Entitlement

What would people like Madame Curie and Joan Johnson say of the entitlement, #metoo, and #timesup movements after looking back at how they arrived at where they got to in life?

After making it on their own, would any owner of a small family ethnic-owned business have a different outlook?

Would they view entitlement as a slap in the face after all their hard work to succeed?

Would they be offended being seen as "tokens"?

Would entitlement confer on "tokens" the same confidence as people who earned success?

Would the entitled feel equal to those who earned success rather than having it handed to them as a sop?

State of the Union

 The United States of Anger

We are mad as hell and not going to stand for it any longer!

Just what kind of mad are we?

Hold your hand over a dog's muzzle. Before long, it becomes mad and bites you. So, it is with people stifled by mask mandates, confinements, and asocial distancing. The only difference is a dog uses teeth where people use guns, knives, fists, cars, or anything that maimes or kills.

Or are we the kind of mad brought on delusion? Are we mad that others dare to disagree with the universal truths discernable only by oneself?

What happens when a dog that won't hunt corners frightened prey

A dog corners prey.

Prey reacts in one of two predictable ways:

Flight, retreating in any unpredictable direction of defensive of self-preservation.

Or:

Fight, lashing outward in any unpredictable direction of aggressive self-preservation.

We have a dog that won't hunt for a Congress that has cornered the American populace.

Its prey cowers, muzzled with nothing more secure than a cloth mask.

The prey has stopped whimpering and started to growl.

If this dog that won't hunt is too dumb to discern the difference, it may find itself prey.

Do the Right Thing

The right thing:

Impeach a president along party lines, then acquit along party lines.

Move to censure a sitting President's conduct, then lack the courage to pass a resolution allowing censure or reprimand.

Appear to be governing by conducting hearings, inquiries, and committee meetings.
Take action, accomplish nothing.

Etiquette redux

Office  of·​fice | \ ˈä-fəs  Noun  A place where we are on our worst behavior.
synonym: see  restaurant, public restroom, automobile, court room.

Nation Building

America is just no good at nation building.

The Philippines, the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, the Korean War, the humiliating helicopter exit from Viet Nam, the fall of the Shah of Iran, the Contras of Nicaragua, and Iraq weren't lesson enough. Each incident ended up building dictatorships or other undemocratic totalitarian regimes in the guise of republics. The closest thing to democracy these nation building missions managed to accomplish were banana republics.

Even within its own borders, nation building among native Americans has been a dismal failure. Instead of nations, Indian reservations have become synonymous with poverty, crime, and failure.

America has forgotten the foundation that it was built on. Colonial Americans grew fed up with remote foreign mismanagement of their domestic affairs which they had managed on their own since the first day the Old World left them stranded in the New World: us versus them.

We are longer the little guys battling big guy domination. US has morphed from the we into them.

What goes 'round comes 'round

Don't let your head be turned by compliments.

Today's accolade may be tomorrow's epithet.