We all have our heroes — and that’s a healthy thing when looking up to them elevates us. Hero-worship is something else entirely. As I said in my doc that took on the entire country 10 years ago:
America has gone totally off the rails in its worship of the wildly undeserving — and that includes the so-called Rock Star running the show right now.
— Richard W. Memmer: Epilogue
While I had Obama and Bush primarily in mind — my message was about that behavior no matter who it is. We’ve become a country that’s way too easily accepting of those who speak to us. Politicians and pundits are not gods. When you treat them as such — you do a cosmic disservice to them, yourselves, the country, and the world as well. Look around! If they were the genuine article — they’d be pushing you to make a habit out of welcoming challenge:
Not just endlessly pointing out the opposition’s flaws while unconscionably ignoring your own.
And lo and behold, guess who’s a master at molding your mind into mush by doing exactly that (all the why acting as though you’re a bastion of virtue):
I couldn’t agree more
But there’s another reason why so many people misunderstand so many issues. Professional know-it-alls like you pull stunts like this while peddling lines like that as cover . . .
To whitewash your record of patently obvious hypocrisy and lies. What would you call someone who shoots their mouth off without addressing the evidence — but banks on their fabricated reputation to create the impression that they did?
In the follow-the-facts fantasyland he manufactured for his followers: Sowell is worshipped as some kind of saint-like Sherlock Holmes. Disciples drape themselves in fancy quotes to float that magically wipe away his misdeeds at a moment’s notice.
About that hero-worship
I wish a buck was still silver
It was back when the country was strong
Merle’s sorrowful song has an uplifting twist at the end, and without that final 45 seconds — you’d miss the meaning of the message. The underlying meaning in mine:
Your beliefs should be backed by your record. I’m old-fashioned that way.
In John Wayne: The Life and Legend, the author relays a story about The Duke growing up as Marion Robert Morrison — and how every day he rode eight miles to elementary school on a horse named Jenny.
No matter how much he fed his horse, Jenny was still too thin.
Some ladies in town took notice of what they perceived as malnutrition and reported his family to the Humane Society. After a vet examined the horse it was diagnosed to have a disease and eventually they had to put her down. On top of losing his beloved horse, Marion was understandably unhappy with how he was treated:
[A] sense of outrage over being falsely accused never left him. “I learned you can’t always judge a person or a situation by the way it appears on the surface,” he remembered. . . .
“You have to look deeply into things before you’re in a position to make a proper decision.”
This nation has no such notion
But all’s fair in The March of Folly and fraud on the The Yellow Brick Road — the path of America’s predictably counterproductive pursuits.
Where systematic oversimplification has taken over to the point where inconvenient correlations are condemned as convoluted. And any attempt to have a conversation on issues that clearly call for careful consideration — is hijacked by baseless beliefs beaten into your brain as bedrock fact. From decades of being increasingly accommodating of liars aligned with your interests:
You kept lowering the bar — and now there is no bar.
Taking on the entire country by myself is worlds away from what everyone else is doing. Explaining America’s decline from decades of dishonesty and systematic self-delusion in the Gutter Games of Government: Is apples & oranges as it gets when compared to the transactional nature of news and social-media norms. Understanding how seemingly unrelated events impact one another takes time and effort to digest.
You are being conditioned to do the exact opposite in a nation that never learns.
Speaking of the King of the Wild Frontier:
In the book: DUKE, We’re Glad We Knew You: John Wayne’s Friends and Colleagues Remember His Remarkable Life — in the forward is a 1979 article that includes the following:
To him a handshake was a binding contract. When he was in the hospital for the last time and sold his yacht, The Wild Goose, for an amount far below its market value, he learned the engines needed minor repairs. He ordered those engines overhauled at a cost to him of $40,000 because he had told the new owner the boat was in good shape.
Speaking of the worth of your word:
This 60-second scene from The Searchers squares with the quote above — and it’s at the bedrock of my beliefs (backed by my lifelong record to boot).
“I Told Ya, Didn’t I!”
John Wayne was also a jerk on some of his stances. But it’s ludicrous to waste time and effort on purity tests about the past that do nothing but poison the present and cripple the future. Like the Left, the Right has gone out of its mind:
But they’re right on the money on the impossibly stupid pampering of woke.
“It is widely recognized that racist symbols produce lasting physical and psychological stress and trauma particularly to Black communities, people of color and other oppressed groups,” the resolution says, adding that Orange County is more diverse than it was when the airport was christened under Wayne’s name in 1979.
Lemme tell you what else is “widely recognized” — you’re being played (and always have been). I’m not defending The Duke, I’m defending sanity. There’s a lot to be said for the totality of one’s life — and the Left has lost its way in abandoning that idea right along with their intellect. Whatever gains you get by aimless protests, removing monuments, renaming airports, and other concocted outrage you come up with — those gains will be offset untold times over.
And already have been . . .
It’s equally absurd to inflate someone’s record as it is to taint the totality of it for political correctness.
John Wayne was 34 years old when the attack on Pearl Harbor shocked the nation. And when the U.S. declared war, Wayne rushed to sign up for active duty. The patriot John Wayne was overwhelmed with despair when informed that he was both too old to fight, and under contractual obligations to the studio — which would keep him out of combat.
That — is Grade-A Horseshit!
[R]ushed to sign up for active duty . . . overwhelmed with despair . . . too old to fight . . . under contractual obligations
They’re either lying or incredibly sloppy in their research.
Pick one
Either way — if they’re willing to produce such shoddy work on something as uneventful as The John Wayne Story, what do you think passes for accuracy on matters of importance? And this is precisely how the media molds your perception — by wildly oversimplifying issues and leaving out anything that doesn’t fit.
To tell the truth on Wayne’s reluctance to serve when his career was kicking into gear — complicates the narrative.
Recognizing complicated issues is what this country desperately needs. Appreciating complexity sharpens the mind and simplifies problem solving — as it cuts through the crap that narrow-minded narratives create.
What do you think I’m saying with these black & white outfits below?
A young man sittin’ on the witness stand
The man with the book says “Raise your hand”
“Repeat after me, I solemnly swear”
The man looked down at his long hair
And although the young man solemnly swore
Nobody seemed to hear anymore
And it didn’t really matter if the truth was there
It was the cut of his clothes and the length of his hair
What is Truth
Sowell is possibly the most fascinating and productive scholar in the world. I say that not as a junior colleague of Sowell (I am a mere 69), but as someone who has studied his work for 44 years.
His scholarship covers a wide range of issues: income inequality, ethnic differences in economic performance, economic geography, poverty and economic growth, the destructive effects of the welfare state, the effects of affirmative action, the role of knowledge and information in decisions, incentives within the political system and within academia, and, more recently, the performance of charter schools.
What can we establish on the bit above?
First off, he’s heavily invested in seeing Sowell in the light that those 44 years have shown him. Secondly, “the role of knowledge and information in decisions” is on the table. Seems like evidence claimed as components for building a nuclear bomb (to manufacture a war in the Middle East in the aftermath of 9/11) — qualifies for consideration, don’t ya think?
The one constant on display through all these topics is an irrepressible mind digging through the data in order to understand the complex reality underneath. His intellectual process, plus his ability to write quickly, have resulted in dozens of books and hundreds upon hundreds of newspaper columns that have helped many of us learn.
— Professor Henderson
And about that “ability to write quickly”:
It’s not that difficult when you leave everything out that matters!
Professor Henderson supposedly likes to learn — so shedding light on Sowell with new information should be welcomed by someone touting “the role of knowledge and information in decisions.” His findings for 44 years shaped his solidified perception of Sowell — but what if he only went looking for what he wanted to find?
Secondly, “the one constant” . . .
Does not strike me as a claim that comes with caveats. Does this book cover imply he’s a Maverick only on the pages within? Of course not, it’s suggesting a way of life — and no rational person would argue otherwise.
Just as no rational person would contort the definition of “constant” by restricting it to the domain that isolates Sowell’s history to what serves you:
I focused on the issues where he really did dig through the data.
By that standard, I can isolate O.J. Simpson’s character to the football field and ignore that little matter of murder. So, we’ve gone from “irrepressible mind digging through the data” to “I just meant where he really did.”
A.K.A. Changing the Rules:
Right on cue | Never fails
Sowell had his own moves in mind . . .
Funny how none of ’em went anywhere near the evidence on WMD or anything else on that fiasco for the ages.
Just how much of an “Intellectual Giant” could you be and blow it on something this big and glaringly obvious? This isn’t about intelligence, it’s about ulterior motives. But wouldn’t an intellectual giant have the foresight to see the inherent holes in his motives? That however well-intentioned they might be, catastrophic consequences tend to come with endless lying and ineptitude.
Not to mention the poison of partisanship to absolve it all — running the nation into the ground while you’re at it.
The Right wants the Left and the black community to get its act together on matters deeply woven into the fabric of America’s long history of brutality and disgrace: Slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, murder, decades of civil rights violations, questionable shootings, and so on.
While the Right won’t even look at the material properties of a tube. What’s wrong with that picture — and this one?
Hmm, so the dimensions exactly match the tubes used in Iraq’s history of manufacturing the Nasser-81 mm artillery rocket (a reverse-engineered version of the Italian Medusa)
My surgical specificity in this clip puts this lie in its place in 5 minutes alone. As I said, I’m not out to “DESTROY” Sowell. But lemme put it in terms you’ll understand: If he stepped into a debate with me on this matter, the beating he’d take would be biblical.
If you think you can challenge me on that, I invite you to try. I’ve been inviting you for a really long time.
Trillion Dollar Tube
To take a story this complex and convoluted and boil its essence down to a few minutes was no small feat:
Imagine what I did with 160
“There is no skimming over the surface of a subject with [Hamilton]. He must sink to the bottom to see what foundation it rests on.”
— Major William Pierce (Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton)
Wouldn’t it be absurd to share that quote if my clip contained nothing but trite talking points? Some circles are not burdened by squaring their walk with their talk. They seem to think that advertising virtue equates to embodying it.
Case in point
People who talk glibly about “intelligence failure” act as if intelligence agencies that are doing their job right would know everything.
— Thomas Sowell
D.O.E’s standard is to spin a tube at 20% above 90,000 RPM before failure — so 48,000 short is a pretty loose definition of “rough indication.”
And since the entire point of testing should be to replicate the conditions of centrifuges, one would think that the full-blown testing would be performed before the N.I.E. was completed.
— Richard W. Memmer: Act II
Between Sowell’s words and mine
Which ones strike you as glib?
That the reaction is not to think it through, not to question, not to assemble facts, not to make arguments — but instead to wave banners and spout slogans such that you could hardly distinguish what they were doing from a manifesto that would come out of [does it matter?]
— Glenn Loury, Tucker Carlson Today
When the context suits you, such words are solid gold. What you do when it doesn’t — determines the worth of your word.
Ripping on woke is all the rage . . .
And outrage industries of dish it but can’t take it — would talk about race and responsibility till the end of time. But heaven forbid we have a single conversation about war and responsibility.
Consequences matter or should matter more than some attractive or fashionable theory.
— Thomas Sowell
I couldn’t agree more
Except there were no consequences on the fiasco for the ages driven by this manifesto: The outcome of which fashioned a culture of no consequences.
At what point does it dawn on you and your beloved genius — that blind loyalty to that cause would be colossally counterproductive to your others? I’m not brilliant and I figured that out all by myself. The Right treating Bush like the Second Coming of Christ — set the stage for the rise of the Rock Star they spent the next 8 years railing against.
That doesn’t strike me as sound strategy. Dumb, dishonest, and delusional wars don’t either.
Nice work!
Two themes emerge from [Professor Henderson’s] writing: (1) that the unintended consequences of government regulation and spending are usually worse than the problems they are supposed to solve.
— Hoover Institution
But spending and unintended consequences didn’t cross your mind on this multi-trillion-dollar fiasco for the ages? And with all the wisdom in Sowell’s fancy quotes to float:
This “intellectual giant” couldn’t see that coming either?
Sowell’s hailed as a folk hero for calling out problems he helped create (and takes no responsibility for any of it).
A lot of that goin’ around
Shallow thinkers do not think beyond the immediate and the observable. They usually take information at face value and only look at immediate consequences. They are not capable of looking at all sides of an issue or think deeply about the issue before making decisions or drawing conclusions . . .
They also believe that their opinion is based on deep thinking because they genuinely believe that their opinion is based on truth and facts. Whereas, deep thinkers look at the whole sequence of events and the consequences.
When we dig deeper, we understand better. We can compare different outcomes, examine, tear apart, and make cognizant judgments that are derived from different mental models.
Left and Right
I’ve yet to find a single person who digs beyond the depth of their immediate domain of interest. In our entirely transactional times, America endlessly rehashes topics of today — never once considering the totality of events that created them (or even having a notion of the need to).
With the issues I address — you might as well be saying the Civil War wasn’t germane to the assassination of Lincoln.
[D]eep thinkers look at the whole sequence of events and the consequences.
There was a time when we did
Which do you think is more valuable? Me telling you what’s going on in that image or you working it out for yourself (and asking questions on anything unclear)? Even if I told you, it wouldn’t be compelling without seeing the story behind it:
And how it it all connects to everything you see in our society today.
I have no idea why this painting sold for $300 million in 2015. But I do know that I’m wildly unqualified to know. You don’t have to be qualified in order to have an opinion about whether you like something or not. But when you haven’t trained your mind to understand what you might be missing, you’re in no position to be the arbiter of truth on the value of the work before you.
I had a choice between Art or Music Appreciation at Purdue. I made a mistake — as I’ve always wished I would have taken both. The image above is to the boxset of cassettes from that course. I learned to listen in ways well beyond music. Alas, we live in a nation that never listens and never learns. And yet, the more you refuse to — the more I continue to.
And the story below
Is a conduit through which to tell the story above.
So you found one small crack in Sowell’s character where he defended Iraq having WMD, does that hurt his credibility?
This man muddied the waters of debate to serve himself: On a little matter of war in the Middle East in the aftermath of 9/11. On top of unconscionably ignoring irrefutable evidence of world-altering consequence, he has a habit of toeing the party line. Not only did Sowell flagrantly fail to follow the facts on all-things Iraq — he brazenly ignored the debauchery in his own party to politely pounce on the other.
In light of his history being wildly out of sync with his sanctimonious claims: That “one small crack” is a wide-open window into his character and credibility.
I wouldn’t care if Sowell cured cancer:
You don’t get a pass for basking in baseless beliefs that cripple the country — and have the bottomless nerve to preach responsibility & accountability to boot. That is a cancer of its own. The poison he pumped into the atmosphere helped destroy the internal organs of America. So we have very different standards as to what qualifies as a “National Treasure.”
At every turn . . .
The faithful tap dance around reality — oily evading anything that requires them to hold Sowell to his own standards.
Hard to Imagine:
That I have to explain that quote to people who seemingly live to flood the internet with his words.
He and his flock incessantly complain about the media — and they don’t make policy. But the second I scrutinize Sowell — suddenly you have new standards.
180 — how fitting
One Voice Became Two 