Join me Tuesday for some live radio — if you can stomach an hour of me

By David McElroy · March 13, 2012

Cleaning out the notebook once again…

I talked to a local elected official Monday night who told me that interest in the primary election today in Alabama is so low that they’re expecting only about 15 percent turnout among Democrats and 45 percent turnout among Republicans. I don’t sense any enthusiasm from voters about any race around here, from presidential on down to family court judge or constable or whatever. I mostly sense apathy.

Up until Monday, I hadn’t even seen a single sign for a presidential candidate around here other than the one Ron Paul sign at the other end of the street where I live. And you know how well Paul is going to do in a state with such a strong social conservative streak. (A poll released on primary day shows this for Alabama: Romney 28 percent, Gingrich 27 percent, Santorum 22 percent and Paul just 4 percent.)

I’ll be a guest Tuesday on a live radio show called “Independent Thinking with Steve Gelder.” Click the link and then click on “Listen live” to join us at noon central time — 10 a.m. on the west coast and 1 p.m. on the east coast. (If you’re in the rest of the world, you’re on your own with the time conversion.)

Steve is a bright and funny guy who’s a Los Angeles-based comedian, actor and filmmaker. We come from completely different places politically, but he’s smart, fair and genuinely interested in other points of view, so it ought to be a lot of fun. I’ve been fighting a cold for nearly a week, so the biggest fun for the audience might be counting the number of times I cough or snort before I can mute myself. If you miss the live show, you can hear it later when the episode is archived.

If a German government proposal is implemented, the Germans might come looking for me to pay someone each time I link to an article somewhere. The German government is trying to figure out ways to get online giants such as Google to pay money to help out with the European financial crisis, but the list of priorities also includes trying to get money from sites that aggregate news links. If this thing passes, I have news for them. The monkeys aren’t paying. All they have in life are their bananas — and the Germans are just going to have to find their own.

All my life, I’ve heard the expression, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” but I didn’t know where it came from and I had no idea of the context. (I also had no idea that the commonly used version isn’t quite correct.) When I was listening to this week’s EconTalk podcast Monday — which you should listen to each week if you don’t already — host Russ Roberts quoted the line from Alexander Pope in its context — and it took on new meaning for me:

A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain;
And drinking largely sobers us again.

How many times have you known someone who’s learned just a little bit about something, but just enough to make him assume he’s an expert? Pope is saying that learning just a little bit about something makes us feel as though we’re brilliant, but if we dig a little deeper, we’ll realize just how little we understand.

Most people today are painfully shallow in their intellectual pursuits. I have to confess that I’ve been guilty at times of learning just enough to talk about something, but not enough to really question the glib insights that I’ve casually picked up. Haven’t all of us done that? I just found myself thinking that when I study something new, if I immediately think I’ve mastered the subject, I probably haven’t gone deep enough to figure out how little I know.

There are times when men get unfairly characterized as being jerks who just want to use women, but there are some guys for whom the stereotype truly applies. A female friend of mine recently met a guy who acted very interested in her and pursued as though he was crazy about her. They had dinner for the first time and that went well. A week later, they had dinner at her house. Afterwards, he was all hands and lips. There was quite a bit of kissing and everything seemed to be going well.

All of a sudden, though, he realized that she didn’t have any intention of sleeping with him. He suddenly looked at the clock and said that it was late and he needed to go. That was days ago and she still hasn’t heard from him. Is there any question about what he was after?

Fella, it’s people like you who give all of us a bad name.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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