The Patriot Post® · An Addictive Society

There are various forms of addictions that are rampant in America today. The most obvious one involves illegal drugs. It’s bad enough that millions of our citizens have chosen to not only turn themselves into moral and physical cripples, but help finance drug cartels and Islamic jihadists. I mean, they can plead ignorance, but where do they think the blood money goes?

I understand that there are a great many innocent victims who, through no fault of their own, have become dependent on prescribed pain killers as a result of suffering traumatic injuries. But those I have in mind are the pinheads who have ignored all the warnings that the schools, the media and Nancy Reagan, have been delivering for decades.

That is why I would become enraged when John Kasich, whenever he started talking about those who needed the help he was offering, invariably included drug addicts. As far back as the 1940s and 50s, books and movies like “The Man with the Golden Arm,” were putting the downside of addiction on clear display. But Kasich kept insisting that we pity these creatures and subsidize their rehabilitation when it was their own irresponsible pursuit of cheap thrills that placed them behind the eight ball.

Speaking of eight balls, I was so disgusted by the 16 black females at West Point posing for what could have been a Black Lives Matter recruiting poster that I continued to invite military veterans to voice their own response.

The following email was sent by a career Army officer: “Those girls knew exactly what they were doing. And they did it as an act of defiance against the history and tradition of West Point, which has been run over the years by what they consider a white establishment. In my opinion, they are hard-core Black racists. And, of course, they realized they could get away with it, considering who is now in the White House and who encourages acts of defiance against the police and authority. They are Black, racist revolutionaries. And LTG Caslen (West Point Commandant) is cowed by political correctness to act and speak as he has in order to save his career, because if he did what was right, Obama would have him relieved — as he has many General and Senior Officers already. The high moral standards of our Armed Forces have gone by the wayside under Obama.”

For my part, I pity the white soldiers who wind up serving under these unrepentant black bigots. Furthermore, when the women receive the disrespect they deserve, I’m certain they will blame it on the racism and sexism of their subordinates.

A reader let me know that she had just heard a radio broadcast on which a rabbi said that he didn’t think Europe had the desire or fortitude to fight terrorism and Glenn Beck said he didn’t think the U.S. did, either. She wanted to know my opinion.

I replied that I thought it was obvious they were both right. “Otherwise the U.S. and Europe would have invaded the Middle East long ago, and after wiping out ISIS in two days, they would have declared war on Iran, the sponsor of most of the attacks on the West.

"Until that happens and we see actual retaliation for all the terrorism they’ve inflicted over the past 37 years, when Iran first announced its evil intentions by taking hostages, the barbarians will continue to behead people and blow airliners out of the sky.

"Just for a change, I would like to see real pain doled out in Tehran, and not constantly in places like Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino and New York.”

When Morley Safer, 84, recently died, I had occasion to think of “60 Minutes” for the first time in years. I was also reminded that he once interviewed me and two other writers, then in our 50s, on the topic of ageism in Hollywood.

On that occasion, although he spent a lot of time asking us how ageism worked and why it was so prevalent in TV and why something so odious was allowed to exist, depriving older writers through the collusion of agents and networks of writing assignments, when the segment aired, we had all but disappeared. Nearly all the time was devoted to retelling the story of a writer in her 30s, Riley Weston, who had been caught trying to cash in by claiming she was a teenage phenomenon.

Ms. Weston had an interesting tale to tell, but she had already told it all over the place, about how she had sold herself as this kid who knew how to write for a young audience because she was so young, and how once the agents and the producers she had fooled found out, they dropped her.

It was hardly an ageism story. She had been ballyhooed not because she was particularly talented, but because she had tried to pass herself off as something she wasn’t, and the people she had gulled were justifiably embarrassed and angry.

In a way, the fact that “60 Minutes” decided to tell her story instead of ours struck me as just one more example of ageism in television.

The reason, though, that I stopped watching “60 Minutes” was because I was sick and tired of being bombarded with leftist dogma every Sunday night. It was a show where the last conservative who was allowed regular airtime was when James J. Kilpatrick got to engage in a weekly debate with the uberliberal Shana Alexander, who moonlighted as Gene McCarthy’s main squeeze.

Through the years, Mike Wallace, Andy Rooney, Harry Reasoner, Dan Rather, Lesley Stahl, Steve Kroft, Diane Sawyer, Bob Simon and Christina Amanpour, got to convince millions of Americans that liberalism was the solution to, not the reason for, most of America’s problems. The clicking stopwatch, I assume, was a way to hypnotize us.

By now, I suppose most of you have heard that Obama’s latest social engineering plan is to move thousands of urban blacks into upscale neighborhoods. As stupid as the plan is, what do you want to bet it will not be any neighborhood in which a liberal politician or left-wing campaign donor is living. If you doubt me, keep in mind that when the ecologists determined that an ideal location for energy-creating windmills was in Hyannis Port, the plan was aborted as soon as Sen. Ted Kennedy complained they would interfere with his view.

If you believe that HUD is going to move poor blacks next door to the Clintons, I’d be happy to give you odds and take your money.

A reader pointed out that liberals like to defend the belief that man is responsible for global-warming by claiming that 97% of scientists agree, neglecting, of course, to mention that 99% of the 97% have to agree if they wish to receive government grants or even land or keep a job in academia. On the other hand, 100% of scientists agree that sex is genetically determined (XX=female, XY=male), but so far as liberals are concerned, one’s sex is whatever one says it is.

Although we who believe that capitalism is the best economic system ever devised often point to places like the Soviet Union, Cuba and Venezuela, as examples of failed socialism, it is no longer necessary to go outside our own borders.

Burlington College, formerly headed up by Jane Sanders, wife of Bernie Sanders, will be closing its doors shortly because of overwhelming debt brought about by Burlington President Sanders when she pushed through an ill-advised real estate deal in 2010.

Listen up, young voters. Destroying the U.S. economy is a much bigger deal than shutting down a college, but don’t sell Bernie short. With his promise to spend $18 trillion in order to fill your Christmas stockings, he’s the guy to do it. And if he needs any help, I’m sure Mrs. Sanders will be only too happy to pitch in and get the job done.

Even when he does something right, it seems that Donald Trump can’t help opening his yap one too many times. Recently, he announced the list of 11 judges from which he would make his Supreme Court appointments. The names were enough to make any true Conservative salivate. Any three or four of them that Trump might have the opportunity to appoint during his first term would ensure that the spirit of Antonin Scalia would live on. But then, when pressed if he would actually make his appointments from the list, the Donald couldn’t help saying, “Probably.”

What does that even mean? That he might have a different list in his other pocket that names 11 liberal judges? Why can he never leave good enough alone?

Finally, I would like to make a correction. In a recent piece, I attributed lines from the poem “How Do I Love Thee?” to Robert Browning. The actual lines were penned by his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I even had a hunch I was mistaken, but for some reason, neglected to check before posting.

I mention it in case you ever wind up on “Jeopardy!” I’d hate to be the reason you lost any money.