The List

Corporations supporting gender ideology and the radical trans agenda

You cannot just not buy Bud Light or Jack Daniels.  No one at Bud Light made this most recent marketing decision, no matter what Alissa Heinerscheid might have you believe.  These decisions are simply not made at the brand level.  Rather, they are made higher up the corporate food chain.  So it is not just Bud Light, but all of the AB Inbev brands that we should boycott...er, reconsider.

Anyway, I think we should start a list:

AB InBev (Owner of Bud Light – All brands)

Brown-Forman (Owner of Jack Daniels – All brands)

Diageo (Owner of J&B Scotch Whiskey – All brands)

Hershey's Chocolate (All brands)

L'Oréal (Owner of Maybelline – All brands)

Nike (Owner of Nike women's wear – Also Converse)

Proctor & Gamble (Owner of Gillette – All brands)

Plus consider this:  Isn't it funny that AB Inbev chose to target the Bud Light customer base rather than, say for example, the Michelob Ultra customer base?  Surely the Ultra customer base would have been much more receptive to this advertising scheme.  So why did they choose Bud Light?  The only possible answer to that question is that this is not a beer marketing campaign.  It is rather a pro trans campaign (and lecture), which the company has decided is more important than this particular brand.  In other words, they decided to sacrifice the brand and its customers for what they believe to be the greater good.  Clearly they hold the Bud Light customer base in contempt, people in need of a good lecture.

In any case, how hard is it to choose a Heineken?  Or switch to Jeremy's Razors or pick up a Cadbury bar?  Jeremy has chocolate too.  All I can add is thank God Diageo sold Bombay Sapphire to Bacardi 25 years ago.  But will Bacardi be far behind?  I have never been a Bud Light drinker.  I'm not even a big beer drinker.  But on occasion when I have had a taste for a beer, I have quite often picked up Michelob Ultra.  I wonder if AB Inbev factored that into their analysis?  They are not stupid, so clearly they just don't care.

Of course, the decision makers are managers, not owners.  So hey, it's not their own money they're throwing away.  And the bulk of their owners are other institutions, also run by the management class.  So turns out, there is little or no accountability for these decisions.

Anyway back to the list, if you look at it in this comprehensive way, well that's a lot of products.  Too many to keep up with.  But I hope this list helps.  We all do what we can.

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Half-Assed as a Cultural Norm

In the Philippines bahala na yields half-assed results (for everything)

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines half-assed as:  Done with little effort or care; incompetent or inadequate.  There do not seem to be any really good synonyms.  I wish there were; I'd be happy to use another term.  But, for example, unserious just does not seem to convey the same level of complete disregard and utter indifference for sufficient care and due diligence.  It just doesn't.  Apathetic may be closer, but it does not capture the inferior results.  Halfhearted and lackadaisical are good, but they lack the proper vigor.  No, it's a half-assed attitude which, of course, produces a half-assed result.  There really is no substitute.

So what is bahala na?  The video above explains it very well, and I prefer to leave it to a Filipino to explain anyway.  She deals with the issue with good humor, and I think that is exactly how it needs to be addressed.  Though I'm not sure that I can agree that the Philippines should blame the Spanish for this.  The Spanish left over a century ago.  A point she acknowledges at the end of the video.

A while back, I met a Filipino seaman.  As an island nation, many people here work in commercial shipping.  This guy worked as the second officer on a cargo ship.  He told me that mariners from other countries do not like working with mariners from the Philippines.  I asked why and he shrugged and said they are prejudiced against Filipinos.  At the time, I just accepted that as true.

But today, I'm not so sure.  Could it be that the foreign mariners just do not like working with people who consistently do a half-assed job?

And that is not all.  Bahala na breeds genuine contempt for anyone who wants to and tries to do a good job.  They think these people are just plain stupid for making the completely unnecessary extra effort.  There is an element of peer pressure involved.  Forget pride in a job well done.  In the Philippines there is no shame for a sloppy or unfinished job.  The only shame seems to be for the poor sap who puts in the extra effort.

In America, we have an expression:  Perfect is the enemy of good.  Well in the Philippines, adequate is the enemy of just barely enough to get by and not one bit more.  It is a cultural phenomenon.  I think it is worth pointing out that, expression or not, many many people in the West strive for perfection, or at least as close as they can get to it.  Certainly, you also see this in Japan.  Of course a Japanese mariner is going to dread the idea of working with a Filipino mariner.

So if we reject Spanish responsibility for this attitude, where does it come from?  One is tempted to blame sheer laziness – Everywhere you turn, there is a noticeable lack of industriousness.  And while that is certainly part of it, I don't think that is the whole story.

No, perhaps I am speculating, but I think it is a question of exposure.  Exposure to quality, craftsmanship, precision, durability, diligence, completeness, consistency, accomplishment, integrity, fidelity, etc.  And even things like excellent customer service, critical thinking, openness to change, self-improvement, learning and curiosity, attention to detail, punctuality, organization and planning, etc.  The list could go on and on.  But if you are not exposed to these hallmarks, you cannot possibly understand and value them, and you cannot possibly know to strive for them.

For instance, not all Filipinos share this attitude.  Many of the most ambitious and hard-working Filipinos leave to work in other countries.  Countries where the bahala na attitude will quickly get you fired.  And I notice that people who return to the Philippines after working long stints overseas seem to have lost the attitude.  Why?  Again, I think it is exposure to these qualities.  Even here in the Philippines, there are people who seem to have moved beyond bahala na.  But they are pretty rare.  I would guess you find more of them in the cities.

In any case, I would call bahala na the dominant cultural attitude of the country.  And it is crippling.  Economically, financially, culturally, socially, politically.  It spans all aspects of Filipino life.

As she said at the end of the video, the Philippine people must decide what kind of country they want.  This is the most important point:  It is a choice.  Not only as a society.  But also for each individual.

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Maybe it's the Hair

FTX head honcho, Sam Bankman-Fried (left) and WeWork boss, Adam Neumann (right)

Am I the only one who notices that an adult haircut might be some type of indicator of... er, financial responsibility?  I mean seriously, would you invest money with these guys?

You cannot use the same logic based on what they wear.  We've seen photos of both of these guys in business attire.  They are willing to put on a coat and tie when necessary.  But they are unwilling to get a proper haircut.  Maybe we should pay attention to that.

I have written previously about all the beards.
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Crazy Times Demand Principled Choices

Compliance is always a choice

Yesterday we made a trip to the Philippine Bureau of Immigration in order to extend my visa.  While our local office is never particularly busy, naturally one does tend to run into other expats.  Yesterday this fellow walks in behind me and he looked American or European.  He was late twenties, early thirties.

So I asked him:  "Hey brother, where are you from?"

"Russia."  I did not expect that.

"Oh" I said, thinking that he was definitely conscription material, "well, I'm glad you're here."  He smiled and gave me a knowing look.  I think he must have instinctively known I was referring to Putin's war in Ukraine.

After a bit of chit-chat in perfect English, I learned that he was waiting on his Russian (not Filipino) wife to join him here.  How interesting is that?  Then he asked me:  "So why are you here?"

I thought about giving him my customary answer to this question:  "My wife is from here."  It's true, but essentially evasive.  Instead I said:  "Well, the US has gone crazy."

He did not miss a beat:  "Yes...Russia too."

We both nodded knowingly.

By this time I was done, and he was being called to the counter.  So I left wondering how many of his contemporaries are here?  And in other countries?

I wish them good luck and long life.

It is one thing to be patriotic, and fight for your country.  It is quite another to risk your life for the whims of a corrupt political class.  Clearly this applies to Russian conscripts in Ukraine; just as it once applied to US conscripts in Vietnam.  Some people, especially in the US, especially during the Vietnam War, viewed conscription as a no choice situation.  Or worse, a patriotic duty.

But looking back at the Vietnam War, can anyone explain the US interest?  Of course not.  It was not about patriotism, much less fighting for your country.  No, it was about a corrupt political class and their self-serving misconceptions.  Remember, these are the same people who let Cuba go, but decided a poor country on the other side of the world, was worth dead Americans.  No, no, Cuba may have been worth war, but certainly not Vietnam.

I think it is worth noting that even George Kennan, father of our containment strategy, thought involvement in Vietnam was a preoccupation and a mistake.  But Johnson and McNamara, and Nixon and Kissinger, did not care about poor dead midwestern farm boys anymore than Putin cares about young dead Russians.

Here's a rule for you:  If you give corrupt politicians the tool of conscription, they will use it to further their corruption.  Every time.  And they only get away with this with our sanction.  Just don't give it; always question everything.  And just like with the Covid vaccine, there is always a choice.  Unpleasant though it may be.

Compliance is always a choice.

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McDonald's is Wasting Ray Kroc's Legacy

It is a slow motion corporate suicide

When I was a kid, I always liked McDonald's.  But I stopped patronizing them when the bad experiences became the rule, rather than the exception.  In the last, say, twenty-five years, I have only eaten at McDonald's in a pinch.  Here in the Philippines, my wife and I have been to McDonald's exactly three times.  Each time for breakfast, when it was the only available option.  Our orders were wrong every time.  It is no big deal to me.  Bad service; I just quit giving them money.

But for many years it has been obvious to me that there is something very wrong with McDonald's.  It is a management problem.  Without caring enough to do some research, that's about all I knew about it.  But their bad behavior stretches back to the early 1970's when they ripped-off their whole McDonaldland ad campaign.  More recently, McDonald's managers failed to warn franchisees about abusive hoax phone calls.  Courts ruled against McDonald's in both of these cases.  But for McDonald's, the judgments were peanuts.  What kind of people act this way? 

Well, people who figure it will be cheaper to pay a judgment rather than act in a responsible manner.  Nevertheless, over the years, I have known many people who have bought McDonald's stock, and swear by it.  I never joined them.

The video above is almost two years old, but it only popped up on my YouTube home page today.  Now "broken" ice cream machines are a well-known and longstanding problem with McDonald's.  And like many people, I always assumed that the problem was that McDonald's employees just did not want the hassle of cleaning the machines.  So they would tell everyone that the machine is out-of-order.  But it turns out, the problem is much more systemic.  This is yet another corporate management problem.  And I suspect, at its core, this is another ethical problem.

The video confirms what I have long suspected about McDonald's management and management attitude.  While I am rather leery of franchising in general, it is worth noting that McDonald's corporate managers do not work for the franchisees.  No franchisor does.  To my mind, it's just a bad business model for the franchisees.  But I am not even convinced that McDonald's managers know they work for the shareholders.  And they sure-as-hell don't work for the customers.

After World War Two, it took forty years for Montgomery Ward to go out-of-business.  Sear's utterly incompetent management followed, but somewhat faster.  I do wonder if McDonald's is going down the same path.  These corporate fat cats become complacent.  And entrenched.  And deaf.

That is what this story is really about.  Broken ice cream machines are not the problem; they are a symptom.  The root problem is bad, unresponsive management.  They are, at best, incompetent.  At worst, they're still the unethical management organization that they were fifty years ago.  Judge for yourself.

You see, after a management team goes bad, they tend to perpetuate their problems, however they manifest.  At upper levels of an organization, it is almost impossible for a bad manager to hire and/or retain a good manager.  It just doesn't happen.  Gresham's Law kicks in:  The bad drive out the good.  There is just no way a bad manager, incompetent or dishonest, can keep a competent, honest manager around.  So what do they do?  They hire people as bad or worse than themselves.  This can go on for years.

I mean what are the odds that the CEO of McDonald's is unaware of their ice cream problem?  One can only speculate why he has not fixed it.  And make no mistake, this is a fixable problem.  Just ask Wendys, or Chick-fil-A, or even Burger King.  Ask Dairy Queen.  The current CEO has been with the company since 2015.  He was appointed CEO in 2019 after the board fired the previous CEO.  No surprise there.  It is also worth noting that the company has had three CEOs in the last ten years.

This whole thing is an unmitigated disaster for McDonald's.  That video has over eleven million views.  And just think about it.  To watch a half hour video on something as esoteric as McDonald's ice cream machine problem.  Who would do that?  Well, perhaps the millions of frustrated customers.  Perhaps all of their competitors.

At this very hour, two years later, twelve percent of McDonald's machines are down.  Note, that is two years since the video came out; the problem was around for years before that.  So where is the CEO?  My guess?  He's out playing golf with the Taylor (ice cream machine) CEO.  Also, I would not be surprised if he hasn't spent a good part of the last two years bullying Google to take down that video:  Take that video down or McDonald's will pull all advertising off YouTube.  Though, I am surprised he has failed (so far).  I'd be willing to bet that he has spent more time on the PR aspects of this problem than on the actual, fixable, problem itself.  Actually, we know this is true because otherwise, the problem would be fixed.

In any case, at some point it becomes impossible to turn around an organization without outside intervention.  And I don't mean bankruptcy; I mean a Carl Icahn type intervention.  Someone who will come in and fire everyone.

The franchisees can only hope.  They're pretty much stuck with the bad McDonald's management.  Though yes, they did volunteer.

The customers can only hope.  But they might just eventually decamp to Wendy's and Dairy Queen.

And, the shareholder's?  Well so far the management problem has not had a major impact on the company's performance.  But how long will that last?

And Taylor?  I cannot end without some comment on their role in all this.  Evidently Taylor does make ice cream machines that work.  So they make a number of machines that work, plus they make the McDonald's machine which does not work.  So clearly they are intentionally selling McDonald's franchisees defective machines in order to juice their repair business.  And that is bad and also unethical.  But here's the thing.  McDonald's knows about this problem and yet they have forced their franchisees to buy the machines anyway.  Taylor is not forcing them to buy the defective product; McDonald's is.  As bad as Taylor's role in this fiasco may be, McDonald's is so much worse.

Again, no surprise.

Now almost six years ago, there was a report (behind paywall) in the The Wall Street Journal that McDonald's would allow franchisees to purchase a machine from a Taylor competitor.  I have no idea what happened with this.  You would think that would have been the end of it.  But clearly not – when twelve percent of their machines are still down.  Could the franchisees not also buy other model Taylor machines?  You know, the ones that work?  If an alternative has been available for so long, why is there still a problem?  One suspects the answer to that question points back to McDonald's management.

In any case, what would be the "worst case fix" for this problem?  Well, McDonald's could pull out all the defective Taylor machines.  Sure, sue Taylor if you like.  But first get rid of the machines.  One wonders why they don't do this?  Cost?  In a cost versus reputation contest, what wins?  But my guess is that it is not cost or reputation that really matters.

No something stinks.  There's an ethical problem here somewhere.

Update, 7 March 2026

Find an update to this story here.

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Watching Yellowstone from the Philippines

Season Five Now Available

I enjoyed the first four seasons of Yellowstone.  But after watching season four, I heard Ben Shapiro talking about it.  He pointed out that the writing is abysmal.  And I thought to myself, that is exactly correct, and vowed that I was done with the show.  I have always thought that good writing is the hallmark of good television.  Yet, here I am again, watching season five, and enjoying it.

Why?

Well Taylor Sheridan's writing is a bit better this year.  But not so much better to make a difference.  Hey I get it, Sheridan is a busy man.  But if we, all of us, are not watching Yellowstone for the writing, why are we watching?

The acting?  It's good.  Maybe not exceptional, but certainly well above average.  The casting?  Well with one major exception, the casting is perfection.  The exception?  Kelly Reilly.  I don't find her credible in the role of Beth Dutton.  The Beth Dutton character is a wounded child of uninhibited chutzpah and intellectual gravitas.  Reilly just does not have the acting skills to pull it off.  And it is such an important role.  The role needs a young Jodie Foster type.  Perhaps a young Faye Dunaway.  I don't know enough about today's Hollywood that I can name a suitable alternate actress.  But you get the idea.  The cinematography?  Maybe.  But it's Montana; it's really hard to screw that up.  Overall, the production values are first rate.  In any case, none of this is why we are watching Yellowstone.

No, we watch Yellowstone for the atmosphere.

And what is the atmosphere of Yellowstone?  Well, let's start with what it is not.  It is not woke.  It has no left coast values.  In fact, the show berates Californians at every available opportunity.  It is not politically correct.  It is not vegan or vegetarian.  It is an extremely pro-environment show, but in a way that the so-called environmentalist posers, in their North Face parkas, hate.  The show does not highlight America's supposed racial problems.  Or feminist issues.  Or proper gender ideology.  There are no trans cowboys in the show and no one states their preferred pronouns.  Think Madam Secretary.  It is anti-government and certainly anti-bureaucracy.  The writers seem to understand what no one on the left does:  Government is, at best, a hindrance to the productive.

Yellowstone is pro family, pro private enterprise, and pro rural lifestyle.  Pro Second Amendment.  It is pro rancher, and yes it must be added, pro beef.  No wonder the left hates it.  I am surprised, but glad, to report that there is almost no religion in the show.  It would be impossible to label it Christian television.  It is just not a Christian show by any stretch of the imagination.  If anything, I guess you could call it secular conservative.  I think this is really beneficial because the Hollywood left cannot simply dismiss the show as mere Christian propaganda for the flyover philistines.

There is one other aspect to the atmosphere worth pointing out.  Today's novelists and other writers seem to have lost faith in their protagonists.  Every lead must have flaws and personal demons, and the story is as much about overcoming these internal issues as anything else.  Think House.  No doubt post modernists would describe this as more realistic.  Real life is not black and white.  The best example I have seen of this is the show Homeland, where the lead character is so encumbered with mental illness that she needs electric shock therapy.  Without denying the gray in everything, personally I think this has gone too far.  Sure, no one is truly all good or all bad.  But for Christ's sake it is also not realistic that our CIA operatives undergo ECT between assignments.

Without such nonsense, Yellowstone is just more fun to watch.

In short, it is everything that our contemporary bien-pensants hate.  I think it is a miracle that a production of this type can even be made today.

So I encourage you to watch Yellowstone...for the atmosphere.  You won't find it anywhere else.

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How We Got Here

Big pharma, a complicit medical establishment, corrupt & incompetent governments, a subversive & irredeemable education system, and a credulous populace with no faculty for critical thought

I have just finished watching the Netflix docuseries, Don't Pick Up the Phone.  It is just amazing to me how many people are willing to blindly follow authority.  Even if the authority is untrustworthy or incompetent or completely fake.  Yes, I am aware that there was a 2012 movie, Compliance, on the same subject.  But I never saw it.  I'm guessing not many people saw it.

Compliance is a choice.  And regarding Covid, most of us chose poorly.  Not all of us.  With much difficulty and some legal risk, my family and I completely eschewed the so-called vaccines.  I wish good luck to the rest of you.  But many of you will never pay for your recklessness.  However, there seems to be an increasing number of people who are paying dearly.

And yet, the mandates continue.  I realize that the world has always known and experienced evil.  Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, the Soviet Union, Jim Crow, etc.  Just to name a few cases from the last century.  But the list is endless.

However, the Covid lockdowns and mandates set a new and disturbing precedent for the breadth of evil.  I think you would be hard-pressed to find a previous example of evil on a scale this broad.  I mean, from the United Nations, to national governments, to state and local governments, to employers and schools, right down to the squawking Karens at the grocery stores.  That is, virtually all of our leadership class, and so many of our friends and family and neighbors and colleagues.  It's widely understood that we have the worst leadership class in generations.  But it turns out, we are surrounded by blind, unthinking, sequacious sheep.

Sure, I blame Biden and Fauci, and the governors, and the medical establishment, and the teachers.  But dear reader, those of you who have shown unquestioning compliance, are every bit as evil as Fauci's capricious pronouncements.  Especially if you have given these untested drugs to your children.

Who does that?

What is that?

Evil is the only word to describe it.

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Your Government Does Not Care About You

And it is completely naive to believe otherwise

I have heard rumors that there is a small town somewhere in middle Indiana where the mayor, the town councilors, and the town manager, and all the rest of the staff care deeply about their constituents and the community at large.

But it's just a rumor.  And it is certainly not true for any community where I have lived.  Or any town or city that I read about in the newspaper.  Do some of these government officials care?  Sure, maybe.  But only to a point.  They care more about themselves, the road in front of their house, or business, the city contract with their brother-in-law, getting a salary raise for the whole sanitation department in return for their votes in the coming re-election.  And don't forget that city council member whose family owns that large tract of land where they're planning to build the new hospital.

And this is just the sort of nonsense that goes on at the local level.  Your state government is orders of magnitude worse.  And your federal government is orders of magnitude worse than that.  This is true for every government and every level of government.  It's truly frightening to think about the United Nations.

But let's start small:  Your homeowner's association.  Actually your HOA gives us a good illustration as to what happens in government.  Do your neighbors who serve on the board of the HOA care about all the right things?  Many times they absolutely do.  But what happens?  Well, they move.  Or, they have other commitments.  And new people have to be elected to the board.  And here is what is so important to understand:  Sooner or later, the people who are drawn to serve on such boards do not have the communities' interest in their hearts.  No, no they are in it for themselves.  These are the people who always run for these seats.  Sometimes they fail to gain a seat.  But not to worry, they'll run again in the next election.  Over time, they learn to say all the right things to win.  And sooner or later they do win.

And this brings us back to government in general and what is so important that we all understand.  The people drawn to government service, either as elected officials or employees, do not care about you.  They care about themselves.  Their pocketbooks, their families, their agendas.  And let's be honest, many of them just want the power to tell other people how to live.  If you question this, just have a look at the people on your HOA board.

Or your local school board.  Or the teachers they hire.  They don't care if little Johnny learns to read.  Not really.  So what do they care about?  More money, of course.  I've never met a teacher who did not harp on about how little she is paid.  And they care deeply that little Johnny develops the correct worldview.  Their worldview.  So an unholy alliance develops between the politicians who give teachers what they want in return for the teachers' votes.  This is true for all government employee groups.

Where does that leave you?

Well, paying for it of course.  You pay for it all.  You get nothing or worse than nothing in return.  They don't care about you; they only want to take advantage of you.

Now, are some governments worse than others?  Surely so.  But at my advanced age, here is what I have come to understand.  There is no such thing as good government.  They are all bad.  It's just a question of how bad?  I am no longer surprised by any level of ineptitude or greed.  Or greed which masquerades as ineptitude.

Henry David Thoreau said:  Government is best which governs least.  Well, that went out the window with the sixteenth amendment.

So where are we today?  Well we have an ever declining number of people who are paying for everything.  But wait just a minute, teachers pay taxes, right?  So let's not use taxes as the threshold.  As an alternative, I suggest, as an intellectual exercise, we divide the population into Net Wealth Creators and Net Wealth Consumers.

First, admittedly, there's lots of gray.  Sure, teachers are net wealth consumers.  But if they are doing their job, the next generation will have its share of net wealth creators, largely thanks to its teachers.  So the question becomes, are the teachers doing their job?

A functional society needs both wealth creators and wealth consumers.  My point is this:  The balance between these two groups has over the last century shifted, and continues to shift, towards the consumers.  And this shift has been facilitated by government buying the wealth consumers' votes.  This is why so many people tolerate and even celebrate bad government.

So we have corrupt government supported by the wealth consumers.  Where are you in that dynamic?

If you are any sort of government employee or contractor, I guess you don't see a problem.  Same for any private organization largely or entirely funded by government – Say you are in the health care field, or you work for a private university.  Sure, all of you pay a portion of your salary in taxes.  But what we should all understand is that your entire salary is from other peoples' taxes.

And somebody has to create the wealth to keep this pyramid scheme afloat.  Ultimately, all taxes are paid by wealth creators.

So what is the solution?  There's not enough of us to vote them out of office.  This is the constant argument of the left.  If you don't like it, you can vote them out.

But this is just not true.  There are too many of them and too few of us.  The unlimited flow of money (our money) into government coffers has corrupted our democracy with purchased votes.  This is vote buying on a massive scale.  To the point where, I would argue, that our productive democracy is now over.

Remember, at one time, most of us were farmers.  As we moved off the farm, we also moved from wealth producers to wealth consumers.

What we have now is a democracy of looters and moochers and parasites.

At this point, the net wealth creators are simply the slaves of the net wealth consumers.  And believe me, the government elites and their wealth consuming voters will keep this system going for as long as they can continue to milk it.  And it can go on almost indefinitely, but only if the wealth creators allow it.

This is the Scandinavian system we see today.  The capitalists are the slaves of the socialists.  And I don't mean capitalist as in the guy who runs the country's largest bank.  I mean the local plumbing contractor, the vegetable farmer, the restaurateur, and guy who runs the bakery down the street.  The capitalists create wealth and turn it over to the socialists to be distributed as they see fit.  And this goes on because the Scandinavian capitalists allow it.  They have completely capitulated to their wealth consuming masters.

Why?  Why don't they stop the gravy train?  Why don't they flee?  I would argue culture and family and perhaps guilt.  Plus, as you look around the world, the question of where would we go becomes paramount.  If you run the country's largest bank, it might be easy to move to the Channel Islands.  But if you run a bakery?

So, instead, they tolerate the theft.

Do you?

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How to Deal with Difficult People

Rule:  People who are difficult to talk with are almost always not worth the effort.

I was raised to believe that we should be nice to everyone.  I was later educated to believe that we can learn something from everyone.  I guess if you put these together what you get is that everyone has something useful and interesting inside them, and even if it is difficult, we should tease it out.  We should give everyone the opportunity to demonstrate their inner worthiness.  Think about the crusty academic who never really mastered social skills, but is brilliant in his field.

Do those people exist?  Absolutely.  I have met plenty of people like this, and yes, learned something from them.

But at some point I realized that never really mastered social skills was not some benign little flaw.  The sort of shortcoming that should be overlooked because of their brilliance.  If they have not mastered basic social skills it is because they do not care about basic social skills.  And that almost always means they do not care about...you.

And of course, that is absolutely fine if they are Albert Einstein.  But what if they're not?  What if they are some mediocre academic?  Or your roommate?  Your neighbor?  I mean, how many people are Albert Einstein?  If you live next to Steve Jobs, and he's a jerk, it's understandable, even forgivable.  But if you live next to Fred Smith?  That is something altogether different.  And let's be honest, most of us are Fred Smith.

So if someone is difficult to talk with, you have a cost-benefit analysis to run in your head.  Ask yourself, what are the odds that this person is worth the effort to overcome his or her rudeness to discover their inner light?  If you are the generous type, you might also ask yourself, what are the odds that this brilliant (or charming) person is just having a bad day?  Because of course we all do on occasion.

So will you sometimes answer the question incorrectly?  No doubt.  Sometimes you will ignore a rude brilliant person.  And hopefully less often, you will engage with a rude mediocre person.

We only have so much time.  Personally, I'd rather risk making the first error.

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Memo to Conservatives

Banana Republic Rules

Just yesterday, the sitting US president approved, and probably ordered, a raid on the home of the immediate past US president, who importantly also happens to be a contender to unseat that same sitting president.  Got that?  When did the US become Paraguay?

On the pretext of looking for classified documents, this was obviously a fishing expedition designed to intimidate Trump, and others.  I mean dear reader, what would they find if they pulled fifteen boxes of documents out of your house?  There'd be something.  What if we could pull fifteen boxes of documents out of the Clinton's house?  And they forced Trump's attorneys to leave.  Why?  So how can we ever be certain the political thugs that we call the FBI did not plant evidence?  How sad it is that, in the past few years, the FBI has tossed its once sterling reputation.

For many years, I have advised residents of blue cities across the US to flee.  This was, and is, the only rational course of action for those residents.  Take your family, your business, your vote, your taxes, even your mere presence, and go somewhere else.  But when the Democrat machine takes over the country, to where is one supposed to flee?

It seems to me that the current situation in the US leads to one of two possibilities.  First, conservatives can submit to lefty rule.  Let's call this the European path.  We will not like it, but it does offer a more leisurely lifestyle.  After all, why work hard for other people, other people's families, and the government power elite?  Sit back and relax.  Retire early, find a hobby.  Take up needlepoint.  Maybe stock up on a few necessities.

Of course, like our European friends, you'll have less children because you cannot afford them.  You'll pay seven dollars a gallon for gasoline, if you are even able to afford a vehicle.  Our open-border country will be swarming with illegal aliens.  Taxes will be confiscatory.  Climate change will become a continuous emergency giving government types every excuse they need to do anything they want.  Oh, and you might want to brush up on modern pronoun usage.

Sound familiar?  Yes of course, this is the default path we are currently on.

But the other path is even less appealing.  It involves fighting for our values.  Here, I do not mean a political fight within our system.  Our system is broken.  Now let's stop for a moment:  How do I know this for sure?  Because the left does not fear the precedent they just set.  Stop and think about that.  Would they take this reckless action if they had any fear that it could, in turn, be used against them?  No, they will never allow, could never allow, a raid on the homes of the Clinton's or the Biden's.

In any case the left is immune to consequences.  After the Hunter Biden laptop farce, and Hillary Clinton's numerous shenanigans, they know a complicit press makes them immune to any consequences for any malfeasance.  Further, they have politicized all agencies of the federal government to do their bidding.  At this point their impunity is comical, but at the same time vital for their continued hold on power.

I think we should carefully consider what it means for them not to fear the precedent.  It means they fully intend to remain in power.  Indefinitely and regardless of what it takes to do so.  They will lie, cheat, and steal.  They will intimidate.  They will raid their opponents homes and offices.  How long before they shut down television networks and political websites?  I mean, that Tucker Carlson and all his disinformation.  Ultimately they will be arresting their political opponents like all self-respecting banana republics.

So what does fighting for our values look like?  Can we not use our constitutional framework to constrain our burgeoning banana republic?  Well, all banana republics have constitutions.  And all banana republics ignore their respective constitutions.  Antonin Scalia reminded us that a constitution is a mere parchment guarantee, easily ignored, especially with single-party rule.  When there is concentration of power in one person or in one party, Scalia says...when that happens, the game is over.  He was referring to the constitutional process.

So here's the real question:  Is our constitutional process over?  You must decide for yourself.  Many good conservatives will argue that of course, it's not over.  The conservative tendency is to follow and fulfill our constitutional mandates.  The problem with this thinking is that it does not appreciate how much animosity there is for the Constitution on the left.  Obama called it a charter of negative liberties.  They hate the constraints it places on government.  And you know, of course, without such constraints, the left could use government to usher in a new utopia.  So, many left-of-center types would be thrilled to scrap it.  You've heard the arguments:  Replace it with a modern, living constitution.  What they really want is a constitution more malleable to their ever-changing whims.

Whims masquerading as policy goals.  But don't make the mistake of assuming that the left cares about policy.  They only care about policy insofar as it helps them achieve and maintain power.  Good policy is not the goal; power is the goal.  Lofty-sounding policy is only a tool.  If they make a policy mess, so be it.  Look at healthcare, look at the economy, look at immigration, look at our foreign policy.  So what the left really wants is a constitution that helps them achieve and maintain power.  A constitution that allows them to do as they please.  Short of this, the left is more than happy to simply ignore the current Constitution.

Here's my point:  The conservative tendency to adhere to a constitution that the left ignores has led us to where we are today.  If the left is in charge of both the executive and the legislative branches of our government, and has fully politicized the Department of Justice, and is willing to use armed government agents as political operatives, all the while provided cover by a complicit press, and if they are willing to simply ignore the Constitution, then yes, the constitutional process is over.

Ignoring the constitution is the hallmark of a banana republic...

All this to ask conservatives this question:  In a banana republic, what is the process for transfer of power?  Because that is how we will have to fight for our values.  That is the only other path.

We must deploy Banana Republic Rules.

Fans of John Le Carré will recognize the terminology.  In his 1979 classic, Smiley's People, Moscow Rules refer to tactics to be deployed in the most dangerous theaters.  Here, I simply mean that if your opponent is the government of a banana republic, you have to fight with a different set of rules.

I'll let the reader define these for himself, but clearly they are necessarily extraconstitutional.

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