Four essays on the madness of our times by John A. Shanahan

ESSAYS ON THE MADNESS OF OUR TIMES Gary Young March 27, 2021 1. THE BIG LIE, STALIN’S LASTING LEGACY If you never heard of the Holodomor, when Stalin purposely starved to death millions of Ukrainians in 1932-1933, it is because of his use of “useful idiots” in Western media and academia. The idiots included The New York Times’ Walter Duranty and Louis Fischer so enamored with Communism they willingly suppressed news of the horrors. It was the first major instance in which Soviet authorities adopted the Big Lie propaganda technique to sway world opinion. The most successful and enduring Big Lie Stalin created was that Nazism anchored the Right of the political spectrum while Stalin’s Socialist paradise anchored the Left. Further, the Left has since established Socialism as some sort of warm and fuzzy equality; free of wants and despair. The Left has supported the Big Lie by embellishing the Right as far more than Nazism. The Big Lie also requires the Right to be linked to Fascism and Capitalism, equating Capitalism with every evil of the Nazis. An example supporting that the Big Lie is in full force happened a few weeks ago. A past colleague wrote an article titled “Defund the Police” for the Colorado Independence Institute. In it he tied the Weimar communist mobs, the Antifasdhistische ‘Aktion, the ancestor to today’s Antifa, as attacking the Nazis for being Fascist. In fact, they were attacking a large splinter group from the Social Democratic party of Germany (SPD). The Nazis were NOT Fascist. Hitler thought Mussolini a fool for not including racism in his ideology. The Nazis also were in no way Capitalist and linking the two is a true insult to freedom loving people. It has been Capitalism and not any form of Socialism that has lifted billions of people out of abject poverty. BACKGROUND OF SOCIALISM: Germany may have been the first to have active Socialist movements decades before 1848 when Marx published his version, the Communist Manifesto. The antecedent of the SPD was a German Marxist Party founded in 1863. At one point both Marx and Engels participated though Marx was critical of the changing doctrine of the SPD. Marx’s criticism arose because the party had evolved a spectrum of factions including those that were for a national socialism and against the international part of Marxist ideology. Thus the largest faction of the SPD evolved with a Germany First nationalist orientation. The international Marxists of the early SPD became the KPD, the more ideology pure internationalist Marxist Communist Party of Germany. 1

In 1919 the SPD became a part of the Weimar Coalition. There were 22 political parties in the Weimar Coalition and as many as 30 parties in Germany. During the 1920’s into the 1930’s the KPD was denied a vote in the Reichstag. The SPD continued to generate splinter factions including a fast growing one in the 1920’s that embraced a version of Mussolini Fascism. In 1932 and still not allowed a Reichstag vote, the KPD started the Antifaschistische Aktion aimed at the SPD segment that embraced Fascism. The effort amounted to little because the Fascist wing of the SPD were joining the Nazis in large numbers during 1932. Once the Nazis came to power in 1933 all fictions of the SPD as well as the KPD were outlawed. HOW DID THE BIG LIE POLITICAL SPECTRUM HAPPEN The simple answer is that Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy lost World War II in Europe. The victors were the Western powers and Stalin’s Soviet Marxist Leninist Communism Russia. The winners write the history. In reality there is little difference between fully State controlled totalitarian socialism based on class and fully State controlled totalitarian socialism based on race. Stalin having found that the Big Lie works and still embracing internationalism wanted to paint the picture that Left is good and Right is bad. It helps having “useful idiots” in Western media, academia and political circles. For example, it helps having Howard Zinn textbooks adopted for K-12 and other idiots dominate the articles in Wikipedia Many of the idiots proclaim the bald face lie that Nazism is on the right because they had some aspects of Capitalism. German business was under the total control of the Nazi State. However one thing Hitler learned from Mussolini; if they willingly do the bidding of the State don’t kill those who know how to run things. If business managers and owners did not do what the State wanted they were eliminated; their duties transferred to the party faithful and wealth to the State. If there was any doubt about Nazism having anything to do with Capitalism Hitler made it very clear in Mein Kampf that he equally hated both Capitalism and Bolshevism (Leninist Communism) because he thought both were part of the Jewish plot to take over the world. There should be no doubt about Nazism having anything in common with Capitalism. I question if the useful idiots ever wondered, if Nazis were Capitalists why would they murder tens of millions of potential customers. Only evil States murder on that scale. MORE RATIONAL POLITICAL SPECTRUM: In the two dimensional political spectrum model, the reality is that both Communism and Nazism are extreme Socialism and on the far left. Of course Fascism is also on the left but not as extreme. Mussolini Fascists in Italy held about 12,500 political prisoners from 1922 to 1940 and only one third of whom died compared to over 100 million under the Socialist paradises of the Nazis, Soviet and Mao Communism, North Korea, Cambodia, Viet Nam, Cuba, and the rest of the socialist states.

All versions of socialism are on the left, and the common denominator is the individual being subordinate to the State. Until 245 years ago the real political Right did not exist. Up until that time, the Walter Williams question of who owns you was easy; the State owned you. Where the State is subordinate to the individual happens only on the political Right. American Exceptionalism arises from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution creating a State that is subordinate to the individual. That had never happened before in written history, that is why it is exceptional! Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are the only natural rights. Each individual enjoy these rights and their rights do not impinge on any other individual’s rights. The impractical limit of the political right is that point where there is absolutely no State coercion of the individual. Pure Libertarianism just isn’t workable. Even the economics of selective speculation works against it. The desired point is as far Right as possible on the political spectrum and where Individualism, Capitalism, Free Markets, social and economic freedoms all exist. “Capitalism is relatively new in human history. Prior to Capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man.” Walter E. Williams. What is workable is a well-controlled minimum amount of State coercion to afford the protections for individuals to thrive. However, that minimum gives rise to the morality issue; is it moral for the State to grant some people additional rights that require the State to coerce others to give up some of their rights. The founders of the U.S. had a poor view of the purer democratic forms of the State because the potential for tyranny by the majority; the problem of two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner. Democracies of the past had indeed quickly descended from relative freedom to tyranny partly because of the passions of the mob and partly because some have a lust for power. The founders wanted a government where the term free applied everywhere. Free to choose. Free markets where individuals could trade things they valued less for things they valued more. Where people could get rich satisfying the needs of others rather than through plunder as had been the normal for centuries. THE FOUNDING OF THE UNITED STATES PROVIDED THAT PLACE The United States is a Constitutional Republic with certain democratic institutions. A strong code of law is required and must be followed to stay free with individuals enjoying sovereignty. The various Constitutional articles and amendments is the framework. The bench mark is the preservation of individual property rights. That in turn requires a judiciary of high integrity and a moral and educated citizenry to constantly reaffirm their individual sovereignty

Another of the Constitution’s solutions to preserve liberty was to insure law making was a very involved and purposely slow process allowing the time for passions to cool by providing time for debate. The greater the impact of the law, such as an Amendment to the Constitution, the more involved the process and the longer it should take providing more debate and wiser decision making. The First Amendment freedom of speech was specifically to enable thorough debate. These principles behind extraordinary freedoms are the Real anchor on the Right of the political spectrum.

2. USEFUL IDIOTS STILL PREVAIL

The founders needed and used the curses and blessings of the “third estate” (the private ownership of newspapers and other press) when founding the United States. The third estate has always had wild and extreme biases but there generally was representation from all extremes now defined as the Left to Right political spectrum. The electorate 4

had access and the required information from all sides to debate and make wise decisions. The founders assumed that collectively, the third estate collectively would continue keeping law makers in check by promoting and publishing all sides of debate until resolved. To keep a viable Republic, First Amendment protection should never be banned. This gross distortion of the political spectrum became very evident last month when I was sent the above Ad Fontes Media, Inc. bias chart for comment. Ad Fontes Media is a Colorado-based media watchdog organization primarily known for its Media Bias Chart, which rates media sources in terms of political bias and reliability. The organization was founded in 2014 by patent attorney Vanessa Otero with the goal of combating political polarization. My initial comment is the whole cluster of media companies on the left side should be shifted to the left one or two more columns to accurately reflect the reality that there is indeed a Left political bias in the “Third Estate.” Because Otero does not understand the real political spectrum, the chart actually increases political polarization. “Big Tech” social networks are joining in by censoring the Political Right. It gets worse, the major organs of the third estate are not only heavily biased to the left but through “crony capitalism” partnering with the State to silence the Right. Clearly they think they have the political cover so can get away with canceling the Right’s messages and reducing the income stream of those they don’t like. Examine again the vertical scale of the bias chart. Ask yourself if the news value and reliability of the reporting is has high as the media fancies themselves if only one side of issues are reported? Without a complete analysis including data the idiots don’t agree with, the issues purported never rise above opinion, the midpoint of the graph. Examining the media outlets chart to the right of center such as American Thinker, any analysis and facts they present are ignored or worse simply not seen. Since these media have been placed to the Right by the “useful idiots’ compiling the chart, the compilers are equating these media to the evils of Nazism. So of course the facts and analysis not in compliance with the Left’s world view are dismissed as fake news or hate speech. Schools of Journalism (now devolving into ‘Communications’) revere Daniel Ellsberg Pentagon Papers and Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate report. While these reporters also had the typical biases of the Left, they actually did in-depth research. I have never before seen such times when news reporters and journalists have been so not eager to know something (incurious). Tucker Carlson on Fox interviewed Tony Bobulinski, a business partner of the Biden family who had the proof that now President Biden had an active role and was scheduled to receive money from a Chinese company that was backed by the Chinese government. Not one other of the dozens of major media companies did any follow-up. The social media giants were probably worse by 5

censoring any mention of the Biden Chinese potential for corruption. After how the media ignored and otherwise spiked the Hunter Biden Burmisa issue I was not surprised the “useful idiots” did not want the voters to know about the Chinese connection before the election. First Amendment protection should never be abridged in our Republic. For example a recent headline Biden Press Secretary: ‘We Support’ Social Media Censorship ‘to Reduce Hate Speech.’ In the current political arena hate speech seems to be anything to which the Left objects. Media bias very rarely involves blatant dishonesty but deception seems to be tolerated. The primary bias is almost always what story is selected or buried and what gets emphasized. The Left doesn't fear false information such as Russian influence in elections. They fear hard, provable data that disproves their narrative (propaganda). THE GREAT GRAVITAS EXPLOSION I was a submariner for years. Everyone I knew and worked with were submariners. Operating a sub that is already ‘sunk’ requires the sailors to be super alert all the time. Multi-month deployments seemed normal. The Cold War was not cold underwater; it was dangerous as hell! The lifestyle just isn’t normal and I did not realize I was in an asylum until I left. I have long suspected that people on the Left live in an asylum were they are dependent minded and under the control of the useful idiots. All doubt was removed during the George W. Bush administration when a talking head used the word ‘gravitas’ in diminishing the president for not having sufficient dignity, seriousness, or solemnity of manner. Gravitas was not a word I ever heard before but within minutes the predominately Left talking heads everywhere were using the term and within 24 hours the word appeared in every Left leaning print media. The scary part of the explosion is how clearly it shows that the Left look to each other seeking confirmation rather than looking for any real story outside their sphere of interest. The trick will be getting them out of the asylum. Yes, the useful idiots still prevail.

3. ON GENERAL EDUCATION: You notice things having been around nearly eight decades. Top of the list is our education system has steadily been dumbing down the populous in nearly every way. The Greatest Generation were schooled largely by young women with only a high school education. At the time and compared to the rest of the world, the Greatest Generation scored high in mathematics, reading and comprehension. The generation had a good grasp of the significance of Western Civilization, why the Constitution was written the way it was to provide maximum liberty for the individual, and the understanding of our first national moto which appears on the Great Seal of the United States: E Pluribus Unum - Latin for "Out of many, one." 6

So where do we now stand? The release of the latest 2018 rankings by the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, The U.S. ranks 36th out of the 79 countries and regions that participate in the test. What PISA rankings 2018 tell us about U.S. schools (hechingerreport.org) This is an alarming outcome considering the resources poured into education.

In short, the status of American education is nothing short of criminal. Here is a look at some specific areas. ON ECONOMICS: I often want to blurt out “were you born stupid or was it your education?” I don’t want to discount the former but most stupidity stems from the latter. For example, "Poverty is not naturally occurring; it is a policy choice." Rep. Ayanna Pressley. Such nincompoopery! Congress woman Pressley clearly has no knowledge of history or economics. As the following chart shows, prosperity for all but the very elite only started about 200 years ago under the environment of Classical Liberalism and primarily driven by Free Market Capitalism. The great gains the last few decades are the easing of socialistic economic constraints in India and China. They are adopting more free market and Capitalism.

THE CREATORS OF WEALTH: Surprising is that only five to ten percent of people create the wealth the rest of society enjoys. It is the entrepreneurs, the people with ideas, business people and doers. It is this small minority that create the jobs. About 80 percent of the population perform the jobs that help the enterprises to flourish and through their efforts improve living conditions for their families and all of society. Unfortunately there is another five to ten percent who create nothing and are a burden on society. It is the rule of law and the protections of the U.S. Constitution that protects the doers from the jealous who would tear them down.

Fig 3.1

“If Socialists understood economics they wouldn’t be Socialists.” Friedrich Hayek. Economics is really all about the incentives that drive human behavior. Incentives that lead to greater wealth for all are greatly diminished under Socialism. The incentives to become ever more entitled to a free ride thrive under Socialism. This is when Socialism becomes ugly. Early on the Socialist State is empowered to take money from the “rich” to distribute to the “poor” which appeals to the poor giving their votes to the Left. When the rich run out of money or cut back their productivity because they now no longer have an incentive to do more, there is less to distribute. Eventually the police forces of the State will use their coercion on everybody to extract what the “New Elite” in the State think they need for their perpetual benefit. The New Elite are the insider party members that have power including the Fascist “Crony Capitalists” like the social media Czars and the favored industries such as those benefiting from the Green New Deal. 8

CRITICAL THINKING: Teaching students the art and science of critical thinking is where the US education establishment has absolutely failed our youth. Right now there are two major and popular delusions pervading our society and their existence is due to people not having the essential tools required for critical thinking. “The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.” - Thomas Sowell CENSOR CULTURE AND WOKE CRUSADE: The latest popular delusion is exemplified what happened starting with professional football. Football at the professional level is very complicated so players can’t be too stupid and make it in the National Football League. That said I find it mystifying that while every player can recite every possible statistic about their on-field performance, particularly during contract negations, they seem clueless about the real Department of Justice statistics on so called police brutality. The real statistics don’t show police brutality as evidenced in Fig 3.2. Digging deeper into the details by number of arrests made in 2018, White males are actually about 1 1/2 times more likely to be shot when arrested than are Blacks. Fig 3.2

compelling is in 2018, there were over 600,000 violent incidents between black people and white people. National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), 2018. US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Table 14 9

White on Black Black on White

57,522 547,948

So In nine out of ten of those 600,000+ incidents, black people were the offenders and white people were the victims of the violence. In other words, while there is indeed racism in America, the widely believed epidemic of violence against black people is NOT true. There are no concerted white effort to harm black people. However, there is an epidemic of black violence against white people and it is now driven by Black Lives Matter. It should be noted that the same survey showed 396,450 Black on Black violent incidents! The issue is really another BIG LIE brought to you by the Left and driven by yet another generation of “useful idiots” promoting communism. OUT OF MANY, ONE: The founders wanted the citizens of the United States to have a widely shared set of appropriate social values. A common understanding of what is “right, just and normal.” Economists refer it as Social Capital. It includes the behaviors that support the Constitution like honesty, fairness, rule of law, hard work etc. The founders thought such social capital would help the “land of the free” endure. The assault on E Pluribus Unum first came from the Stalin Big Lie that Nationalism is bad because Germany and Italy were Nationalist. Of course Stalin had been pitting social classes against each other up until Order No. 227 of 1942. That was the “not one step back” order that galvanized the Russian people to have a sense of Nationalism. It worked, they stopped the German advances. The point is that Nationalism can be a very good thing. It was Sun Tzu in China over 2500 years ago who provided effective war strategies still studied today including dividing the populations into as many warring factions as possible. Now we have the Saul Alanski “Rules for Radicals” the Left’ play book pushing among other things that the notion of Nationalism is a bad thing. The ultimate plan is to tear down the United States to rebuild it into a socialist state. Alanski’s rules are not new but sure looks like the strategy behind the Cancel Culture and Woke Crusade. More chilling was Sun Tzu said, “All warfare is based on deception.” The Left is never honest, it is the Communist promise of an egalitarian utopia that is attractive to so many with brains of mush; (Johnny confusing thinking with feelings.) 4. CLIMATE MADNESS; The Climate Change madness is the BIG LIE now over a quarter century old which is quite long as mass delusions go. However, it has gone on long enough to notice something very scientifically important. The best objective measure of scientific competence is the ability to predict. Those predicting Climate Doom have a perfect

negative predictive track record! Every very-scary climate prediction of the fifty or more they have made has failed to happen. ABOUT NET ZERO: The BIG LIE drive is still on as evidenced by: “people are demanding a Net Zero world.” It is a tactic as old as history. Scare sufficient folk, especially the young, into believing what you want them to believe and soon they are pressuring countries, corporations, pension funds and particularly the gullible into supporting the dreadful ideology in the name of “climate justice.” Without citizens using critical thinking skills, they are creating a new “Dark Age” both literally and figuratively. ABOUT CARBON DIOXIDE: The major part of the climate BIG LIE is that carbon dioxide (CO2 ) is bad. It is portrayed as a poison and the “single control knob” leading to climate Armageddon. It is neither. The cells of our body take in oxygen and because they are living expel carbon dioxide. The earth’s atmosphere contains about 0.04% CO2 yet a crowded room could easily have two or three times the concentration. If you didn’t notice any ill effects, it is easy to conclude that CO2 it is not a poison. Carbon dioxide is a very necessary plant food. That is why your garden nursery pipes in additional CO2 to grow stronger plants faster. It is indisputable that worldwide and particularly the great Sahara Desert has been greening up over the last 20 years and that is really good news. Yes, CO2 can absorb the energy contained in infrared light and release it as heat. What has been suppressed (see SCAM ALERT below) is that water vapor in the air absorbs better and there is a lot more water vapor in the air then CO2. Applying a little high school physics and it can be determined there are more than a thousand times the heat absorbing molecules in the air than there are absorbable photons of greenhouse causing infrared light. The scientific term is called saturated and that means more CO2 will make very little difference in temperatures. ABOUT NET ZERO: The BIG LIE drive is still on as evidenced by: “people are demanding a Net Zero world.” It is a tactic as old as history. Scare sufficient folk, especially the young, into believing what you want them to believe and soon they are pressuring countries, corporations, pension funds and the gullible into supporting the dreadful ideology in the name of “climate justice.” Without citizens using critical thinking skills, they are creating a new “Dark Age” both literally and figuratively.

The threat of climate change does NOT justify the trillions of dollars that will be spent in the vain attempt to reduce the risk to human lives. The World Health Organization (Fig. 4.1) using the “alarmists” worst case temperature scenerios places the lives saved as number 28 out of 30 possible causes. Fig. 4.1

We hear “follow the science” mostly from people that have no idea what is real science. Science should be the epitome of intellectual integrity, fairness, and rationality. So, what is real science? If the data consistently do not support the hypothesis (idea), the hypothesis is WRONG. Real scientist must reject the hypothesis. A scientist becomes a sham (no longer a scientist) when defending a hypothesis when all experimental data does not support the idea. They are no longer a scientist because they are emotionally or ideologically committed to a preconceived outcome. A sham also forges data, or suppresses data which do not agree with their preconceptions. A sham refuses to let others see their data for independent evaluation. Those who compromise these values are shams, charlatans, fakes, or pseudoscientists and not to be trusted. 12

Billions of dollars have been spent modeling climate yet from Fig. 4.2 it can be seen that only one of the 31 plotted models is anywhere near the actual real world data collected since 1979. Not shown are about 75 lessor known models whose combined output track slightly warmer than the red line plotted model trend average.

Fig. 4.2

Fig. 4.2 displays a lot of information in a complicated format. Our failed education system has resulted in the lay person having insufficient but mostly no understanding on what is real science and no way to analyze if they are being lied to. The useful idiots in the media are also woefully ignorant of science. Are you aware that the science is not settle even for the most famous scientific equation of all time, Einstein’s E = mc2 ? What it says is that the Energy (released) is equal to the mass (of the material being converted) times c (speed of light) and again times c (the speed of light). Yet the equation is still only a hypothesis because there is still the possibility that it isn’t the whole story. In other words, the science is not settled. The unfortunate results of poor education, pseudoscientists and the useful idiots in the media is citizens have little understanding of how much science is present in figure 4.2. 13

Further, citizens have no exposure to the thousands of well researched papers that show climate change is not an existential threat or even a significant problem. Fortunately from fig. 4.2, the non-scientific can easily tell that the science is not settled simply by looking at the plots of the models. Just looking at the red and green dotted lines show the predicted temperatures did not match what really happened. Another way to tell you are being conned is how many different models exist; “real science” would have come down to needing only one model to accurately predict the future. ECONOMICS OF CLIMATE BIG LIE: Look again at Fig 3.1 in the previous essay to see how much the material lives of so many in the world have improved. The major driver is vastly increased productivity. The BIG LIE included rhetoric about all the jobs that will be created through the green energy revolution. What is actually going to happen is going backwards in productivity. Going backwards in productivity means living standards will fall. Cheap and abundant energy is the key to prosperity. More workers making less electricity will dramatically increase costs pushing millions into “energy poverty.” The Left uses all means to build their passions for really stupid solutions. SCAM ALERT: In President Eisenhower’s farewell speech he said “…we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex.” The real threat now is the unwarranted influence of the government funded research complex. The federal government has been granting research money for years. I received a National Science Foundation grant 60 years ago to build a prototype pulsate flow heart pump. The grant process then was not political. Now it is. Now the federal grants are only issued to those who support the ideology and narrative of the Left. This came about in part because the university and college grantees come from the Left and these institutions have contributed to stacking the granters within the government. For decades if you proposed research examining the science supporting global warming, you got the grant. If you proposed anything contradicting the warming narrative, no grant. Compounding the issue is that politicians used to stay out of the granting process and now they are very involved. Worse is the political crony capitalism such as losing vast sums of taxpayer money on companies like the Tonopah Solar Energy bankruptcy ($430 million) and the Solyndra failure ($500 million). Al Gore, who as I recall received a D in his only science class, has gotten really rich through such schemes. Such passions as the culture crusades and climate alarmism are well described in the 1841 book “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” by Charles McKay, available online here. It is a good read if you have the time. For example, during

the 17th century Tulipomania, the price of one special tulip would then buy 9,900 US gallons of good wine or 173,000 US gallons of beer! The Preface well captures how common and irrational are such passions and the magnitude of their deleterious effects. One line that caught my eye was “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.” I am not optimistic that we will recover because the BIG LIES serve the Left in their drive to dominate all humanity.