The Patriot Post® · A Nation of Busybodies

By Burt Prelutsky ·
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/49574-a-nation-of-busybodies-2017-06-17

Between the left-wing politicians and zombie judges, California has gone from being the golden state to being the world’s biggest loony bin. Say what you will about places like Illinois, New York and Massachusetts, no other state has ever made someone as freaky as Jerry Brown both the youngest governor in state history as well as the oldest.

I know it’s hard to believe, but California used to be a state that regularly elected Republican governors and senators like William Knowland, George Murphy, Tom Kuchel, Ronald Reagan, Goodwin Knight, George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and S.I. Hayakawa. But those days are now a distant memory.

The first whiff of what was coming came from the judiciary in the 1970s when it was determined that the trouble with public education was that the students were segregated, even if it was because the races tended to live in separate communities, not because of racist policies. Suddenly, well-meaning, but insipid, judges decided that the solution was to bus poor black kids clear across town to attend school with white kids in the affluent coastal community of Pacific Palisades.

Predictably, it infuriated black parents because it meant their teens had to spend two hours a day riding buses, and if the kid became sick or injured, they might as well have been on the other side of the moon. The social engineering didn’t go down too well with whites, either, because acts of violence, vandalism and shoplifting, in the Palisades soared.

The lesson that should have been learned was that busybodies, no matter how benevolent their intentions might be, should just lie down and apply a cold compress to their brows until the urge to screw up the natural order passes.

The irony of the desegregation movement is that all these years later, black people have come around to the notion that a policy of segregation is perfectly acceptable, especially on college campuses, so long as they’re the ones promoting the racist practice.


I watched as much of the James Comey appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee as I could stomach. Predictably, both sides played up the partisan elements they thought reflected best on them.

That meant the Democrats totally ignored the fact that the former Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, told her pet poodle, Comey, to stop referring to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s unlawful use of a private server as an investigation, but, rather, as a “matter,” the peculiar term that Clinton’s campaign mavens devised for the occasion.

The Republicans, on the other hand, had to pretend it wasn’t the least bit suspicious that Donald Trump kicked his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, out of the room in order to have a secret discussion with Sessions’ subordinate, FBI Director Comey. Even to a loyalist like me, that arouses the same sort of questions as Loretta Lynch’s meeting with Bill Clinton on the Vegas tarmac.

Understand, I like President Trump. I want him to be able to carry through on his promises to get rid of ObamaCare, reform the tax code, build the wall and finally move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. But, sometimes he leaves me shaking my head. Why, for instance, didn’t he replace Comey on the first day of his administration? Both sides of the aisle in Congress would have flung confetti in the air. Instead, he waited four months and then dumped the guy in the most suspicious way possible, turning him not only into the world’s tallest political martyr, but the smuggest and least appealing.


I thought the strongest defense of President Trump was delivered by his oldest son, Donald, Jr. When he was asked to divine what his father had in mind when he said or did something seemingly incomprehensible, as if his dad had channeled Niccolo Machiavelli, the 15th century master of political deceit, he said: “I’ve known my father for 39 years and he never does subtle. When he gives an order, there is no ambiguity about it.”

Still, there are times that Donald Trump, Sr., does or says things that are so curious that even some of us who are pulling for him to succeed have to fall back on crystal balls and tea leaves to ferret out his motives.


Whatever Trump’s sins, I would never suggest that hypocrisy was one of them. We can leave that to the Democrats, who insist they want to prolong the investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election in order to safeguard the democratic process going forward, even though, to use Obama’s favorite noun, there isn’t a smidgen of evidence that the Russkies moved a single vote from Clinton to Trump.

On the other hand, they continue to oppose photo IDs, although there is plenty of proof that foreigners (illegal aliens) cast thousands of votes for Mrs. Clinton.


South Korea, our erstwhile ally, has suspended the deployment of our anti-missile defense systems in an attempt to assuage China and North Korea. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, as the newly-elected president of the country ran on a platform that called putting distance between them and us.

That is certainly their right. I just hope that when Kim Jung-un wakes up on a bad hair day, which would narrow it down to any day of the week, and decides to pick up the Korean War where it left off, we stay the hell out of it.

Before that happens, I trust Trump pulls our troops out of the demilitarized zone and moves them to Japan, Australia or, better yet, back home.


According to Buz Chertok, a guy in a saloon has had a few, so he’s not sure he can trust his eyes. But it appears to him that at the opposite end of the bar there’s a fellow who’s 12-inches tall, wearing a tropical outfit replete with short pants, epaulets on his shirt and a pith helmet, drinking and holding forth.

The guy keeps gawking and rubbing his eyes until the bartender wanders over and asks him what the problem is. He explains that he didn’t think he’d had that much to drink, but he can’t believe what he thinks he sees.

The bartender assures him his eyes aren’t playing tricks on him. Then he turns and shouts down the bar: “Colonel, come on down here and tell this guy about that time you called the witch doctor a schmuck!”