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I have been writing this column, off and on, mostly on, for–dear God, can it be nearly thirty years? Yet nothing lasts forever, neither columns nor columnists, and Fred on Everything, for unexpected reasons with which I will not bore the reader, has reached its end. (more…)
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Consider two children, white, boys, growing up in contented middle-class families in the same suburb of Washington, DC, equally bright, popular, successful with girls, and so on. One becomes a growling conservative, the other a chirping liberal (I think of them as woofers and tweeters). Why the difference in outcome? A likely explanation, or so it seems to me, is that political orientation is innate or, as we would say today, a result of genetic predisposition. (more…)
Street, Shanghai, a few years ago. China ain’t what it used to be. Getting rid of Mao did the trick. PhredFoto
Street, Shanghai, a few years ago. China ain’t what it used to be. Getting rid of Mao did the trick. PhredFoto
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Ages ago, for reasons I no longer remember, I was wandering across Asia and decided to spend some time in Taiwan. The Chinese interested me, and Taiwan was then as close as it was practical to get. Then, as now, the Chinese were thought by many to be exotic, inscrutable, devious, and unlike normal people such as ourselves. You know, opium dens, dragon ladies, assassinations by puff adder, that sort of thing. Given the importance of China today, the nature of these multitudinous people might bear thought. (more…)
Cartoon courtesy of CGTN.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
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Everybody and his dog is writing about the Trump conviction, so I guess I’ll add my few grains to the sand pile. Otherwise I’d kill something, preferably a New York judge. Or several of them.
On the observable principle that each succeeding President is worse than his predecessor, Biden has, barely, taken the title for godawful worthlessness and foreign-policy bafflement. But the question is not whether Trump has the morals of a politician, or whether he and some porn queen made the beast with two backs. How many readers would have done the same, given a shot at Stormy? (more…)
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
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I wonder how many Americans quite understand what the United States is facing in its aggressive confrontation with China. Washington clearly prepares the public for another unnecessary war. Given America’s routine defeat in war and catastrophic miscalculations in fighting small powers, picking a fight with what, increasingly, is again becoming the Middle Kingdom seems less than bright. (more…)
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Donald Trump, always interesting if not obsessively cogent, says that he will deport perhaps 20 million illegal aliens if again elected. Can he? Legally, of course, Trump is in the right. The illegals are in the country illegally and the law clearly says that they may be deported. Polls show that a great many Americans favor the idea. The question is one of practicality. (more…)
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I enjoyed Fred Reed’s April 24 essay “Ignorance, Its Uses and Nurture,” which refers to universal suffrage in anything larger than a small town as a “crackpot” idea. In a mere thousand words, Reed painted the American public as entirely incapable and unqualified to understand United States foreign policy, let alone vote on it. Therefore, he concludes, the entire democratic system is a sham. Yes, the statistics he presents bolster his point admirably. But maybe not as much as epic burns such as this one: (more…)
An Estonian ID card inserted into a digital ID reader. Estonia has been using digital ID since 2018. Photo courtesy of Flickr.
An Estonian ID card inserted into a digital ID reader. Estonia has been using digital ID since 2018. Photo courtesy of Flickr.
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How time flies, said Fred with scintillating originality. When I was a young lad in rural Virginia in the mid-Sixties, the only thing digital was the local drive-in movie, known colloquially as the Finger Bowl. Now the world runneth over with bits and bytes and screens and all. Regarding which: (more…)
Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
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Democracy may not be the silliest idea concocted by man but, for anything larger than a small town, it is crackpot. It consists in the idea that a public, on average knowing almost nothing, can choose leaders in popularity contests among provincial lawyers who know little more and are required to know nothing, except how to get elected.
In a democracy, this ignorance is both a protected quality, such as motherhood, and a valued resource. By common consent, the ruled do not look too closely at the mentality of elected rulers, and the rulers speak solemnly of the wisdom of the people, who have none. (more…)
Photo courtesy of SHYCITYNikon on Flickr.
Photo courtesy of SHYCITYNikon on Flickr.
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For years I worked as police reporter for the Washington Times, spending long hours in squad cars in various cities getting to know cops well. Now I listen to nice white people in the suburbs, and self-assured voices from National Public Radio (NPR), talking about the police. They know nothing of the world where the police work. (more…)
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If you are a young man wondering what to do with your life, you may consider enlisting in the military. Don’t. Yes, the military has its appeal, or seems to. You may need a job. The uniform looks good. There can be adventure. You might get laid by Asian lovelies in foreign countries. These things have their appeal. They did for me as a young Marine. (more…)
An everyday street scene in Guadalajara. (Photo courtesy of Ted McGrath on Flickr.)
An everyday street scene in Guadalajara. (Photo courtesy of Ted McGrath on Flickr.)
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Being as I am a creature of little judgement and less discrimination, I have friends both woke and White Nationalist. These being hypergolic, I have to keep them separated so they don’t leave each other’s body parts on my rug. (more…)