The Age of Lies & Propaganda
It is easy for people, including President Trump and me, to bash the mainstream media. For one thing, it’s fun; for another, they have it coming. But I withhold the greatest portion of my contempt for those who swallow the lies, knowing it’s swill, but insisting that it tastes like chocolate milk.
It is easy for people, including President Trump and me, to bash the mainstream media. For one thing, it’s fun; for another, they have it coming. But I withhold the greatest portion of my contempt for those who swallow the lies, knowing it’s swill, but insisting that it tastes like chocolate milk.
In the same way, I despise the Afghanis and the Pakistanis who grow the poppies, the Central American cartels who smuggle the processed poison into the U.S., but, most of all, I despise the users. You can call them innocent victims suffering from a disease all you like, but, one, nobody forced them to become addicted in the first place, and let’s not pretend that after a 50-year war on drugs, they were unaware of the dangers; and, two, they also knew that their dollars were going towards financing the Mafia, murderous Mexican cartels or the jihadists.
Speaking of which, I have grown weary of hearing people pretending that they can discern the difference between good Muslims and bad ones. They’re about as convincing as George W. Bush who announced that he had gazed into the eyes of former KGB officer Vladimir Putin and seen his soul. He might as well have declared that he had looked into an ice cube and spotted a beating heart.
In two recent polls of British Muslims, between 50 and 67% of them admitted they wouldn’t report it to the authorities if somebody they knew was involved in terrorist activities.
Pardon me if I assume the results would be similar if American Muslims were being equally honest. That’s because I still remember that even after 9/11, until the FBI put a stop to it, American Muslims continued to funnel money to Hamas and Hezbollah.
One often hears about the importance of team chemistry, especially in the world of sports, but it is often a naïve assumption that assumes that the alleged chemistry resulted in success, whereas the chemistry was far more directly due to success.
In other words, if you want to be regarded as a great coach or manager, be sure you succeed in rounding up the best players.
Sometimes, a team comes along like the great squads that the Oakland A’s fielded in the late 80s, where the players let it be known they didn’t like each other and the locker room was a war zone, but the raw talent out-weighed personal animosity.
Other times, one player can make all the difference. Between 1912 and 1918, the Boston Red Sox won four world titles. But then in 1919, the team owner decided to sell a pitcher to the New York Yankees. Normally, that would be merely a footnote. Unfortunately for Boston, the terrific pitcher turned out to be an even better hitter named Babe Ruth. As a direct result, the Yankees would go on to win the World Series 26 times before the Red Sox finally won another in 2004.
In a different arena, we have the team of Abbott and Costello, two guys who couldn’t stand the sight of each other. They even hired bodyguards who, in turn, hated each other. But in order to make a great deal of money, Lou and Bud managed to put up with each other, if only barely, because they understood that without the other guy, they were essentially unemployable.
To take another example, we have one of the three or four most successful songwriting teams ever, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. You would think that two guys who could consistently churn out the likes of “My Funny Valentine,” “Blue Moon,” “My Romance,” “There’s a Small Hotel,” “Falling in Love with Love,” “Where or When” and “Bewitched,” would be as close as the fingers on your hand.
But nobody was ever happier than Rodgers when Hart bowed out of working on “Oklahoma,” which allowed Rodgers to replace him with the far more reliable, but equally gifted, Oscar Hammerstein II. As Rodgers said when being interviewed some 20 years after the death of his erstwhile partner in rhyme: “You can’t imagine how wonderful it felt to have written the music and not have to search all over the globe for that little fag.”
According to a recent survey by an outfit called Whatsgoodly, 1,422 millennials were asked if they considered themselves alpha males. Of the half who supported Trump, 67% said they did. Of those who supported Mrs. Clinton, only 46% did. I did check with them to make certain that the 1,422 were all males. They confirmed it.
Frankly, even though a sizable difference was predictable, I don’t believe the numbers are even that close. I suspect that a lot of Trump’s supporters didn’t want to sound as if they were boasting, whereas I assume most of Clinton’s male supporters must have been lying. Frankly, I can’t imagine a man possessing even a drop of testosterone casting a vote for that traitorous pants-suited sack of cow manure. Come to think of it, the closest thing to an alpha male engaged in Clinton’s campaign was Hillary herself.
Someone sent me one of those things that shows one photo on top, one below, along with pointed commentary. On top was a photo of Jackie Chan holding his head, trying to keep it from exploding, while the caption read: “The same networks that told me Hillary was going to win the election…are now telling me what the climate will be like 100 years from now.”
Below was a bewildered-looking chap standing in front of a TV weather map, with the caption: “Meanwhile, professionals can’t even accurately predict what the weather will be like next week.”
Someone thought it would be a good idea to send me two quotes attributed to Edward Snowden. The first was “Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”
Actually, it’s quite different. When and if I say I have nothing to hide, I’m also wondering what it is that you’re so terrified will come out.
The second Snowden quote: “Terrorists don’t hate us for our freedom. They don’t even know what our freedoms are. Terrorists are incapable of destroying our rights or diminishing our society. They lack the strength. Only we can do that.”
Wrong and wrong. First off, terrorists do hate our freedoms. They have said so. By freedoms, they refer to our freedom to drink alcohol, go dancing, use illegal drugs, watch pornography, not to mention allowing our women to drive, go to school and marry the man or woman of their choice.
Two, the terrorists have already have denied us the ability to get on an airplane without spending well over an hour going through a series of security checkpoints; to attend, ballgames, concerts or even go shopping, without wondering if we or our kids are going to get home alive.
In response to the quotes, I wrote to the fellow who forwarded them: “One of my least favorite activities is being lectured about what constitutes a free society by a putz who committed espionage against the freest society on the face of the earth and then sought sanctuary in Russia, of all places.”
The latest joke to arrive in my in-box: Senators McConnell, Graham and McCain, walked into a diner and spotted Jesus eating breakfast at a nearby table. They asked if they could join Him. After making idle chitchat about the weather, the men asked if it would be okay to question him.
Permission granted, McConnell asked Him why God made women so beautiful. Jesus replied: “So you would love them.”
Then Graham asked Jesus why God made women so delightful. Once again, Jesus replied: “So you would love them.”
Finally, McCain asked him why God made women so stupid. Jesus replied: “So they would love you.”
I didn’t find the joke all that funny, except for the part about Jesus eating breakfast in a diner. For one thing, the punchline was as predictable as a cop being around whenever you run a stop sign. But I figured that most of the jokes I pass along come from men, and women, particularly blondes, are often the target. Besides, this one was submitted by a woman, Barb Bononi, so she’s the one putting words in John McCain’s mouth.
Besides, we all know that the only really dumb women are liberals, which explains how God managed to ensure that even the likes of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer, would wind up with mates.
One of my faithful readers let me know that he had heard about the Squatty Potty even before the company made the news by firing Kathy Griffin as its spokesperson. Apparently, it had been something of a running joke on the Charlie Sheen sit com, “Two and a Half Men.”
I replied: “I had heard of the show, but never watched it. So, until the Griffin kerfuffle, I had never heard of the Squatty. But, then, life is, or at least should be, just one long learning process…at least until old age, which I’m quickly discovering is just one frighteningly short forgetting process.”
