.  Prior to this they came after the President with every lunatic claim they could muster to smear and destroy him, but his personal life was an open book, and a not such pretty one at that but everyone who voted for him knew it,  so that didn't work!  Then they tried impeachment, which some are still attempting to pull off, their impeachment claims fell like a ton of manure, and it fell right back on them, and as more information comes out, the manure is falling on a lot more people with the stench reaching very high levels of the Obama administration.

That left the economy.  Unfortunately for them, it was humming along so nicely they couldn't attack Trump on the economy without looking even more insane than before.   But then the nation faced one of the biggest political and scientific scams to hit the nation ever.  The coronavirus scam!  With this scientific fraud they managed to crush the economy and destroy a lot of lives, and waste trillions on their pet schemes, and create a system for voter fraud that would have never floated without the covid scam.  

But as the old saying goes - "be careful what you wish for!"  This all came back to haunt them, and Trump was elected again.

A Machiavellian principle.

Machiavelli's book "The Prince" made some amazingly simple, yet brilliant observations.  He showed the only thing the common people really want.  Security!  People want to be fed, housed, and furthermore, they want to feel secure in their ability to continue to be able to house and feed their families. Democrats have obviously worked hard to take that away from them, and the nation didn't feel secure at all, and that wasn't forgotten at election time.   How much more so will all this Democrat/leftist inspired, promoted, and funded violence impact both the 2026 midterm and the 2028 elections?

When the invertebrates in the Republican party ran McCain and Romney for the presidency, and conservatives stayed home in droves my conservative friends were aghast. I explained to them why.

It was clear these faux conservatives were taking the nation to exactly where the Democrat left was wanting to go, just a bit slower.  The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans was the Democrats wanted to take all your money, all your freedom, and control every aspect of you life, and do it right now.  The Republicans were willing to wait a week or two.  They were all undercover Rockefeller Republicans, just like Richard Nixon.

Conservatives had finally come to two conclusions.

1. They were no longer going to support the Republicans who were not truly conservative.
2. They felt the only way they could change the system was to allow the lunatic left to take over completely. That way the nation could see just how insane and corrupt they really are.

Now that’s happened, the Rockefeller Republicans, RINO's, Main Street Republicans, the Pravda media, and the those suffering from the Trump Derangement Syndrome are swirling the drain, and the alternative media along with MAGA base is in ascension.

There are some areas that will always have large segments of the population that will embrace leftist insanity, and there are states that are totally dominated by the left.  All these states are going to face the consequences of their own leftist dystopian policies.   They wasted trillions of dollars to offset this coronavirus fraud, and now they expect the federal government to bail them out of the unsustainable spending practices that have gone of for decades, like California's railway to nowhere where billions have been spent over these many years and not one mile of rail has been laid.  The federal government isn’t going to bail them out.  

Millions are migrating out of these states, along with many businesses, both small and large, in order to avoid total bankruptcy, all of which is destroying their tax base.  They had the right to do whatever they wanted regarding spending and taxation. The rest of the states have the right to expect them to face the consequences of their actions.

What's more, in five years the 2030 census will be conducted, they could potentially lose up to twenty five seats in the House of Representatives.  Which is why they're fighting so hard to prevent all these illegal migrants from being deported.  And that fight is being conducted through "spontaneous" acts of mass violence,  

It's Schadenfreude time, and in no way do I feel sorry for these people!

Year after year they looked down their noses at conservatives, constantly claiming conservatives were greedy, uncaring, selfish, racists and stupid. But they, the leftist, were pure of heart, righteous and brilliant. In short, they were far better morally and far smarter people with a clear understanding and vision as to how the world should function with all their virtue signaling.   Their problem isn't just their vision, it's the application of that vision, and while history has shown they're always sure, it's also shown they're rarely right. 

Now let them virtue signal themselves out of their mess.   Except for one thing. Those who've been in the forefront of all these leftist schemes are well off, and people with skills. They can afford to move to a state with conservative values and sound economic principles in place in order to avoid facing the consequences of their stupidity, leaving the least able to fend for themselves on their own.

Do I feel sorry for those left in these states who are unable to leave for various reasons? For the most part, No! When you talk to them about these issues they spout the same level of weirdness and low information ignorance as the rest, and they're just as arrogant in their ignorance as the rest.

Being ignorant is the norm, it just means we just don't know, and since there's just so much information about everything in the world, we're all in some state of ignorance. But that's fixable with learning. Stupid on the other hand is different. The stupid are the ignorant who refuse to learn.

Life is hard, but it’s really hard when your stupid, and stupid can’t be fixed. It can only be crushed.

Nothing of Value

By Rich Kozlovich

Over this last year I've noticed someone is going back into my files are reading really old articles, which I'm a bit fascinated by, as well as pleased.  P&D is a small blog, but it is hit internationally quite a bit. As I see that happening I will go back and read those articles, and perhaps I'm being a bit vainglorious, think they're pretty good. I originally published this on Sunday, April 29, 2012, and while it's clearly dated, it's still profound. 

I keep marveling at the depth of information that is available on every conceivable subject that is missed by the media; and that includes Fox News. Did I say missed? Foolish me; perhaps I should use the correct term…."ignored"!

I had a conversation with a friend of mine Saturday who commented that all of his friends think that what we need to do is tax the rich. I went on a bit of a rant about how incredibly stupid this was, and explained to him the reality of numbers; as in who is actually paying all the taxes right now; that we now have approximately 47% of the population that pays no federal income tax ; that we now have more people on the public dole (in some form or another) than pay taxes; along with a short dissertation about the Great Depression and whose fault it really was and why. Stuff he had never before heard. Why was he unaware of all of this? Why isn't this on all the news channels?

What is most fascinating to me is that he and all of his friends live conservative lives. They go to work, they marry, they have children, they educate them and they pay their bills and mortgages. So why do they live conservative lives, raise their children to live conservative lives, and then support or promote liberal policies? Why don’t these people preach what they practice?

When shows like The Five become overnight successes it demonstrates to me that Fox is almost as worthless as NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and all the other talking head news shows, not quite as bad, but bad enough. So whose fault is that? It is the public's fault. When the public starts watching shows on Fox like the Wall Street Journal Report, which has intelligent insightful discussion devoid of interruptions and snide remarks, things will change.

Does anyone think that is going to happen any time soon? I certainly don’t think so. Why do I say that? Did you ever notice the magazine rack at the grocery store checkout line? In years gone by it was loaded with rags that touted such nonsense as 'fish boy' and 'children of aliens' stories. Then there were the more 'main stream' rags that 'exposed' indiscretions by famous people that never happened.

Most of them are gone or have had a serious drop in readership. Why? Are we to assume that people are more intelligent, more sophisticated, more serious minded; or are we to assume that they can use the internet instead? I support the latter explanation, not to mention that we now have ‘reality’ shows on television making sleazy people rich and famous by being sleazy.

I have seen snippets of all of these shows and I am so embarrassed for them that I can’t stand more than a few minutes. Try watching “Mob Wives” for more than a few minutes. That is even more unbearable than the “Real Housewives of Atlanta”. Can these people be described as anything other than foul mouthed ignorant people publicly exposing their lack of decency? 

The rest are almost as bad, but I think these two stand out as the most obnoxious examples. So what exactly is it that the pubic really wants? Is it depth of insight, knowledge and understanding people crave?  Since it is meanness, meaninglessness and shallowness that is rewarded; that must be what they crave!

In days gone by this would have never been allowed by the networks, or tolerated by the public. Today it is entertainment… big time entertainment. We no longer have a moral compass as a society. Nothing is right, nothing is wrong; everything is painted in a gray shallowness. When that happens then everything is right and everything is wrong, depending on the latest philosophical flavor of the day. When that happens society will fall for anything because there are no stable values! When traditional values are abandoned we are left with nothing of value and we eventually will lose everything.

As for right now; we have lost our minds! It won’t be long before all else follows.

The Cultural Foundation and Justification For Civilization: Beer

An e-mail has been floating around dealing with conservatives, liberals and beer.  That e-mail is the basis for this piece. 

By Rich Kozlovich

Historians say humans started out as hunter/gathers.  Small groups of inbred savages that hunted anything edible, and somethings not so edible.  Just think about this.  We have a "delicacy" called "escargot", which are snails loaded with garlic and butter, and chew like a rubber erasure.  Snails mind you!  Come on now, who in the world would ever think to eat a snail unless they had some serious issues with starvation? 

But somewhere along the line someone decided they didn't like all that moving around, and found wheat could be grown, and in sufficient quantities to meet their needs without moving.  Then, they made bread!   Now there are some who may wish to construe bread as the foundation for civilization, but it isn't.  The real miracle that emerged from that was...... beer! 

Apparently someone left an unbaked container of dough outside in the rain, and that started fermentation.  And since they thought eating snails was a good idea, they must have thought, why not drink the liquid from rotting dough?  And since the results were pretty amazing, they decided to continue that process and learned to make beer.  Regularly.  

As it turns out, a lot of people liked drinking the liquid from the rotting dough.  But calling it rotting dough was lousy public relations, so they they needed a name change.  It was decided to call it flavorful decomposition.  Thus, the first successful advertising campaign, and that created demand.  

That was the foundation for civilization.  Why?  Because now since everyone wanted to drink beer, they needed to live close to the beer makers.  That created villages, which morphed into cities.  As for those who didn't live in these new communal settings, they needed a means of transporting barrels of beer to their homestead, ergo, the wheel was created, and now we see what was the true foundations for advanced civilization.  

Beer and the wheel.  

What happened next created a split in humanity which we now call liberals and conservatives.  You see, those who lived outside the cities were still skilled hunters and fishermen.  After bringing home their catches, they would cook over an open fire, which was the beginning of home BBQ's, a true expansion of cultural civilized behavior, while drinking a lot of beer, but that created an issue for conservatives. 

Those who were permanent city dwellers became completely unskilled at hunting and fishing, and became liberals.  They liked the meat and fish the conservatives gathered, so they eventually created government in order to decide how to skim off some of the meat and fish being hunted by the conservatives and make sure it would be "fairly" divided.  They called it paying their fair share.  

 

Why did the conservatives go along with this?  No sharing according to the schemes of liberals, no beer!  Eventually liberals even passed laws that prevented conservatives from making and selling their own beer.

 

Of course all this government oversight became a stress filled arduous task, which created big psychological problems, so they invented group therapy and group hugs.  As centuries passed the tastes of liberals and conservatives continued to diverge.  Liberals only drink imported beer and wine, and happily paid excessive amounts of money for bottled water, ate raw fish, and well done steaks.  

 

Then, after all those centuries of unending self reflection, many liberal men discovered they were actually "women", now having less testosterone than liberal women, or any women for that matter. They were also incapable of defining what is a woman, and actually believe men who claim to be women can get pregnant.   That's why they're symbolized by a jackass.   And all because of beer. 

The Happiness Plateau

By Rich Kozlovich

 

On March 9th Arden Dier published a piece entitled, $75K Yearly Income Where Happiness Plateaus? There's More to It,  with the subtitle "$75K Yearly Income Where Happiness Plateaus? There's More to It" saying:

Study suggests only the unhappiest 20% see emotional well-being flatline after $100K. Nobel Prize-winning economist and psychologist Daniel Kahneman has admitted his influential study from a decade ago—suggesting happiness increases with household income only up to $75,000—didn't get it right. The question of whether money can buy happiness has been much debated since Kahneman's 2010 research with fellow Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton. In 2021, University of Pennsylvania happiness researcher Matthew Killingsworth published a study indicating there was actually no limit to the amount of money that boosted happiness. Hoping for a final answer, Kahneman and Killingsworth teamed up for a new study and found that for most people, Killingsworth's findings ring true.

The truth of the matter is, I think these studies are a load of horsepucky.  Time and circumstances change all the parameters, they always have and they always will, so they're always going to have to come back and admit they were wrong, and why.

There's a book out there entitled "Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It", which I found to be enlightening, and boring, as my eyes have to tendency to roll back into by head reading too many charts and statistics.  But one thing came clear to me, the happiness quotient is ignored by political leaders, and I can explain why.  They don't have a clue!  The reason for that is happiness is as difficult to define as defining "fair".  What's fair?  Who wrote the Book of Fair?  No one, and it's been my observation that fair is usually defined by who's ox is being gored.  And that's pretty much the same for happiness.

After reading that book, I concluded Machiavelli had the answer in his book The Prince, (which should be required reading starting in junior high school) published in 1532, where he outlines there are only two groups in the world.  The privileged and the masses.  The privileged only want to maintain, or expand, their privileges, and the masses just want security.  Individuals within those groups will have varying wants, but for both classes happiness is predicated on those two criteria.

Having owned a pest control company, I became involved in my industry's affairs serving as an officer of four trade associations in Ohio, and President of two of them. One of my associates once said I was "an enigma" to him. I answered, I'm easy to understand. I don't want money, power, position, privilege, or prestige, I just want what's right.  A nationally prominent scientist friend of mine told me once he always wanted to be important, to be someone, and he was, and he was amazing. I said I never wanted to be anyone, I just wanted to have a nice life, and I only got into these things because I didn't like being pushed around. It's the Serbian in me.

Happiness for the two of us, who were very much alike in many ways, was very different. Time and circumstance change our parameters. He wanted to be more prominent, and I wanted to be less prominent, so trying to find the "plateau" for happiness is in my opinion nothing more than academic welfare. It doesn't exist as a permanent equation.

Time and circumstance will change those parameters, but Machiavelli understood this one all important fact. If neither the privileged or the masses, as groups, are threatened as a group, governments are safe from both the privileged and the masses. Assuring their positions in life, the government can then reach in and pluck out any troublesome individual from the respective group and the group will not only remain silent, they will find justification for such action. And we've been seeing that currently.

When one or both groups feel threatened as a group, governments fall, and we're seeing talk of that now.  It's the first time in my 76 years I've seen the phrase, "America is in an existential crisis", touted more and more often, and with supporting evidence.  

As for these kinds of studies; I consider them academic welfare, since the parameters will change as circumstances change, and they'll have to do another study to apology for the errors of the last study.

Histrionics over History

By Rich Kozlovich

I recently read an article out of Detroit by Kathryn Larson, Enter At Your Own Risk: Police Union Says ‘War-Like’ Detroit Is Unsafe.

The article stated that:

"[The] Detroit Police Department believe the city is too dangerous to enter, and they want citizens to know it.” “Detroit Police Officer Association [want] remind the public that the officers are overworked, understaffed, and at times, fearful for their lives.”

The article continues saying:

 “Detroit is America’s most violent city, its homicide rate is the highest in the country and yet the Detroit Police Department is grossly understaffed …..the once 2,000 strong force is shrinking rapidly; since the start of summer, hundreds of officers have left....."

Ok…so now what are the decent honest hard working citizens supposed to do against this failure to maintain civil order? A failure which in turn has resulted in a failure to keep the “protectors” on the job? Guns? Make no mistake about it; at some point people will start to take the law into their own hands. In point of fact…you will see people starting to make, enforce and execute their own laws. That is the way reality works.

Many years ago I bought some tapes of books to listen to in my truck as I drove from account to account. In this case I bought some Louis L’Amour tapes of western novels. L’Amour loved the Texas Rangers and wrote about them a lot, and he may have been the most knowledgeable man on the history of the west in the nation and certainly had one of the largest libraries, if not the largest library, about the old west in the nation in order to research his books. He did have the largest library collection about western gunfighters in the nation.

On some of his tapes he would do a short dissertation about the old west. On one of the tapes he talked about one of his favorites, who was a Texas horse rancher who eventually became a Texas Ranger, who had his horse herd stolen. His friends wanted him to wait in order to get a large posse together. He said there was no time as they would be in Mexico by then and took off after them alone.

A few days later he came riding back with his horses and was asked what had happened. He said he rode night and day until he caught up with them. A gun fight ensued and he killed two of them and arrested that third. Since he came back alone they asked where his prisoner was.

He said that since he hadn’t slept since he took off after them he was falling asleep in the saddle and his prisoner taunted him saying that when he fell asleep that night he was going to kill him and take off for Mexico. He said he realized that this was exactly was going to happen, so he had to develop some way of securing his prisoner to get a good night’s sleep and yet survive.

So he tied his hands behind his back; put him on his horse; tied a noose around his neck and tied the other end to a tree. Then he said…. You know, that darned horse walked off and left him in the middle of the night.

Well, that isn’t what happened. He hung the man! They knew he hung the man! And it didn’t much matter because they were going to hang the man anyway! So what is the moral of this story? They understood the difference between right and wrong and what needed to be done about it.

People will not tolerate this abuse by the system and the criminals. People will not watch their families being destroyed without taking a stand. So who is at fault? In the Navy the Captain of a ship is responsible for everything; even if it isn’t his fault. It is his job to put systems and people in place that will do the job properly….and failure isn’t an option and no excuse will be tolerated.

We need to get this. Detroit is a example of failure of leadership in the city, the nation and society. As society has abandoned Judaic/Christian principles they adopted the secular values promoted by the leftists that says….nothing is right and nothing is wrong and certain minority groups cannot be held accountable for their actions because it is the fault of the white majority that “forced” them into this behavior. What a load of horsepucky!

Everything we are told should bear some resemblance to what we see going on in reality. The reality is that the “values” of the left are meaningless platitudes that have, in all of history, only promoted dystopia for society. Why is that so hard to grasp? The history books speak so loudly on this that I would think this wouldn’t be an issue. Yet…..why aren’t we as a society aware of this history? The schools and the media have been part and parcel of the problem because they have abandoned history for histrionics.

The reality is that when the Judaic/Christian values that created our civil society were abandoned disaster followed. The only answer must be to return to those values. Even if the churches won’t! But that is another story for another day!