In a column a month ago, I grumbled about how our political leaders — with plenty of help from meddling media — allow their attention to be diverted from the truly critical issues facing our nation. In that column, I labeled as “absurdities” several high-visibility but unnecessary distractions. There are more.
A few more examples of absurdities:
Just say no to AI.
A poll asking respondents if they “approve” of Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes about as much sense as a poll asking if they approve of the sun coming up each day. On this one, public preferences are meaningless. AI is the natural progression of mankind’s ever-expanding knowledge and intellectual capacity, and it’s here to stay.
The public anxiety about AI is understandable — just look around, and you can spot jobs that AI could do more efficiently. But the transition to better tools (think planes, trains, and automobiles) has been a constant reality since the Industrial Revolution — and now it’s skyrocketing. The net result? Ever-improving public prosperity. Take a deep breath, and climb aboard.
And what about the huge AI data centers, popping up here and there, suddenly being noticed (and disliked) by the public, and just as quickly being fiercely opposed? True, the data centers needed to make AI work are unsightly in rural areas, and they require large tracts of land and gobs of electrical power and cooling water. The frequent reaction by short-sighted politicians? “NOT IN MY BACKYARD!”
Rejoinder: the notion that in our immense country we should stifle our ability to develop and harness this development — because it is unattractive and resource-intensive — is nuts. This is America, and we can make it work.
Babies are expendable (i.e., abortable) until the moment before birth.
Is there anything more uplifting, more life-affirming, more heartwarming than a newborn baby? I think not. The first time we set our eyes on that tiny miracle, none of the factors that might generate sparks among adults — gender, ethnicity, the parents’ religion, sexual orientation or political alignment — matter at all. Is that one-hour-old baby a human being? Of course!
Nevertheless, 20 states in our Union — most recently Massachusetts — have legalized aborting (i.e., killing) that innocent and fragile tiny human being, in some cases for any reason at all, up until the moment of birth, perhaps just minutes before his or her first breath.
Yes, I know, those rulings are all intended to protect the health of the mother and/or to avoid the pain and suffering of a child with a life-threatening condition. We can debate endlessly among ourselves about the ethics of abortion, the need to balance the health of the mother and that of the infant she’s carrying, and the point at which human life begins.
At some point, we must acknowledge as a civilized society that late-term abortion is barbaric.
Transgender women are actually women.
But they’re not. They deserve the same civil rights as every American, but they’re not actually women.
The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) has been embroiled in a major PR flap regarding what seems like a dirt-simple question: Should biological men be allowed to compete in the professional basketball league created and reserved for women?
The uproar was sparked by Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham's response to that question in a post-game interview. Sophie’s clear and candid answer was “no.” But several politically correct WNBA coaches jumped into the fray, arguing that the principle of “inclusion” calls for acceptance of trans women (i.e., biological men identifying as women) into their women’s-only league.
Nonsense. I have my own basketball inclusion story — I got cut from my high school freshman basketball team simply because the coach failed to recognize (inexplicably, in my view) the latent basketball talent in my 13-year-old frame. I was heartbroken, as were the other 20 or so young boys who didn’t make the team. It would have been great if there had been a league rule dictating inclusion of gangly, awkward boys, but no such luck. We all got over it and went on with life.
The larger point here is that restricting WNBA player participation to biological women does not encroach on the civil rights of those who do not meet the criteria set by the league. Just last week, reacting to the sudden furor, league executives met to resolve the pressing question of what the “W” in WNBA actually means. Simple as that seems, they whiffed, and the unnecessary uncertainty remains.
To help resolve the matter — or more likely, to underscore its craziness — two former NBA players (both men willing to assert that they now identify as women) have announced their availability for the post-season WNBA draft. The league didn't take the bait, highlighting the absurdity.
U.S. Debt exceeds $40 trillion.
$40 trillion is an absurd amount of debt. But so is $39 trillion, and all of the other too-huge-to-comprehend debt figures that have been piling up for the last couple of decades. Even more absurd, the American public is indifferent to the inevitable economic collapse down the track.
We learned all we need to know about the public appetite for spending restraint in the early days of the current Trump administration. The DOGE project, under the well-known and widely respected Elon Musk, was tasked by President Donald Trump with identifying and eliminating wasteful spending. DOGE got off to a jackrabbit start, but as soon as Musk’s team began knocking off low-hanging fruit, partisan politics took over, and it all unraveled.
Before we knew it, Musk went from hero to goat, DOGE “protesters” were firebombing Tesla dealerships, Tesla took a nosedive, and he and Trump parted ways. Technically, DOGE stayed alive, but Trump and the administration moved on. Evidently, like his predecessors, Trump the politician quickly learned to steer clear of the debt tarbaby.
There’s no mystery here. The problem, of course, is out-of-control spending. Both parties share the blame, and no sensible politician (Trump included) is willing to take the heat from finger-pointing opponents and unappreciative voters that would surely accompany the needed cuts.
In time, the inevitable solution will reveal itself — but only when it’s too late to avert a true economic crisis. In the meantime, DSA promises of “free” everything (healthcare, preschool, college, the works) are selling like hotcakes.
Absurdities aside, let’s get back to work on the really hard issues.
