he Legal Tactics to Jail or Bankrupt Trump Before the Election Are Failing. What Can Anti-Trumpers Do Now to Keep Him from Running and Possibly Winning?

On March 4, as you know, the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the State of Colorado could not proceed with its effort to keep Colorado residents from voting for Trump by taking him off the ballot. This was a win for pro-democracy thinkers, but a painful blow to all who wanted him eliminated from America’s future by any means necessary.

According to the WSJ:

The Court struck down a Colorado Supreme Court ruling claiming that because Trump had engaged in “insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2021, he would not be allowed on the Colorado presidential ballot. The court set aside the question of whether Jan. 6 was an insurrection, and simply ruled that states cannot choose whether to disqualify candidates for federal office as insurrectionists.

The ruling was not a surprise to students of the Constitution because it was based on an interpretation of a clause that was so strained that even the “Liberal” justices couldn’t get behind it.

The NY Civil Fraud Case 

As for the civil fraud case brought by NY Attorney General Letitia James and adjudicated summarily by Judge Arthur Engoron (both Democrats) against Trump (for supposedly overvaluing his collateralized properties’ bank loans), I’m 100% sure it will be reversed on appeal.

Like the Colorado ruling, it is so wrong on so many levels, including the facts that his valuations were actually understated, and that the banks, which were in theory the injured parties, made millions off the loans.

And there is another reason, which, though rarely discussed, tops them all. If NYC’s novel interpretation of the banking law were enforced, billion-dollar development projects (which are the driving force of real estate values in every city in America) would screech to a halt almost overnight.

The other cases against Trump are the Georgia “election interference” case, the federal Jan. 6 “insurrection” case, and the federal classified documents case. Taken all together, they accuse him of no fewer than 91 criminal offenses.

The Racketeering Case 

The Georgia case is quickly falling apart in soap opera fashion before our eyes. Fani Willis, the prosecutor who became a national figure by bragging about her intent to put Trump in jail, has just narrowly survived a judgement that would have taken her off the case. But to stay on, she had to fire Nathan Wade, her married boyfriend and the lead prosecutor. And this, as the judge said in his ruling, will leave a bad “odor” on the case for the prosecution.

The Classified Documents Case 

As for the classified documents case, it was a Hail Mary effort from the beginning, which became even less likely to cause Trump any damage as the very similar case against Biden was brought to light. Even if the government sanctions Trump for some piece of the complex of charges, it is inconceivable that it will inhibit his ability to continue as his party’s candidate or make a difference in the vote itself.

The Incitement to Insurrection Charge 

That leaves what is, in my mind, the most absurd and unlikely case against Trump: that he incited the “insurrection” of Jan. 6.

First, the case will not succeed because the event was not, by any legal or reasonable definition, an insurrection.

Second, because the basis of the charge is a clear and purposeful misreading of the Constitutional amendment it is based on, which would almost certainly be seen as such by the Supreme Court.

Third, because Trump called for a “peaceful protest,” not an insurrection.

And finally, because it’s recently been documented that he explicitly called for the city’s Democratic leadership to protect the Capitol and its environs by ordering the National Guard to bring in ten thousand guardsmen to prevent rioting and violence. (A call that was inexplicably ignored.)

So, on my scorecard, the Democratic Party’s attempts to get rid of Trump through legal warfare looks to be a 4 out of 4 win for Trump.

What now? 

What can the Anti-Trump Party, which currently represents about a third of American voters, do to defeat the Pro-Trump Party, which comprises a slightly larger number of voters?

What can the Anti-Trump Party do to keep the foul-mouthed, orange-haired, irrepressibly annoying former president from running in November and possibly becoming our next president?

It’s clear now that any further legal attacks won’t work.

Since the first indictment against Trump in April of last year, every poll I’ve found shows Trump’s support rising, while Biden’s numbers have edged downward.

(Averaging the data I’ve accumulated from a half-dozen of the most “respectable” polls, Trump’s support in April was about 45% and stands at 47% now. Biden’s promising 49% support in April is down to 42%.)

I was wrong. 

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that had I been running the Democratic Party, Biden would have by now given up his run for the 2024 election in favor of endorsing Gavin Newsom. In fact, I predicted it would happen sometime between Thanksgiving and the new year.

That didn’t happen. And since Biden managed to successfully read the teleprompter during his State of the Union address, it looks like – short of Biden getting seriously ill – Newsom is out and the Biden/Harris ticket is locked in.

Thus, American voters in November will be choosing between 78-year-old swaggering Donald Trump and 80-year-old lost-in-space Joe Biden.

So, who is going to win? 

Most presidential elections since I was old enough to pay attention to them have been decided by fear, rather than hope or inspiration.

The 2016 election was, to a large extent, a contest between the fear of illegal immigrants versus the fear of deplorable American citizens. In that election, the fear of illegal immigrants was stronger.

The 2020 election was largely a contest between the fear of the Black Lives Matter movement and the fear of COVID. COVID won.

I see the 2024 election as a rhetorical contest between five fears: one that has already worked once, another that has failed once, a third fear about inflation, a fourth fear about culture, and a fifth that is too weak because nobody will believe it.

The Democrats seem to be betting all their chips on the one hard-to-believe accusation: that Trump will become a “tyrant” in his second term and put an end to US democracy.

The Republicans have four fears to stoke.

First, they will double down on stoking the fear of illegal immigration again – this time strengthened by the more than 8 million migrants that have crossed the border since Biden took office.

Second, they will argue that Biden’s social justice policies, supported by liberal judges and DAs around the country, are allowing the illegal immigrants and other law breakers to be released from jail without bail and get back to what they were arrested for: cleaning out retail stores, hijacking cars, and mugging and murdering law-abiding citizens.

Third, they will remind American voters of a fact that the Democrats can’t contradict: The economy is weaker now than it was when Biden took office.

And for the cherry on top, the Republicans will blame Biden for unleashing a new social culture of trangenderism, institutional racism, and White privilege that will destroy traditional American culture.

Again, if I were heading up the Democratic reelection campaign, I’d be looking very hard for several more ideas – ideas that are stronger than the fear of tyranny under Trump – if they want to win in November.

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Were It Not for Hypocrisy…

For ten years, from 2000 to 2010, I wrote a blog called Early to Rise. It was, in general, about self-improvement – building wealth, optimizing health and fitness, and living a rich and satisfying life.

I chose the title because I had recently discovered that instead of going to sleep at one or two a.m. and waking up seven hours later, which had become my habit, I could get much more accomplished by going to bed at ten or eleven p.m. and waking at five or six.

For ten years, I reported on my experiences with building wealth… diet and exercise… and the many philosophical approaches to life that I tried out.

The year 2000 was really the dawn of email-based blogs, and mine attracted a growing audience of young and middle-aged readers. At its peak, Early to Rise had more than 900,000 subscribers.

In 2010, I was invited to head up a business dedicated to just one of the topics I had been covering in the blog: creating personal wealth. So, I sold most of my equity in Early to Rise to a young man that I thought could continue its mission, and I devoted my next ten years to writing about entrepreneurship, business, and investing.

By 2020, I had written more than 10,000 essays on various aspects of wealth building and published 24 books. I had also established two non-profit organizations, made three movies, and started about a dozen small businesses.

No doubt about it. The early-to-bed/ early-to-rise idea had really been working for me!

I was on the verge of what would have been my third attempt at retirement and had to make some decisions about what I would be doing with my time once I stepped away from actively participating in business.

Since I’d stopped writing Early to Rise, I had developed an interest reading and writing and traveling and all sorts of other things that, if you’ve been reading this blog, you are well aware of. But something had happened between then and now that was not good. I had gradually developed a habit of going to bed later and waking up later until I was back to my old routine of staying up till one or two in the morning and waking at eight or nine.

I had also abandoned my number-one rule for being productive, which was to devote the first hour or two of every day to a goal that was “important but not urgent.”

I was getting by in terms of getting done what I had to get done every day. But I had stopped making progress on my important-but-not-urgent objectives, which included finishing 14 half-written books and building a museum of Central American art.

Somehow, just two weeks ago, I decided to return to my early-to-rise strategy and began to set my alarm for 6 a.m. and rearrange my daily schedule accordingly.

I’m happy to report that (so far, at least) it seems to be working out as well as it did 24 years ago. I’m back to exercising at seven a.m., and then spending the next hour or two on something I really want to get done before I shed the old mortal coil. And I’m feeling better than I have in years.

I’m telling you all this because I remember that when I did my first stretch of the early-to-rise lifestyle, I received many letters from readers that doubted the premise. And although I couldn’t guarantee that they would do better by getting up earlier, I advised them to give it a try. Many, I’m sure, did not. But over the ten years that I was writing Early to Rise, several hundred of my readers wrote to say that they were getting up earlier and it was working for them.

So, even if you are a confirmed “night person” and you feel that you are doing fine that way, I can only urge you to give the early-to-rise lifestyle a 30-day trial to see if your life doesn’t get noticeably better.

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Old Men Worrying About the Future:
Three Predictions We Won’t Live to See 

I got into an email chat with my Myrtle Beach crew that got briefly serious. In a single afternoon, we covered the economic, political, and social future of our country. Plus overpopulation. Plus global warming.

I thought the conversation was brilliant. On every topic, the group differed, with about a third presenting a pessimistic view of the future, a third feeling optimistic, and a third admitting they had no idea. Lots of good points were made. But I’ll just give you my best recollection of what I said:

Global Warming

The globe may continue to warm for some time, and that may change our climate and our topography to a significant degree. But it won’t end the world. Nor will it end the presence of Homo sapiens. As the physical world changes, population densities and lifestyles will adapt, aided by technology that will allow human beings to continue to be an important part of Earth’s ecosystem for hundreds or thousands of years. Which is, even in my most forward-caring moments, all I can bring myself to worry about.

Overpopulation 

Our more urgent concerns were for our children and grandchildren, with overpopulation seen by many in the group to be a major issue. But for much of the world, and most of the developed world, populations are shrinking. And to my mind, that is going to be a bigger problem than overpopulation for our children and grandchildren – perhaps the most serious economic and cultural challenge they will face.

Life and Lifestyle in the Future

My feeling is that there is a 50% to 60% chance that we will nuke ourselves into oblivion in the next 10 to 20 years. If, however, we can avoid doing that, technological advances that are already underway (e.g., robotics and AI) will change the human experience drastically. The world will no longer be comprised of have and have-not countries. Hunger and abject poverty will be problems of the past, violent crime will be rare, and most other forms of crime will cease to exist.

But what will also cease to exist will be personal privacy and liberty.

This will happen because everyone on the planet will be monitored, 24/7, by ubiquitous cameras, microphones, and other sensors (including some embedded in their bodies) that will feed millions of bits of data about everything they do and say into remote monitoring systems that will provide the government (and who knows who else) with almost instantaneous reports on their actions, statements, and (quite possibly) even their thoughts.

Along with the disappearance of personal liberty and privacy, the appreciation of independent and especially contrarian forms of thinking will be gone. Humans will gradually and happily give up their freedom to be and think differently in return for comfort, safety, and predictability in their lives.

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What’s Going On with Me, You Ask? I’ll Tell You… I’m Fat! 

RJ, an old friend who recently reconnected with me, asked me to bring him up to date on my life. “What are you spending your time on?” he asked. “Are you still working or retired? How’s the body? And the mind? Give me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

After telling him how glad I was to be in contact with him again, I answered thusly:

“What’s going on with me? Let me start with the most important thing, RJ: I’m fat. Now, I’m not one of those people that say they are fat when their eight-pack turns into a six-pack. I have 15 to 20 pounds of blubber hanging on my bones, slowing me down, and increasing my blood pressure.

“So that’s number one.

“Second, third, and fourth, I’m dealing with a bunch of personal and business challenges that I doubt you’d be interested in.

“Fifth, for the first time in my life, I’m beginning to worry seriously about the direction of the world and what life is going to be like for my children and grandchildren.

“And finally, I’m fat. Oh, right… I already mentioned that.”

Then I thought… “Maybe I should write about this in my blog. I’ve written about my struggles with weight in the past, but maybe I should write about the new routine I’ve started that I’m excited about.”

I thought that was a pretty good idea. So that’s why you’re going to see it here now.

My new routine allows me to eat whatever and as much as I want – every day – and yet lose weight. So far, I’m averaging a pound a day. Which means that, if this continues, I’ll be back to fighting shape by the end of this month.

But before I tell you what it is, I’d like to share with you how, over the years, I have coped with those periods when I’ve draped a bath towel over the full-length mirror directly across from my shower and, if I ever found myself at the beach, had my beach towel tucked just beneath my chest so that onlookers could guess, but never know, how big my belly had grown.

My Psychological Approach: Switch-Hitting My Values

Whenever I’ve gone through one of those times, I’ve forced myself to think positively. I reminded myself that my physical appearance doesn’t matter. That what really matters is my family, my work, and whatever good I can do for other people. I told that to myself not just every morning, but every time I caught myself in profile passing a shop window.

And, of course, all of that is true.

So my vanity-based anxiety would recede. And I would begin to experience the true joy of being at peace with myself.

And when I lost the fat (which I always managed to do after wallowing in it for a year or so), I basked in my recovered body image with great jubilation, taking every chance to take off my shirt in front of strangers.

But that’s beside the point.

Here’s my new diet…

My Crazy New Eating Strategy

This diet is based on one that worked very well for me about 30 years ago. I combined it with the new information out there about the advantages of fasting, plus something I heard about a 50-year-old martial artist friend of mine who has always looked lean and muscular.

It’s simple. I eat only one meal a day. And I limit that meal to exactly 60 minutes.

I know how crazy this might sound. I know it contradicts the many other diets that advise eating lots of small meals throughout the day. It contradicts paleo diets, because I allow myself to eat all the carbs and artificial foods I care to. It even sort of contradicts the new fasting diets, which are based on having three meals a day but within restricted time limits.

I don’t know for sure the biological explanation for why it’s working. But I do know that eating once a day significantly limits the number of times per day my body will experience the ups and downs of insulin spikes that have always made me hungry a few hours after every meal (however healthy) and, when one of my meals was high in carbs, set off my metabolism so that it wanted to burn energy for fat, which meant my body would store more fat, even if the portions I was eating were small.

Actually, I think the main reason this diet is working for me is that it gives me another way to tap into the power of positive thinking. On this new diet, I no longer feel deprived. I no longer think about what I can’t eat. I don’t even have to think about how much I’m eating. I spend all my food-thinking energy imagining how I’m going to stuff my face during that one-hour period. How great it’s going to be to begin the meal with a cocktail, eat all the steak and mashed potatoes and gravy I can fit into my craw while drinking copious amounts of wine, end the meal with a pint of ice cream, and then, if there’s another five or ten minutes left, end the evening with a quick Cognac and a long-lasting cigar.

Not only is this diet working (so far), but since I started it, I have never felt a moment’s hunger. I’ve never wanted to grab a cookie when passing the cookie jar, and I’ve never gotten out of bed at 11:00 p.m. to raid the refrigerator.

I do drink a cup or two more coffee in the a.m. than I have in the past, and a glass or two of caffeinated diet cola in the afternoon. But I’m never pining for food. It’s 4:00 p.m. as I write this. We are having dinner at 6:00. I’m starting to think happily about what I’m going to eat, but I’m not pining.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress…

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A Good Example of Bad Science 

Early in the COVID-19 breakout, I caught the bug from a young’un I was rassling, and then passed it on to PB, one of my trainers.

PB is in his fifties. He’s scrupulous about staying in shape, and looks like he’s 40. He is also a committed vegan, which gives us something to good-naturedly spar about.

PB had a terrible time with the virus. He was in bed for a week, and unable to work for another two. My experience was considerably better. I spent a fairly miserable 24 hours in bed, but woke up the following day feeling A-OK and was able to resume my normal schedule.

I felt sure that my much easier bout with the virus must have felt comically unjust to PB. Why would he, with his optimum health habits and scrupulously nurtured biosystem, have suffered so greatly, while I, a tequila-drinking, cigar-chomping, meat-eater 20 years older than he, beat it so quickly!

To make him feel a little better, I said, “It makes sense. Imagine when that tiny little COVID virus dropped into the lush, green fields of your unsullied bloodstream. What a paradise the little feller discovered! Now imagine an equally fragile little bug falling into my biosystem, a steaming swamp of meat fat and alcohol, struggling to stay alive while sudden gusts of toxic cigar smoke surround him. He had to be thinking, ‘I’ve got to get the hell out of here! And fast!’”

That Was Then and This Is Now: To Watch or Not to Watch 

I’m reminded of that now because after my last training session with PB, he recommended a movie to me, a four-part documentary titled You Are What You Eat. It is based, he told me, on a study comparing vegan and omnivorous diets. And since he was recommending it, I didn’t have to ask him which one proved out to be better.

Knowing that PB was earnestly trying to help me with my diet, just as he helps me with my exercise and my physical therapy, I told him I would watch it. But I also told him that I was willing to bet that the study was flawed, if not outright rigged.

And then, I think it was the very next day, I read a review of You Are What You Eat by one of my favorite health journalists, Peter Attia.

Attia begins with this:

“The investigators behind this research (and docuseries) claim that their study design – which involves the use of identical twins to control for genetic factors – has allowed them ‘to investigate metabolism in a very comprehensive way,’ including effects of the respective diets on cardiovascular and metabolic health. So how well did the study accomplish that goal? And what can we take away from the results?”

You can read the rest of Attia’s review here.

And you can watch the four-part documentary on Netflix here.

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Another Reason to Support the War in Ukraine

I just found out. The military-industrial complex has come up with a new reason Americans should support Ukraine in its war with Russia: It’s good for the US economy!

I learned this while listening to the radio last week. According to whatever numbskull was speaking, industrial production in the US defense and space sector has increased almost 18% since Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago. And that’s why Biden’s new “supplemental defense bill” should be supported by every congressperson – even those Trump-supporting crackpots that don’t think we should be supporting another Cold War proxy contest.

Here’s how they explain it: Out of the $95 billion the bill’s sponsors are asking for, 65% – about $61 billion – will flow back to the US by way of paying for US-manufactured military products.

That’s good, right?

Of course, there is the inconvenient fact that 100% of the $95 billion will be 100% funded by adding to the federal debt (already at a mind-boggling and record-breaking $33 trillion). And 100% of that will be paid back – either by inflation or recession (more likely both) – by American taxpayers, most of whom couldn’t find Ukraine on a map.

If you care to read more about the bill, US spending, and the political arguments, here’s a piece from the WSJ that was published on Feb. 18.

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Five Contrarian Truths About Behavior Modification

I’ve been thinking about a thesis I cooked up about a year ago, which, if it continues to feel valid as I write about it, will become a book.

The thought is this: We (as individuals and citizens and as members of social organizations and religious groups) spend a not insignificant amount of our time, energy, and money trying to improve the world by improving people who have tendencies and habits we judge to be unhealthy, unwanted, and/ or destructive.

Just in terms of well-known national and international organizations, we have a plethora of programs for alcoholics, drug addicts, and overeaters, plus anger management programs, dozens of programs whose purpose is to prevent criminal recidivism, and even programs for people that are addicted to sex.

This would make sense if these programs worked – if they were largely successful in effecting the desired change. But most of them are not.

Take, for example, programs for treating drug and alcohol addiction. The success rate is very low. So low that it is difficult to find the numbers, because the organizations that make their money running such programs don’t want the public to know how unsuccessful they are.

If you spend several hours digging and verifying the numbers you are able to find, you will discover that the 12-month success rate for alcohol and drug rehabilitation is about 15%. Put differently, drug and alcohol recovery organizations fail in achieving their goals at a rate of about 85%.

The War on Poverty, started by President Johnson in 1964, was a massive government initiative of more than 40 individual programs. There are plenty of phony ways to measure the success of that program that show positive results. However, if you look at the only metric that is honest – the “absolute poverty line” (the threshold below which families have insufficient income to provide the food, shelter, and clothing needed to preserve health – the rate has fallen insignificantly: from 10.5% in 1966 to 10.1% today.

The War on Drugs, started by President Nixon in 1971, is another big one. In June 2011, the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a critical report, declaring: “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.” In 2015, the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for an end to the war on drugs, estimated that the US spends $51 billion annually on the effort to stop illegal drug use. In 2021, after 50 years, others have estimated that the US has spent a cumulative $1 trillion on it.

The result? More Americans are taking illegal drugs than ever before, and the number of Americans incarcerated for illegal drug use has risen 500% since 1971.

Question: Is there anything that you would commit your time and money to if you knew the failure rate was that high?

It’s said that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. You can attempt to open a locked door by continuously slamming your head into it. But if, after your first attempt, the door stays firmly shut, slamming your head into it even harder makes no sense.

You would have to be an absolute idiot to believe that if we kept on with the same enormously expensive programs, they would one day achieve their goals. Yet that is exactly what we have been doing… for more than 80 years!

The reason is simple: the irrational but persistent belief that we – as individuals or organizations – can change (improve) unfavorable behaviors of people to any meaningful degree.

I believe there is a better way to deal with the massive failure rate of these programs. And that is to give up, once and for all, the false belief that, in a free country, anyone other than the sovereign individual can change his or her behavior.

Here are a few axioms to consider:

1. When it comes to character flaws, negative temperament, and bad habits, adult Homo sapiens seem to be almost incapable of change. Whether the issue is drug or alcohol addiction, overeating, leaving the toilet seat up, or general grouchiness, the percentage of people that successfully and permanently change are few and far between. Despite this obvious fact, most people, including educated people, refuse to believe that other people can’t change.

2. Trying to beat the odds by scolding or cajoling someone into changing their ways does no good at all. On the contrary, it usually has two bad results: It reduces the very slim chance that the person you are trying to change will change. And it creates a void between the two of you that is almost always filled with lying, anger, and resentment.

3. If you love the people in your life in whom you want to see change, begin by asking yourself if you would feel better if your relationships with them got worse or ended. Because that is, again, the most likely outcome of trying to change them.

4. If the answer to the above question is no – i.e., that you would not like to further damage or destroy your relationships with people you care about – the only reasonable thing to do is accept those things you don’t like about them. And even – if those things are annoying rather than damaging (to you or to them) – find a way to enjoy them.

5. If the behavior you want to see changed is damaging and destructive (to one or both of you), the only thing you can do is end the relationship gently but firmly. You must say goodbye. And you must mean it.

I know how futile and possibly depressing this may sound. But I’ve found that letting go of the mythology of change is very positive. I’ll talk more about that next week.

It’s a Serious, Scientific Catalog. So… Is This a Joke?

I was paging through one of my catalogs on trees this morning and I came across this entry for Woman’s Tongue Tree (Albizia lebbeck), otherwise known as East Indian Walnut: “This tree is well known for producing an abundance of long, brittle pods containing small seeds which, when driven by a light breeze, rattle endlessly. What connection this might have with a woman’s tongue is not clear.”

Aging Anecdotes: Forgot Your ID? 

AS writes to say: “I was making a purchase today and the 50-something clerk asked me for ID. I didn’t have my license on me and told him so. Then I said, ‘What do you think could possibly have happened to me in my life that I could look like this and still not be 21?’ He took another look at me and said, ‘All right, forget it.’”

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Five Contrary Truths I Learned Too Late in My Life. 
If You Are Younger Than 73, You Can Be Five Steps Ahead of Me!

I’ve spent what probably amounts to an unhealthy amount of my spare time trying to figure out why so much of life is difficult or weird or crazy. I’ve spent an equal amount of time trying to figure out how I could get more of what I need (these days, mostly peace of mind) out of what I’ve got (mostly relationships).

I’ve got dozens, if not hundreds, of these thoughts filed away in the recesses of my aging mind. And I keep thinking that some of them might be helpful to one or several of my readers. So, before they flee completely from my cobwebbed memory banks, I thought I’d put them down here in my blog post – perhaps four or five at a time.

These first five are connected in some ways – but whatever connection they have, I’ve already forgotten. So, please take them as individual observations, and decide for yourself if they make sense to you.

1. Equal opportunity and equal treatment under the law are worthy and achievable goals for a civilized society. But believing that equality is a natural or divine law of some kind is foolish and destructive. Equality – true equality – is a rare and momentary anomaly. And that is because the universe, including all its elements, all its forces, and all its creatures, is designed to move relentlessly towards inequality. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is just one of innumerable observations that scientists and philosophers have made about this fact.

2. Equity – the objective of achieving equal outcomes in terms of education, income, scientific or artistic achievement, etc. – is a goal that will always result in communal degradation and can be achieved only by theft and the threat of violence. And even then, it cannot last, because it is based on equality. (See above.)

3. If the universe has any meaning, it is ironic – that life is a joke laughing at itself. All the best art and music is, happily or sadly, acceptingly or in anguish, a recognition of the fundamental irony of life and living.

4. The quality of our lives is largely determined by what we pay attention to. The more we focus our attention outside ourselves, the greater our sense of accomplishment and well-being. The more we focus our attention on ourselves, the greater our unhappiness, including ennui, neuroticism, and depression.

5. Every truth about life has an equal and opposite truth. Including the four above.

Have You Heard of Swatting? It’s Not Good. And It’s Becoming More Common.

Last week, Judge Tanya Chutkan found out what “swatting” means after an anonymous caller told her local police precinct that there was a shooting at her Washington home. Officers arrived at her home shortly thereafter to find that the call was bogus. No shooting had taken place. Two weeks earlier, federal marshals had rushed to special counsel Jack Smith’s home in Maryland where, they found out, there had been no shooting.

Swatting has emerged in recent years as a method of harassing and intimidating public figures,
and political targets have been bipartisan. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claims to have been swatted several times. And in 2022, Judge Emmet Sullivan, who was presiding over the trial of a Jan. 6. rioter, also seems to have been swatted.

The danger with swatting political figures is not just the unnecessary diversion of emergency resources, but the physical risk any confrontation with law enforcement poses to victims and police.

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Things I’ve Been Thinking About Lately 

White Privilege, Intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, Identity Politics… How Academia’s Dumbest Ideas Became So Popular 
 
I had just finished a chapter of a book I’m writing in which, among other things, I consider why so many of the most popular ideas and ideologies being propounded in colleges and universities today are not just wrong, but downright stupid.

White Privilege, intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, identity politics, etc. – I’ve written about all of them here before, wondering how they could be so obviously nonsensical and yet so strongly promoted and consumed.

I was thinking about it again last week after watching the clown show that took place during the Congressional hearings on the pro-Palestinian protests at many of our most prestigious universities. I was trying to understand how the presumably intelligent presidents of Harvard, MIT, and U Penn – people who were all about student behavior codes that banned such “microaggressions” as using misgendered pronouns – could publicly defend student protesters that repeatedly called for the extinction of the Jewish state?

How could they be so dumb on both issues at the same time?

Moreover, how could all those pro-Palestinian student protesters believe their cause was right? That the largest genocide of Jews since the Holocaust was a legitimate “act of resistance” against an oppressive, colonialist, racist, and apartheid state of White supremacy?

Even more disturbingly, why did the media portray them in a positive light?

I have not yet developed a theory that feels complete, much less defensible. But here is what I’m thinking.

A college professor can have a splendid career at an “ordinary” college by being an excellent teacher as well as an actual expert in the subject he or she teaches

My father, who was an exceptionally learned man, is an example. His dream was to be a playwright. But after writing several plays that were not commercially successful, he accepted the fact that, to support a family (that would soon include eight children), he had to get a “real” job. So, he became a professor of English, Greek, and Latin Literature at a local college on Long Island. He earned his living that way, supplemented by side gigs teaching mathematics and “speed” reading, for his entire career. He knew his Shakespeare and Homer and Joyce. He was also a very good teacher – so good that his classes were always maxed out early in the registration process.

His considerable skills would have been insufficient to get him tenure had he been teaching at Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. At those lofty institutions, success requires not just expertise, but the continuous production of scholarly papers and books that would demonstrate his bona fides.

In other words, he would have had to play the “publish or perish” game.

And here’s where we get into the question of how highly educated people can end up embracing stupid ideas.

Professors at prestige universities must write books and essays that are published by academic publishers. But academic publishers – and this is true to some extent of all nonfiction publishers – are reluctant to spend money on books that, however solid they may be in terms of research, are unlikely to get attention. Books that get attention draw attention to the publishers themselves. And that means growth, prestige, and profits.

So, if the goal of the professor/writer is limited to merely being edifying, there is no natural incentive to propose theses that are unable to get lots of attention.

In theory, academic publishers should be satisfied with books that correct some minor technical flaws in the accepted scholarly literature, the idea being that scholarship is advanced by strengthening and extending widely respected theories. (Scholarly research and writing was always thought to be a scrupulous and humble pastime.)

But however successful books like that may be at inching forward towards a deeper understanding of some esoteric subject, they will receive, at best, approval and praise from other scholars that are unknown to the larger world.

If modern scholars want to make a “splash” – if they want to propel their careers forward – they have to write something that, in some way, is bold and ambitious. Put differently, they must challenge or refute, in whole or in part, the accepted wisdom of the day.

It’s not easy to overturn or reinvent or even reshape ideas that have dominated a field of study. Standard academic ideas are standard for a good reason: They have resisted critical challenges time and time again, sometimes for centuries.

Faced with the task of coming up with an idea that is different, it’s nearly impossible for a modern scholar to resist the temptation to compose, instead, one that is simply new. An idea that is, however flawed, nonetheless exciting, superficially cogent, and, most importantly, appealing in some way to the current gestalt of the larger academic community.

Such ideas are not only attractive to academic publishers, they are attractive to the scholars that critique them in academic journals because they, too, are under pressure to have something new to write about.

They are all looking for ideas that are fresh but not flat-out nonsensical, newish and clever, but also supportive of the academic vibe of the time. These are the ideas that are endorsed and embraced.

So what academia gets, with every new generation of scholars and critics, is a set of “new” ideas that may be flawed, but at least have the benefit of seeming to be reasonable given the cultural prejudices of the day. And though they may have lost any relationship to logic, fact, or common sense, they are eventually accepted as “true.”

Fifty years ago, any academic that wrote a book promoting any of the crazy ideas out there today would have never seen that book in print.

The idea of White Privilege, for example, could not have become accepted were it not for Karl Marx’s idea, 100 years ago, that Capitalism and class conflict were the fundamental reasons for the unequal distribution of wealth. And the current ideas of intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, and identity politics could never have been taken seriously were it not for Marx’s illogical and false theories that power and class conflict were the root causes of inequality.

That is the situation we have today. The dominant social, political, and economic ideas embraced by elitist educational institutions are obviously and evidently ridiculous. But for those enclosed in academic echo chambers and social media algorithms, they seem not just perfectly reasonable, but virtuous and good.

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“I Am 17 and I Don’t Know Where to Go with My Life”

I frequently get requests from my readers asking for advice, and I do my best to answer their questions and get them pointed in the right direction. Sometimes, much to my surprise, the requests come from young people who have read my books. For example, this one from JC, who wrote after reading Ready, Fire, Aim:

“I am 17 and I don’t know where to go with my life. I was thinking about going into sales because I want to learn a skill. Since you are an expert, I wanted to know what your insight would be. Any help would be appreciated.”

This is what I told him… 

The best thing you have going for you, JC, is that you are only 17 and you’ve already proven your ambition by taking the initiative to write to me. In my opinion, ambition + proactivity = 50% of success. So, you already have half of what you need to achieve your business and financial goals.

The other half is a combination of knowledge and skill.

By knowledge, I mean discovering the key elements that undergird all entrepreneurial businesses, which is exactly what Ready, Fire, Aim was written to explain.

And by skill, I mean the three essential skills of entrepreneurial success:

* Knowing how to sell products and services, generally and in the specific industry you work in
* Knowing how to safely and intelligently grow any entrepreneurial business
* Knowing how to create and manage healthy and sustainable profits

Smart You!

There is no bigger advantage to achieving significant goals than starting young. Not only do you have unlimited energy and perhaps the sharpest mind you will ever have, you also have decades of time. You have the time to learn the fundamental skills that will make you competent and comfortable in every situation and against every challenge you will face in the future. You have the time to decide, at any point, that the path you are on is not right. And you have the time to start over.

Lucky You! 

There are many ways to become wealthy and successful. So if you begin your journey without a particular profession or business in mind, as seems to be the case with you, don’t fret about it. You have a BIG advantage over someone that wants to be, for example, a successful doctor or software technician or CEO in a particular industry. Because you haven’t locked yourself into a niche, you are free to choose a path that – depending on the skill sets you have now – will be the fastest and easiest to get you where you want to go.

What Should You Do First? 

I’ve never been comfortable with the idea that goals – any goals – should be undertaken one step at a time. The moment I decided that I wanted to be financially successful, I could see that there were a half-dozen things I needed to do, and I needed to start doing all of them immediately.

Suggestion #1. At this point, you are not sure what profession or business you want to become a part of. And, as I said, that is to your advantage. Because what you must start doing immediately is learn the fundamentals of how all businesses work. Not just by reading Ready, Fire, Aim, but by treating it as a reference that you refer to daily.

Suggestion #2. Take a sales job. Any sales job. Every successful entrepreneur I know spent at least a year or two in his/her youth selling products and services directly – either by phone or door-to-door, in a retail office or on a car lot. There is nothing that will teach you how to sell anything better and faster than simply doing it. No book or manual can come close. And don’t be afraid to move around a bit from one type of sales job to another. To truly master the skill of selling, you have to have experience with soft selling (as you would be doing in a retail store) and hard selling (on the phone or door-to-door).

Suggestion #3. Once you become comfortable with your selling chops, make the move to become head of sales, either in the company you are working for or another one. Running a sales department requires essential skills that you won’t get by being one of the salespeople. Heading a sales team will teach you how to manage, monitor and, most of all, motivate salespeople. And that is an enormously important skill that you must learn if you want to get to the top of whatever industry you eventually land in.

These three suggestions will get you started. There will be other skills you will need to develop as you move closer to your ultimate goals. But for now, since you are just starting out, this will be more than enough to focus on.

Oh, and One Other Thing… 

While you are working full-time at various jobs to develop your selling and sales management skills, don’t neglect your general education. If you choose not to go to college, you should nevertheless spend several hours a day taking online courses that will provide you with the knowledge and intellectual sophistication you will need in order to wisely spend the wealth you will eventually acquire.

 

Worth Considering

The Continuing Mystery of Ray Epps, Sr. 

On Jan. 5, the man pictured above was videotaped energetically encouraging Trump supporters to storm the Capitol. The next day, in the midst of the chaos outside the Capitol building, he was videotaped asking law enforcement officers how he could help them.

This got Tucker Carlson and some other conservative commentators wondering: Who was this guy? And what the heck was he doing? Was he bipolar? Or could he be working for the Feds, provoking the crowd to enter the Capitol?

For months, they asked: Who is that mystery man? And why wasn’t he among the 1,000+ Jan. 6 protestors that were suspected of criminal activity, identified, and arrested? For months, there were no answers. And then, finally, he was named: Ray Epps, Sr., a 60-something ex-Marine who, when questioned before the now-defunct House Select Committee, said that he wasn’t a federal agent and wasn’t working for the CIA, the National Security Agency, or the Metropolitan Police Dept.

What he couldn’t explain was his strange behavior.

Since then, more than 700 Jan. 6 protesters have been charged with various crimes, with more than half of them convicted. Most of those that had done nothing more than be photographed at the scene received sentences of several months. But the sentences of some who were involved in the planning and execution of the protest were severe.

Stewart Rhodes, a Yale graduate and military veteran who was convicted of planning the protest, received 18 years in prison for “seditious conspiracy.” Peter Schwartz, who was accused of throwing a chair at a group of policemen and then pepper-spraying them, got a 14-year sentence. And Thomas Webster, a retired New York City police officer, got 10 years for tackling a DC officer and grabbing his gas mask.

The most-publicized protestor, of course, was Jacob Chansley, who wasn’t accused of assaulting law enforcement or destroying property. He was sentenced to 41 months in jail for, apparently, simply being inside the Capitol Building, shirtless and wearing a headdress.

So, what do I think about the whole Ray Epps thing?

It might be the biggest political farce of the last 10 years, and we have had plenty of those. In terms of facts and common sense, his testimony and the government’s stated position on him and his story have the intellectual solidity of gender fluidity theory.

I still have questions.

Why, after the contradictory videos of him went viral, weren’t the FBI, the CIA , and the Metropolitan police, who had thousands and thousands of images of all the protestors that day, able to identify him?

And then why, when he was identified, did it take so long for the police to charge him?

And then why, after he was arrested, did the Justice Department make a special plea to the court for how they felt he should be treated?

Could it be that they were afraid that if he got a much stiffer sentence, five or 10 years, for example, he might start talking?

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