Book Review: Thumbs Down

By virtue of being dead, yet sentient, for over 2,000 years, I have plenty of time to read. At first, I read every factual tome I could find. Of course, as time went on, many of those facts proved to be less than accurate.

You know how it is–it was believed that the Earth is the center of the universe. No, wait, the Sun is the center of the universe. Actually, neither is the center of the universe.

I would like to say it was time wasted, but in my case, that would not be true. There was no other activity vying for my time.

Later, I focused on literature. As the founder of cynicism, I couldn’t be caught dead (literally) reading poetry. In any case, I read Shakespeare. I read Tolstoy and Tolkien. I even read Dashiell Hammitt and Robert A. Heinlein. I enjoyed some more than others, of course, but it gave me a good foundation.

I recently tried to read the defense legal team’s response to the impeachment charges, “Trial Memorandum of Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America.” The title is B-O-R-I-N-G, which is a warning that the rest of the document is a real snoozer. I mean, it is a more effective sleep-aid than 2 Ambien chased by 3 fingers of scotch.

It’s only available in paperback and shoddily bound at that. The plot is implausible. The characters are not only unbelievable but also unlikable. And the writing? Truman Capote would say, “That’s not writing, it’s only typing.”

My recommendation–don’t buy it! As a matter of fact, if somebody tries to give you a copy, give it back.

You’ll do better to check online for e-books available from your local public library.

Who Follows Trump?

Trump Calls For First Presidential Debate To Be Moved Up ... — I’m not presidential and I can’t even act like one on TV!

I’m a cynic–after all, I’m considered to be the founder of Cynical Philosophy–so what would you expect. However, cynicism is still a philosophical discipline, and like all the others, and seeks wisdom and truth.

After your presidential ~~debacle~~ debate, yesterday, I began to ponder an important question. What kind of person would follow Trump? What kind of person accepts routine lying, vengeance, and intimidation, etc.?

Then, inspiration hit! Eureka!

Thomas F. Wilson portrayed Biff Tannen, the antagonist in all three Back to the Future movies. According to Bob Gale, the writer, Biff Tannen was based on Donald Trump. This is especially obvious in the second one–the one in the future–in which Biff was immensely wealthy, owned a casino (and the entire town), and had no scruples.

Biff always had three sycophants following him around. They didn’t have purpose or even thoughts of their own–they just followed Biff and did whatever he said. (Although in the final one, they did abandon Tannen when he would be going to jail.)

Biff Tannen answers your burning Back To The Future ...

Those three followers explain Trump’s base better than anything else I’ve seen. Score one for the philosophical advantages of cynicism!

Presidential Quotations

Abraham Lincoln – “I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt – “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

John Fitzgerald Kennedy – “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.

Lyndon Baines Johnson – “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

Richard M. Nixon – “I am not a crook.”

Donald M. trump – “I don’t take responsibility at all.”

John Adams’ Advice

In the musical 1776, one of the first offerings is John Adams bemoaning the lack of progress toward independency:

I do believe you’ve laid a curse on North America
A curse that we now here rehearse in Philadelphia
A second flood, a simple famine
Plagues of locusts everywhere
Or a cataclysmic earthquake
I’d accept with some despair
But, no, you sent us Congress.
Good God, sir, was that fair?

Sometimes it’s hard to improve on the classics.

Confederate Coincidence

As the debate continues about Confederate monuments, I’d like for you to consider a few issues:

After the Civil War, Reconstruction, which was despised by the South, ended about 1877. This ushered in the Jim Crow era, which included various laws and practices to effectively disenfranchise and disadvantage the freed slaves.
Many, if not most monuments to the Confederate soldiers were erected after 1890 and peaked about 1909, when segregation was the norm, especially in the South.
It is not coincidence that more than a few of the monuments to confederate soldiers were located on sites that were former slave markets or whipping posts where slaves were flogged in public. You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to figure out the not-so-hidden message.

I keep hearing apologia that the Confederate soldiers honored by these monuments were not traitors. Merriam Webster provides the definitions below. Many of those depicted in statues and other monuments attended or graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point, where they had taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. These include Robert E. Lee, Braxton Bragg, A.P. Hill, George Pickett, and John Bell Hood. For a more inclusive list, click here. They all took up arms and waged war against the country to which they had sworn an oath.

Definition of traitor

1 : one who betrays another’s trust or is false to an obligation or duty 2 : one who commits treason

Definition of treason

1 : the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign’s family 2 : the betrayal of a trust

Presidential Militias

The use of federal troops independent of state and local authorities in Portland, Oregon is disturbing. Word is that Chicago, Illinois will be next. After that, they may be coming to a neighborhood near you.

It’s bad enough that your president has manged to get para-military forces at his command. It’s worse that Americans in the employ of the federal government who have sworn an oath to the US Constitution have changed their allegiance to Trump and are complicit, if not worse.

I say that you should go all the way or not at all. If you don’t have the common sense to stop, then make Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich your role models.

If you don’t know about Himmler and Heydrich, perhaps you should read up on them. You could learn a lot–even though, in the long run, things did not work out well for them.

History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

You Goya Ivanka!

Ivanka Trump backs Goya on Twitter after liberals call for ...

Ivanka Trump recently told unemployed Americans to “find something new.” This simplistic response to a complex problem was met with astonishment and compared to Marie Antoinette’s alleged advice to “Let them eat cake.” The biggest difference is that Antoinette probably did NOT make the cake comment. Ivanka, on the other hand, actually did tell Americans to “find something new.”

Anxious to top her previous comment, Ivanka–the Special Assistant to the President for Boneheaded Advice–raised the ante. Goya’s president had angered many of its customers by calling Donald Trump “a blessing,” so Ivanka started promoting Goya. Does anyone believe that Ivanka has ever–as in not even once in her life–opened a can of Goya beans?

Since all Trumps are shielded from laws, regulations, and anything else they find inconvenient, Ivanka’s Goya promotion is a clear federal ethics violation is immaterial. After all, White House plastic surgery poster girl Kellyann Conway, violated the same ethics rules when she shilled Ivanka’s clothing brand. When the administration was confronted with Kellyann’s behavior, the only response was silence, interrupted only by the sound of crickets chirping.

The president is rumored to have told his staff that it’s no big deal and both issues could easily be corrected with the stroke of a SHARPIE.

P.S. Given Donald Trumps bromance with Russian leader-for-life Vladimir Putin, does anyone else find it unsettling that “Ivanka” is the feminine version of “Ivan,” one of, if not the most, popular first name in Russia?

Doing Nothing

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Edmund Burke 1729 – 1797

I observed Edmund Burke, but don’t claim to have known him. He was far too busy to commune with a long-dead philosopher. On the other hand, Mr. Burke is now also a long-dead philosopher, so he may better appreciate my position. Nevertheless, I appreciate and applaud his wisdom.

Edmund Burke is viewed as the father of modern conservatism. Given the current situation, it’s sad that most modern conservatives have no appreciation for his philosophy or his hard-learned lessons. If they were willing, they could learn a great deal from him.

I suspect their minds are closed.

Conservatives refuse to wear masks. Why? Because somebody told them to? Does this mean that when their mother told them not to run with scissors, they took offense? Would it have been better if Mom and Dr. Fauci had said, “Please? Pretty please? Pretty please with sugar on it?”

Tucker Carlson

I’ve been enjoying the interaction between Tucker Carlson and Senator Tammy Duckworth. Let’s look at the bona fides of these two . . . .

Tucker Carlson
– Grew up in a home overlooking the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club
– Has a BA in history
– Tried to join the CIA, but was rejected
– Father had been head of the Voice of America and the Corporation for Public Brodcasting
– Has worked as a newspaper reporter in Arkansas and has been published in a number of magazines
– Is a conservative pundit on Fox News
– Accuses Senator Tammy Duckworth of being un-American

Tammy Duckworth
– Has a BA in Political Science, an MA in International Affairs, and a PhD in Human Services; was pursuing a second PhD in Political Science, but was mobilized with the US Army before she could complete it
– Joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps in graduate school
– Commissioned as an officer in the US Army Reserve, became a helicopter pilot and was deployed to Iraq where she lost both legs in combat to a rocket propelled grenade
– Lobbied to remain in service, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel from the Army National Guard
– Has served in numerous public service positions including as a member of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate

Before either of them says a single word, who would you choose to listen to?

COVID-19 Mismath

“Dammit Jim, I’m a philosopher, not a mathematician!”*

Your political leaders are saying that 99 percent of coronavirus cases are harmless.

I don’t have a whiteboard, a chalkboard, much less a working copy of Microsoft Excel in my sewer-home. However, I do have a stick and there’s a dirt road I can reach by leaning out of my sewer, so I did some ciphering (as we used to call math).

Over the last few months, the number of new deaths to new cases has been 2.8 percent. For any politicians reading this, that means that for every 1000 new cases, 28 will die. No big deal, except that in the United States, you have had 3,022,742 cases. Politicians, either have one of your staff do the math for you, or else, just ignore it.

As a philosopher, that tells me:
1. People who do not die from the disease are, according to your political leaders, not harmed–even if their lungs don’t work properly for the rest of their (shortened) life.
2. A majority of those who die from the disease–nearly two out of three–are, according to your political leaders, not harmed either. This does not align with Betelgeuse, who said “Besides, this dead thing—-it’s creepy.”

I could cipher and write more, but I’d rather crawl back into my sewer.

Good luck. You’re going to need it.

* Apologies to Star Trek (The Original Series)