Blog Fundraising Week Begins

It’s been one helluva year. Our first year with a cognitively impaired president and with a vice president who acts like a giggly schoolgirl has seen the nation continue its descent into stupid.

Among that many posts on this blog I recall a recent post about a German resistance fighter during the Hitler era. A Lutheran clergyman, Dietrich Bonhoeffer declared that:

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than evil.

For that the good pastor gave his life.

In today’s America we are continuing our descent into stupid. The most important word in the press this year has not been vaccine; it has been “misinformation” or perhaps “disinformation.”

In a republic inhabited by intelligent citizens, all information would be available. People can decide for themselves what they want to believe or disbelieve. Such are the workings of the free market in ideas.

Yet, now we have arrived at the point where our overlords in Silicon Valley decide what we can and cannot hear. If you disagree, you will be censored or shut down. If they cannot shut you down. they will accuse you of being a purveyor of lies and misinformation. And they shut down accounts, shadow ban you and otherwise accuse you of crimes against whomever.

Evidently, those of us who care about ideas and about free debate have stood up to keep the conversation open. I have on this blog tried to highlight the work of those on the right and the left who have refused to be silenced or cowed by the tech titans.

But, that is not all.

This year saw the great American meritocracy take more decisive steps toward becoming an idiotocracy. Corporate chieftains prescribed diversity training by two notable idiots, Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DeAngelo. Their books became best sellers, proving the point that more and more Americans had joined the ranks of the illiterati.

And then, of course, hiring decisions were not longer based on merit. They were based on considerations of diversity and inclusion. No one considered that we had been doing this for decades now—where has it gotten us?

And then of course the year has seen parents, especially suburban mothers, rise up in anger against school boards across America. In part they were protesting the indoctrination in critical race theory that has infested their children’s learning experience. But, in larger part, they were expressing their horror at the fact that the schools were not teaching math and science, literature and history. School systems, run by brain dead bureaucrats and teachers’ unions were trying to dumb down the population and to deprive America of its future.

If some children were underachieving the solution was to make all other children stupid.

Amazingly, and brazenly, the Attorney General of the Biden Administration, one Merrick Garland, decided to sic the FBI on these suburban mothers. Obviously, the most recent elections offered an opportunity for people to strike back.

Of course, this has been going on for decades now. American schools are not serious institutions. Didn’t we recently discover that something like 70% of the workers in Silicon Valley were educated in foreign countries, especially in China. Walk through the halls of Facebook, Kenny Xu explained, and you will hear people speaking Mandarin.

So, you can ask whether America is still a serious country. New York Times columnist Tom Friedman stirred up a hornet’s nest when he declaimed against our inability to build high speed trains. In response people said that we do not need trains any more, and besides that China was using slave labor.

And yet, such conveyances have been working in Europe for decades, and they do not use slave labor.

Friedman notwithstanding, a serious country would have ports that can efficiently unload cargo container ships. Such is not the case in today’s America. The port of Shanghai, to take an obvious example, is five times more efficient than the port of Long Beach, California. Are we still a serious country?

And then there is climate change hysteria. The Biden administration is shutting down gas pipelines and has tamped down on energy exploration, oil drilling on federal lands and fracking. The result has been more inflation, point that has been lost on the Biden administration. It takes a special kind of stupid to base policy on hysterical adolescent rants about the pending climate apocalypse. And yet, we do not debate the issue. Our philosopher kings insult those who refuse to accept the current dogma. 

American youth cannot qualify for jobs in Silicon Valley. But they are convinced of the pending climate catastrophe and are perfectly willing to shut down industry and transportation to achieve their goals.

The best yet has been reports about what is called Gen Z. The under-25 generation is now entering the workforce and their managers are appalled at what they are seeing. The product of America’s education system they are insolent brats who can barely do any job, but who are happy to correct their managers’ pronouns.

So, we have dumbed down America. It has been ongoing for decades now. It is not a happy picture. This blog, among others has been fighting the good fight to turn the tide. Hopefully, with your support.

Of course, all of this by way of a request for donations to this blog. I have been trying to keep readers abreast of the decline and fall of American intellectual life, and of the degradation of our school system, not to mention our political debate. 

And I have even kept you informed about the latest from the psycho world, yet another space where ignorance reigns and where people are more inclined to feel than to think. 

I have been writing daily posts on this blog for some thirteen years now. I trust that you find that praiseworthy. Obviously, it takes time and work to do the job, and I could not have done it without the financial support of you, the readers.

If you believe that this blog has earned your financial support, you can contribute by clicking on the orange Donate button, on the left side of this page. The folks at Paypal will help you to contribute as much as you would like. You can make a one time holiday contribution or a monthly contribution.

And, you can also contribute by doing your Christmas shopping at Amazon. If you enter the Amazon site by clicking the Amazon ad at the left of this page, a percentage of each purchase price will be credited to your humble blogger. Thus, you can support the blog-- at no extra cost to you.

If you do not wish to use Paypal, I gratefully accept checks or cash sent to my address:

            310 East 46^th St. 24H

            New York, NY   10017

Since this is a week-long fundraising campaign, I will be repeating this post several times throughout the week. Be prepared.