Month: September 2025

Some people have a way of making broad generalizations about entire groups of people, and then saying those things in what sounds like a reasonable and friendly tone of voice. This can mislead many others into thinking that the ideas themselves are reasonable.

For example, such a person might say, in a reasonable sounding tone of voice, that black people are inherently violent and incompetent. He might add that all black women in particular are stupid, and could never, on their own merits, be in positions that require intelligence and competence.

Or he might say that Jews are secretly organizing a vast conspiracy to replace white people by “inferior” races. This is the same theory that Nazis adopted, and most people today don’t think that Nazis were reasonable. But apparently, if those same hateful ideas are advanced in what sounds like a calm and reasoned tone of voice, they can gain traction.

Here is what I am wondering: How flexible are these techniques? Could they be used to target Italians, or left handed people, or people with red hair?

Could a persuasive person, speaking in what sounds like a calm and reasonable tone of voice, get millions of people to espouse virulent hate and contempt against any particular group?

One thing that stands out about the current US administration, aside from the cruelty and destructiveness, is the enforced level of stupidity. The administration insists that everything needs to be stupid.

If you say or do things that require a three digit IQ, such as insist that policy needs to follow the Constitution, you get fired. If your reasoning exhibits sny nuance or understanding of complexity, you get fired. Or you are declared to be the enemy.

I wonder whether the millions of Americans who voted for these bozos will turn on them in the next election cycle not because of the cruelty, but because of the pervasive level of idiocy. Some people find cruelty attractive. Very few people find unforced stupidity attractive.

To quote Archie Bunke: It’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity.

Many people are persecuted during authoritarian regimes. Sometimes they go to jail, sometimes worse.
What we do know is that if you stand up to tyranny, tyranny will work extra hard to come after you.

What tyrants fear most are brave patriots. So standing up to these bullies can quite literally be dangerous.

Which is why I think that in the end, James Comey is going to come out of this being regarded as an American hero. Being brought up on fake charges by wannabe dictators is a badge of honor.

It may be true that we are best judged by our enemies. If so, then the events of the last few days have affirmed that Comey is an ethical, brave and patriotic American.

Sometimes I forget just how wonderful it is simply to be able to be here on this planet. It is all too easy to take that for granted.
Then I remember how miraculous all this is, and what a privilege it is simply to be alive.
And I remember to be grateful.

Watching the shenanigans of the current U.S. administration feels for all the world like watching a pack of five year olds acting out. Which may be why something about it has been nagging at my brain.

I think I finally have it. These people remind me of the “He-Man Woman Haters Club” from the Spanky and Our Gang movie shorts in the 1930s.

All the stories in those films were essentially about a gang of little boys trying to punch way above their weight. And like our current president, those little boys had a definite problem with equality between the sexes.

Spanky’s club even had an anthem: “We Are He-Man Woman Haters… We Feed Girls To Alligators”. That also might help to explain why the president decided to call his fancy new concentration camp “Alligator Alley”.

One line stood out for me in Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue:

This show is not important. What is important is that we live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.

That is such a perfect thought, and so beautifully stated. Yet the junior league mafiosi who are pretending to run this country keep trying to paint Mr. Kimmel as some kind of figure of hate. But you can only gaslight millions of people for so long.

Meanwhile, in just the last few days that guy in the Whitehouse talked about openly embracing hate, spread bizarre conspiracy theories about painkillers, and made a utter ass of himself in front of most of the leaders of the world’s various nations. Maybe we’ve got the wrong guy in the Whitehouse.

Is it too late to elect Jimmy Kimmel? He seems a lot more qualified than the guy who currently has the job.

As much fun as it is to develop a time travel story on-line, recent events have convinced me that I need to put that little project on hold. The real world is turning out to be far stranger than anything I could dream up in science fiction.

Yesterday the president of the United States made a big public speech, telling everyone that pregnant women should not take acetaminophen (eg: Tylenol) because it will give their child Autism. Not surprisingly, that assertion is inconsistent with actual science.

In fact, since other painkillers such as ibuprofen are unsafe for a developing fetus, acetaminophen is one of the few effective ways to relieve pain during pregnancy. And complications from chronic pain are far more likely to harm the child.

Chronic pain elevates maternal stress levels, triggers inflammatory responses, and reduces uterine blood flow needed to delivery oxygen and nutrients to the baby. This can lead to premature birth, low birth weight, altered brain structure and developmental issues later in life.

But facts don’t really enter into the conversation here. This president is an opposite man: He says and does racist things while claiming to fight racism, calls his adversaries antisemites while lionizing people who push “replacement theory”, and rebrands the Department of Defense (whose main purpose is to prevent war) as the Department of War. The list goes on.

And now, true to form, he has given us another opposite man moment: He is giving a big headache to companies that make pills to fight headaches. He is also endangering lives in the process, but I am not that sure he cares about such details.

A time travel story needs to begin with a premise, and some premises are more common than others. For example, it has a common trope in time travel scifi circles to day that “Everyone kills Hitler on their first trip.”

Then again, in nearly all of the actual scifi stories where somebody goes back in time to kill Hitler, things end up going wrong in one way or another. That’s probably because time travel gone wrong makes for a more interesting story than the alternative — a straight ahead win for the good guys.

To me what is most interesting about this particular trope is the “pre-crime” aspect of it. Young Adolf has not actually caused the death of millions of people, or even risen to power. Arguably his greatest crime is making bad art.

So he were actually to be killed, to prevent a future that would therefore never happen, would that actually be justifiable? Can you really justify a capital crime in the name of something that doesn’t happen?

I have a cool idea for a time travel story. The premise is a touch farfetched, but then again, reality itself seems pretty farfetched these days.

So my story should fit right in. I’m still developing it, but it’s starting to come together.

Over the coming days I will be sharing my process. More tomorrow.

The Madness of King George is one of my favorite movies. A British film released in 1994, and adapted by Alan Bennett from his own 1991 play, it tells the true story of how King George III gradually went insane while he was still on the British throne.

The bizarre $15 billion law suit against the New York Times, which was just summarily dismissed by a clearly nonplussed judge, makes me think of that film. At what point does it become officially obvious that the leader of your country has bats in his belfry and is totally out to lunch?

At what point do even the people who voted for him realize that he has become totally bonkers, wackadoodle and is nutty as a fruitcake? And then what do they do when they finally admit that he has gone off his rocker, is mad as a hatter, and isn’t playing with a full deck?

Maybe there’s a metaphor for that.