Lift Up Your Hearts!

I saw it most dramatically in the Democratic Party's response to President Biden's debate performance, this total disconnect with reality, followed by an abrupt and dizzying volte face. How could they not have known about his cognitive decline, which had been obvious for years, and why was it so suddenly a matter of national panic? (I've already written about that.)

When it comes to our country's economic situation, the same phenomenon has occurred. We go for years and years of ever-increasing prices, obvious to anyone who does his own grocery shopping, or fills up his own gas tank, or has to find his own place to live, and the government officials tasked with keeping us informed insisted there was no inflation, could be no inflation, inflation was a thing of the past.

Jobs? They insisted that unemployment was down, and job creation up. The people knew better—we knew that high-paying jobs were still going away; it was low-paying service jobs that made up the bulk of the deceptive numbers. We knew that what looked like good employment numbers was actually people taking on second or third low-paying jobs in order to make ends meet.

We were told again and again that the job market is good, there's no inflation, and the economy is robust. But with a reversal as sudden as the evaluation of the state of President Biden's mental faculties, inflation is now a critical problem, the unemployment numbers are frightening, and the economy needs to be saved. (By the same people who have been managing it for almost four years now?)

How is it that there is now panic over something that so many of us have been worried about for years? Where have these people been?

(As an aside, how is it that Vice President Harris thinks we should trust her to "fix" the housing problem, when she bears responsibility for adding nearly 10 million people to the population pressure of those who need housing?)

That's a long introduction to this video interview, from August, with Jeremy Tucker. He has a good grasp of economic theory and reality, and is worth listening to. However, it is long (over an hour), as too many interviews are. There is a full transcript below the video, for those who prefer text.  Here's an introduction:

Just one set of numbers, released on Friday morning, showing a small increase in the unemployment rate, completely shifted the attitude in Washington, Wall Street, and the mainstream media. We went from celebrating a booming economy and the absence of inflation to suddenly believing that a recession is probably already here. The world seems to be falling apart, and panic selling begins. It’s an overreaction, to say the least. First, the data is already a month old, so the recession didn’t just happen on Friday. It was from the previous month. Secondly, the numbers weren’t particularly bad compared to the past. It has been obvious to me and many others for at least two years, if not longer, that we never fully recovered from the lockdown period. Worker participation ratios and labor participation rates are still below 2019 levels.

When we analyze the jobs data, we see a growing gap between the household survey and business payrolls, indicating potential double counting in the establishment survey. This gap never existed before, but now it’s widening. It’s becoming more extreme, with one set of data dropping and the other rising. This has been happening for several months over the past year.

Additionally, there have been revisions to the jobs data every month. For example, they would initially report 220,000 jobs, but then revise last month’s 190,000 jobs down to only 90,000 jobs. Where did those jobs go? It seemed like all the jobs were being pushed forward a month and taken out of the previous month’s count. There have been illusions in the data all along. I lost interest in the headline unemployment numbers because they don’t include discouraged workers or account for people who have dropped out of the workforce. The unemployment data only counts those who are actively looking for jobs and can’t find one. While that number may be relatively low, it doesn’t mean a healthy job market.

In other words, the job market has not been healthy for a very long time. There was something that shattered the psychology of denial on Friday morning. It had something to do with Wall Street and the attachment of Main Street Media to the headline unemployment number. Once that news broke, everything else crumbled, and suddenly someone shouted, “There’s an elephant in the room!” and chaos ensued.

That's only a taste. Even the transcript is long, and technical in places, but is a good introduction to the sleight-of-hand that our government has been using to play with the economic numbers on which so much depends. And not just the current administration, either, though it's increasingly egregious.

(Part 1) (Part 2)

Rescue the Republic—Join the Resistance

It's almost here!

Rescue the Republic: Join the Resistance will run from 12pm-7pm on Sunday, September 29th. 

The stage will be located northeast of the WWII Memorial (east of 17th Street) and open viewing will extend all the way to the Washington Monument. The program will consist of a mix of musical artists, comedians and thought leaders who alternate in a fast-paced program.

I have too much going on to sit glued to the livestream tomorrow, but I hope to check in now and then, and then listen later when I can.

Why am I a bit nervous? Because this is so important to me, and I know that (1) large events, especially ones about which people may have strong feelings, attract bad actors and false flag operations; (2) petty thugs without any political feelings whatsoever are tempted by crowds of any sort to engage in unpleasant activities; and (3) even the best of audiences can sometimes be swept along by irrational action. (I believe that when President Trump stood up after the Pennsylvania assassination attempt, showing himself alive and well to the crowd, that action was a major factor in keeping both fear and anger—and likely more injury—to a minimum in the crowd.)

Why am I so excited about this? Excited enough that despite my intense dislike of crowds, I wish I could be a part of it? Because for the first time in many years I am feeling the unity in diversity I experienced so many times in my younger days, when I was a part of several minority movements that attracted people of a wide variety of political, social, religious, and demographic backgrounds. People who enjoyed and learned from each other as we worked together for a good cause that was more important to us than our differences. I miss that, a lot. And among the people who are participating in this rally—many of whom I would never have thought I would have rubbed shoulders with, even metaphorically—I'm finding the same joy.

In the following clip, if you listen from 1:09:10 to 1:24:25 (15 minutes) you will hear Bret Weinstein, one of the organizers, acknowledging the risks of holding such a rally, and expounding on the critical importance of the potential benefits. Please listen, especially if you are feeling fed up with the whole political process and are tempted to sit this election out.

Is this taking sympathy too far?    Porter after MOHS surgery this morning.

The following is from CNN. If you want the information from a news outlet with a different political perspective, you can easily find it. It is essentially the same wherever I look, with varying degrees of concern being expressed but the same story.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN that Ukraine’s request to use long-range missiles on targets inside Russia is part of his “victory plan,” that he is due to present to US officials next week.

Zelensky has been pushing Ukraine’s allies to ease restrictions on weapons and although there have been signs of the US shifting its stance he said they are yet to be given the go-ahead.

“We do have long-range weapons. But let’s just say not the amount we need.” Zelensky said Friday, adding that “neither the US nor the United Kingdom gave us permission to use these weapons on the territory of Russia.”

Speaking to journalists, Zelensky blamed the allies’ hesitation to authorize such use on escalations fears.

Escalation fears? And rightly so! Zelensky wants us to authorize the use of American missiles to strike deep into the sovereign nation of Russia, and he thinks we shouldn't be concerned about how Putin would react?

How would we react if Putin should supply Cubans with missiles and authorize them to use those missiles on the United States? Oh, wait—haven't we seen this already? And avoided World War III by the skin of our teeth and the courage of a Russian Naval officer?

We have been overtly and dramatically poking the Russian bear over the Ukraine for more than two years, including crossing Russia's "red line" by encouraging NATO membership for Ukraine. Actually, we've been messing with Ukraine's politics for a lot longer than that, though most Americans (including me) only became aware of it in early 2022.

Are we so divorced from the natural world that we have forgotten how unwise it is to tease a bear? Let not the one who encourages another to repeatedly provoke a bear think that he himself will escape when the bear turns wrathful.

It is the height of hubris to believe that America can flirt with World War III and remain unscathed. I acknowledge that sometimes a wise, bold, and decisive move made in the right way at the right time can bring about a strategic victory, but that opportunity has passed. It's only my opinion, but for what it's worth, I believe Russia and the Ukraine could have worked out a settlement early on if we had not been encouraging Zelensky and the Ukrainians to believe they could actually win all they want from this war. It's true that a much larger power can sometimes be defeated by persistence on the part of the smaller party and indecisiveness on the part of the more powerful one (e.g. Vietnam and Afghanistan), but the cost—in lives, land, infrastructure, and resources—is unspeakably great. A prolonged war only enriches the wrong pockets.

Consider:

• The United States military is not in a position to win a direct war with Russia, without resorting to terrible—and illegal—weaponry. I'm sorry to say that, and I mean no disrespect to our military personel—at least at the lower levels; I think less of the top brass and the politicians who are making our biggest decisions. But we are insufficient in hardware, personnel, and morale. Our only hope is that Russia is worse off, which it likely is at this point, but that makes it all the more likely that Putin will step out of the bounds of conventional warfare.
• That part about being insufficient in personnel? Perhaps only one who has lived through years of military conscription, as I have, can truly understand the horrors of a draft, the internal damage it causes a nation, and the blessings of an all-volunteer military. I don't see an out-and-out war being fought, let alone won, without a march larger military than we have, and that means conscription. Are we prepared to sacrifice our sons (and likely, this time, our daughters) in a fight that never should have been ours in the first place, if there is any reasonable way it can be avoided?
• We are pouring untold billions of dollars into Ukraine aid, of which over 100 billion directly aids the Ukrainian government. (See this article from the Council on Foreign Relations for details.) Leaving aside all issues of how much is lining corrupt pockets, and how much is sleight of hand in which the U.S. is getting rid of outdated equipment in hopes of being able to replace it with newer technology, that's still an incredible amount of money that we don't actually have. We are saddling our children and grandchildren with an enormous debt burden that makes their impossible college debts look like pocket change. (Side question: Does anyone even have pocket change anymore?)
• Ignoring the critical point that we are spending money that's not ours, and the fact that a massive influx of governmental money often does more harm than good—still, what progress might we have made if we had spend even a small fraction of that (albeit nonexistent) money on (for example) clearing our air and water of dangerous chemicals; supporting childhood cancer research (woefully underfunded compared with other cancers); strengthening our national security by encouraging small farms and businesses, protecting our farmlands and natural resources, building up and protecting our infrastructure, and bringing critical manufacturing back to the United States? (I'm all for international trade, but not at the expense of our independence.)
• By our actions, we have forced Russia to strengthen their ties significantly with countries that view us as a common adversary, China and Iran in particular. That's not good. I'll take a trade war over a war with bombs any day.
• By our heavy involvement in the Ukraine, we have set our relations with the Russian people back decades. They may be upset with Putin for continuing this war, but for certain they are upset with America for what our sanctions have done to them. And rightly so. We had been booked for a visit to Russia in the fall of 2020, and I expected to experience the warm welcome that our friends had enjoyed on their own visits to the country. Thanks to the worldwide, ill-advised panic over the covid virus, that trip was postponed—and later cancelled because of the war. Even if we avoid WWIII, I don't foresee living long enough for relations between Russia and the United States to heal sufficiently for tourist traffic to resume. My father enjoyed his trip to Russia in 1993, when he was my age, and perhaps my grandchildren will have a chance in their later years; I hold no such hope for myself.
• How is it that we care so much about the border between Russia and the Ukraine and so little about the borders of our own country? Our fentanyl and organized crime crises alone are orders of magnitude more important to the American people than which country rules the Donbas.
• I'm starting to believe that the events that mean so much to me, brought home forcefully during our recent trips to Berlin (the Fall of the Berlin Wall) and Gdansk, Poland (the Solidarity Movement), did not please everyone in our country. There appear to be those who very much miss the excitement (and profit) of the Cold War days.

This coming Thursday, President Zelensky will meet with President Biden to push for a green light to send our long-range missiles into Russia.

Regardless of whatever your political opinions may be, if you are a praying person, please pray for this meeting, and for his additional meetings with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. I am more concerned about the possibility of unthinkable war than I have ever been—and I lived through the duck-and-cover days.

One of my favorite Substack people (Heather Heying, Natural Selections) wrote this in her article entitled, "It’s an Upside Down World, and You’re Living In It."

I used to be a Democrat. Two of the things that I did that felt democraty include:

I bought as much of my food as possible at farmer’s markets, and got to know the farmers who grew my food. I bought organic, and avoided GMOs. When given a choice, I bought food that was grown closer to how it had been before humans got involved—cows that had spent their lives grazing outside, coffee grown in the shade on farms with canopy trees, tomatoes and strawberries picked at perfect ripeness, transported as little as possible, eaten fresh and raw.

And I refused pharmaceuticals except when absolutely necessary—the notable exception being vaccines, which I barely questioned until Covid raised my awareness. Over the counter drugs were no better. The rule of thumb in our house was: the longer it’s been on the market, the more likely it is to be safe. Aspirin seemed like a pretty safe bet, as did some antibiotics, in moderation. Everything else? Buyer beware.

I still do these things. My behavior was always informed by an evolutionary understanding of the world, a fundamental preference for solutions that have stood the test of time (e.g. beef over lab-grown meat), and wanting as little corporate product and involvement in my life as possible. Such behavior just doesn’t seem democraty anymore. It seems like the opposite.

In response, I wrote the following.

For decades, I have been saying that the Republicans need to reinvent themselves as the party of human-scale life. Seeing Trump and Kennedy together call to Make America Healthy Again gives me more hope in that direction than I've had in a long time.

Your beautiful, healthy approach to living felt Democrat-y to you, but in my life it has always been embraced by a mixture of folks, from hippies to conservative Christians, who shared a love of what we saw rejected by mainstream society: children and family life; non-medicalized childbirth and homebirth; the critical importance of breastfeeding; independent and home education; the belief that children can be far more competent and responsible than we give them credit for; small businesses; small farms and natural foods; the superior flavor and health benefits of raw milk and juice, pasture-raised animals, and organically-grown fruits and vegetables; homesteading and preserving/restoring the land; reclaiming heritage breeds and seeds; and a deep concern for the environment that was called conservation before it was taken over and ruined by the environmentalist movement. 

If the Republican Party will truly embrace and fight for these values, I will in turn be thrilled to have finally become a Republican after 56 years a Democrat. The beginning of the end of my complacency with the Democratic Party was discovering the party's intense opposition to homeschooling—despite the fact that so many of the home education pioneers were radical liberals in their day.

Home education may have been the beginning of my disaffection, but the disconnect between the Democratic Party and the values I thought were their priorities became more and more obvious, accelerating at a most alarming rate, to the point where I agree with Dr. Heying again:

The democrats are claiming that they’re on the side of the little people. The only proper response to such claims is this: No. No you are not. Stop lying. And: No.

Republicans, this is your chance. Don't blow it by infighting, nor by sabotage from within. Reach out to the Independents and disaffected Democrats—like Dr. Heying, and RFK Jr., and Sasha Stone...and me—who are reaching out to you, willing—eager—to put aside our differences long enough to do the really hard work of seeking and saving that which is rapidly being lost.

Rescue the Republic—Join the Resistance

As promised, here is more about the Rescue the Republic rally. A graphic of their foundational ideals,

and the line-up of their speakers/entertainers. The link takes you to the whole list, of which I recognize and respect almost half. The bigger names include: Bret Weinstein, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Russell Brand, Jordan Peterson, Tulsi Gabbard, Charlie Kirk, Matt Taibbi, Robert Malone, Pierre Kory, and Heather Heying.

I'd love to hear them all, even the people I don't recognize. I'm expecting that their talks will be recorded and made available to those of us who can't be there. I confess to this weakness: I love live events if they're small and I can sit down while I'm listening; standing up in large crowds and listening over loudspeakers, less so.

Of course, the purpose of being there wouldn't be so much for the entertainment as to support the cause. But as I said, at least I bought the t-shirt. Unfortunately, it's not expected to be delivered till mid-October, so I'll have to show my support post-facto.

I'm not the kind of person who attends demonstrations, or pretty much any large-crowd events. I went to exactly one major rock concert in my life—Jefferson Airplane, at the Rochester War Memorial, when I was in college. I took it all in stride, but it certainly was not an experience I wished to repeat. When I lived in Philadelphia, I attended one Phillies game (in Connie Mack Stadium!), and one Sixers game, but if and when I attend sporting events, I much prefer smaller venues. Preferably with family members on the field.

In 1968, I stood in front of a movie theater with other Democrats and waved a sign and handed out flyers for Hubert Humphrey; about a decade later I joined other prolife demonstrators lining the streets of Rochester, holding signs and cheering the drivers as they expressed their solidarity. I'm pretty sure that was the extent of my activism; I mean, I was a college student in the early 70's, and never protested the Vietnam War, nor burned my bra, nor participated in a single sit-in! I was in college to learn, and hopefully not waste my parents' money and my time.

Large-group events, especially protests, can be dangerous places. You can find yourself unintentionally in the middle of a counter-demonstration with bad blood between participants. You could be caught up in a false-flag operation designed to cause trouble. If you were merely an open-mouthed spectator in Washington, DC on Epiphany, 2021, you could find yourself in jail, and if you were in Tiananmen Square at the wrong time in 1989, you could find yourself dead.

No thank you. Not my thing.

However, there have been two recent events that I really wished to attend in person. One, the Canadian truckers' Freedom Convoy and celebration/protest in the middle of a frigid Ottawa winter.

The other is yet to come: The Rescue the Republic - Join the Resistance event in Washington, DC on Sunday, September 29, 2024. That's only 10 days away!

No matter what you may think you know from mainstream media about the Freedom Convoy and subsequent events in Ottawa, I can pretty much assure you it is wrong. We watched hours and hours of Viva Frei's live, man-on-the-street coverage of every day of the Ottawa part of the event, and it was the most beautiful, most diverse, and most peaceful event I've ever seen or heard of. It was awe-inspiring, and I've given it a whole category to itself here.

The Rescue the Republic—Join the Resistance rally has the potential to be just as remarkable.

I have much to say about this event, such as the philosophy, the goals, the lineup, and what other people have had to say about it, but I'll space it out over several posts, hoping to avoid the TL;DR effect. If you're too curious to wait, there's a lot more at https://jointheresistance.org/.

Why is our Republic worth preserving? What is the West?

At its heart, it is an agreement to distribute opportunity as widely as possible. Today, the foundation that makes up the West is under attack. This moment demands radical change and requires liberals, conservatives, and independents of every color and creed to unify to rescue the West.

Let’s come together to celebrate the essence of what makes America and the West so special. A message of peace, love and unity is at the heart of this celebration.

Rescue the Republic: Join the Resistance will kick off at 12pm on Sunday, September 29th.

The stage will be located northeast of the WWII Memorial (east of 17th Street) and open viewing will extend all the way to the Washington Monument. The program will consist of a mix of musical artists, comedians and thought leaders who alternate in a fast-paced program.

Barring some extraordinary, unexpected event, we won't be able to be there in person, even though I'm pretty sure that if we lived in the DC area I'd conquer my aversion to crowds to be part of what I hope to be a great moment in history. At least I've done the really important part already:

I bought the t-shirt.

C. S. Lewis said it best:

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.

There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world, it is pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We are on the wrong road. And if that is so, we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.

I've started a new category, which I've called "Heroes." Here's the first post. It's not the most important, but it's the first—so I guess it is the most important until I post the next one. Not all heroes carry swords; not all die pulling children from burning buildings. Some just do what they know they have to do, and take the consequences.

This is the story of Andrew Klavan (14 minutes). He's one of the multitude of entertainment culture characters that I've never heard of; from the long list of his books and screenplays, I know that's my fault and not his. Two things stand out to me as he recounts his experiences in Hollywood: (1) His calm but firm refusal to compromise his ethical beliefs despite the threat of great financial loss, and (2) Whatever wise decisions (unnamed) that he made in advance of his time of trial that buttressed his resolve not to give in, through confidence that he and his family could weather the economic storm.

In the mad scramble to establish whether or not immigrant families are eating people's pets and wild ducks and geese in parks, the obvious answer is being ignored: Of course they are! What world are you living in if you think they can't be?

After the United States retreated ignobly from Southeast Asia, we were flooded with refugees from that part of the world. "Flooded" is a relative word; the numbers I can find vary, but it appears that it was around 125,000 people before we closed our doors except for the purpose of reuniting families. Which, of course, is a trickle compared with the multiple millions of people coming in now, from all over the world.

There were naturally plenty of difficulties settling so many Southeast Asian refugees and integrating them into our communities, but there were some significant differences between then and now that made that process generally successful. 

• Sheer numbers, obviously.
• Comparatively speaking, their entrance into this country was well-regulated.
• As refugees were brought here, they were sponsored by families, churches, and other groups that took responsibility for helping individual refugee families find places to stay, gain employment, learn or improve their English, navigate paperwork, and get their children enrolled in schools. In addition to that, the sponsors provided much-needed friendly relationships, often long-lasting, in an alien and frightening environment.
• Their presence in our country was clearly legal, greatly reducing the refugees' vulnerability to enslavement by gangs, pimps, unscrupulous employers, and crooked cops, lawyers, and judges.
• Again, the numbers. Small numbers of immigrants, relative to the population, can be assimilated and integrated into the host society without causing massive disruption. There is a difference between a summer storm and a category 5 hurricane.

What does this have to do with eating cats? Everything. Even with the relatively small, orderly, and successful assimilation of the "boat people" of Southeast Asia, people are human. They have problems. They lose their jobs, drop out of school, fall victim to unscrupulous predators, are tempted by illegal activities, or can't handle their money well. Especially as time goes on and the social safety net is not so focused and robust. And don't forget that while many of the Southeast Asian refugees were middle class workers who spoke English, many were also "country bumpkins" with no knowledge of Western culture. They weren't stupid people, but they were smart in their own culture; being dropped into an American city made them as vulnerable as I would be if I suddenly found myself in the jungles of Laos.

So some of them were hungry, and they did what hungry people do: they used the skills they had to find food. They fished in the rivers, not knowing and not caring that the rivers were polluted. The hungry belly does not concern itself with mercury levels. They discovered that squirrels abound in city parks, and squirrels make good eating—or so I'm told. Here, we rely on our local hawks to keep the squirrel population under control; back then, refugee families took care of that. I am not making this up.

If you flood an unprepared—and maybe unsuspecting—city with a large population of migrants who do not fit into the culture, who may not even speak the language, and who have no responsible sponsors to welcome them, some of them are going to be hungry. And they are going to do what they have to do to get food.

They're going to help themselves to ducks found conveniently living on city ponds. If they're hungry enough, they're going to eat cats without a second thought for whose pets they might be. Maybe they come from a culture that is too poor to imagine keeping pets and treating them like family members.

Of course they're going to eat pets, and whatever else they can find.

When Russia invaded the Ukraine, I was naturally on the side of the underdog. I was thrilled when our choir sang John Rutter's A Ukrainian Prayer, and was happy to see the Ukrainian flags displayed in many places on our cruise through France later that summer. (I was even happier when one of our tours walked right into the middle of a demonstration in support of the Canadian truckers' Freedom Convoy.)

But from the beginning I have never understood the hatred of Russia, and one of my first blog posts about the situation was Pray for Russia. We had been looking forward to a trip to St. Petersburg, especially after a friend told me how impressed she was with the friendliness of the Russian people and their gratitude (still!) for American help during World War II. Now it's abundantly clear that we won't live long enough for American-Russian relations to be sufficiently repaired to make such a visit possible.

Very early in the war, I spoke with a Swiss man who could not understand why the United States was involved, and supporting Ukraine so enthusiastically, as there wasn't that much difference between the two governments, and they were both horribly corrupt. I'm finally beginning to understand his point of view, and also that the United States was far from innocent in the Ukrainian corruption.

The Vietnam War was a big part of my young life, though none of our family members actually fought in that terrible (and probably worse than useless) war. Our involvement in the Ukraine is beginning to have an all-too-familiar smell and feel. This 30-minute interview with human rights lawyer Bob Amsterdam gives a peek into one of the dirty sides of the conflict.

This morning I posted Jordan Peterson's take on the disastrous fall from grace of America's once-trusted institutions:  government, academia, the media, and medicine.  By the time evening came around I had also found Jeremy Tucker's point of view, with similar conclusions. It's an Epoch Times article, so I'll quote a few paragraphs for you.

Several new polls have appeared that confirm what you suspected. Trust in medical authority and pharmaceutical giants, along with their core product, have hit new lows.

People were willing to go along [with the government's COVID policies], simply because most people presumed that there had to be something true about the fears or else leaders would not be saying and doing such things. Surely, too, if this fear was being exaggerated, certainly the medical profession would have been the first to blow the whistle. Instead, we saw media, medicine, government, and pharma all marching in lockstep as the economy was crushed and civil liberties were wrecked.

It seems strange and bitterly ironic that following the largest and most expensive public health intervention in human history that trust would have sunk so far and so dramatically and is unlikely to recover for a generation. That is a problem that needs addressing. It certainly cannot be swept under the carpet, and the dissidents certainly should no longer be treated as problems to silence.

The people who expressed grave doubts about lockdowns and vaccine mandates should be given a hearing and spotlight. They were correct when the entire establishment was wrong. We might as well admit it. That is the beginning of the restoration of trust.

I don't always understand Jordan Peterson, nor do I always agree him, but he is always interesting and makes me think. Here he manages to ponder the causes of anti-Trump extremism, the fears of Trump voters, the fundamental natural resource of Western civilization, and the terrifying erosion of trust he has observed over the last five years, all in three minutes.

Every person, every sermon, every book has something of value to offer to those who will listen with a discerning heart and mind. I am fond of repeating my own aphorism: The wise man recognizes truth even in the words of his enemies. How much more so in the rest of the world?

At the same time, we find ourselves attaching too much value to the words of people we admire. We have much to learn from those with whom we already agree on important issues, but at least with our "enemies" we know to be cautious. It is so human to want to find a path and stick with it, to find the "one right way" to approach a situation and shut our eyes to alternatives and to information that might contradict what we think we know. With complex issues, such as childrearing, health care, charitable giving, education, foreign policy, economics, even personal organization, rigidly following the advice of others often leads to disaster.

I'm not saying that there's no such thing as a "right path," nor that truth is subjective, as so many people want to insist—but that people, even the wisest, best-educated, and most experienced people, are still fallible human beings and make really lousy gods.

Our own knowledge, experience, and thoughts don't necessarily show us the right way, either, and for the same reason. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." Nonetheless, those are the tools we're given and we need to make the most of them.

Listen to others, seek many counsellors, be happy to learn from them—but never stop thinking for yourself. Make the effort to compare what others say with what you know from living your own life. After all, the day is coming, and now is, when those others might actually be "human bots" paid to spread falsehoods and stir up trouble, or AI (Artificial Intelligence or Automated Idiocy, take your pick) doing the same.