The Sound of Silence
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
‘Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence
And in the naked light, I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
“Fools”, said I, “You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you”
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls”
And whispered in the sound of silence
How stupid are we?
Talking about America, there seems to be no limit to the depth of our stupidity, the depth of the pit of stupidity we have fallen into. It’s rather amazing actually. Think about it. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin wall came down, the United States was the only world power. In the thirty years since then we have allowed Russia to regain its world-power status and we have allowed China to become a world power. China’s economy has overtaken ours and just recently, for the first time ever, the dollar is no longer the world currency.
So how stupid are we? Well, how stupid can you be?
The war on poverty has been going on for fifty-two years, since 1965. We’ve poured twenty-three billion dollars into it. That’s 23,000,000,000. For that money there has been no real noticeable change in the poverty rate and no real change in the demographics of the people in poverty. Yet we continue down the same road. Stupid?
As regards education, we spend more per capita than any other country and yet we rank a whopping twenty-seventh in the world in education. Now that’s a big bang for the buck. Furthermore, segregation was outlawed in 1954 and yet our schools are becoming more and more segregated. The rate at which segregation is occurring continues to increase.
Stupid?
It gets better. There are those who fought against segregation who now insist they have a right to their own spaces, or they insist that whites not be allowed into certain spaces. Well then…
Stupid? You bet
Just as stupid and actually most dangerous to our society is the disregard shown for logic and facts. Replacing logic and facts are feelings and subjectivity. The gender identity laws exemplify this. But that raises a controversial issue and God forbid that should happen. So let’s put it this way. Mr. X doesn’t have any cash and can’t buy that five-dollar super mochaccino he wants because he left his wallet in his Porsche. He feels poor. He identifies with poor people at that moment. In accordance with the gender identity rules, he is poor. He identifies himself as poor, ergo, by the new rules, he is poor. If that happened on April 15th, Mr. X should be eligible for not paying taxes and even getting an earned income credit.
Stupid? Beyond stupid. How stupid can we be?
Let’s see. Remember “you have to sign it to see what’s in it?” Stupid? Well, what’s even more stupid is that she’s still in office and the head of her party. She’s not stupid. She didn’t have to read it because she doesn’t have to deal with it. She and her cronies voted themselves an exception so they could stay on the government congressional plan. That’s the Cadillac of Cadillacs plan.
Stupid? Not them! Us. More than half of them are millionaires And they way their positions work, they don’t really have to pay for anything. Our tax dollars pay for everything. Or, they’re having a great, self-enriching time on our dime. So how stupid can we be?
Russia. Russia’s goal is to create chaos here in America. Well, look at what our media has been pushing for the last four years and more. Look at what the party of opposition, now leadership and in control, has done. How stupid are we as a people and as a nation? Haven’t we played right into Putin’s hands? China’s hands? Stupid.
Well, aren’t we stupid for allowing all this to go on? Aren’t we more stupid for continuing to fund it?
Finally, as the liberals push left toward the welfare state and socialism, history tells us that capitalism and the free market pay for the bulk of all charity work done throughout the world. It also tells us that no socialist government thus far has ever managed to succeed. Why would we push toward that which we know will fail?
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Really, how stupid are we? Pretty damn stupid.
By Peter Weiss
WYSIWYG came about in regard to computers, referring to the notion that what was displayed on the computer screen was exactly what would be printed out. What you see is what you get. Computers programs did not always produce this, so around 1982, when they began to, it was a pretty cool thing.
Overall, it’s nice to know that when you are looking at something it is what it’s supposed to be. Similarly, when you’re looking at someone, it’s nice to know he or she is what they appear to be. WYSIWYG.
Most often, however, this is not the case. Most often language is coded, ideas are couched in innuendo or inference, and people are not what they appear to be. It’s sad, but it’s true.
So let’s start with the media. News reporters are supposed to be unbiased. That was why the press was protected in the Constitution. When the media are puppets for governments, we in America look at them with scorn and derision. Remember the 1950s and 1960s, particularly regarding the Soviet Union, when we viewed their propaganda-spewing press as despicable agents for the government hiding the truth from the Soviet people? When a coup occurs, the first thing a new power does is knock out the broadcast media. It is only restored when controlled by the new government.
We were supposed to be free of that propaganda stuff here in America. We were supposed to be free of a biased press. That’s why the press was protected from the get-go, in the First Amendment to the Constitution. But the media is no longer WYSIWYG. Most of the media is in the tank for Democrats and these days they make no bones about it. Two newspapers come to mind, The Washington Post and the New York Times, both of which lean really far left. It’s okay to lean one way or the other, but the particular bent is supposed to be expressed editorially, not through the news itself. The news is supposed to be sacrosanct. But it’s not. The first, by the way, is owned by the owner of Amazon. His personal holding company bought it in 2013. Carlos Slim, one of the world’s richest men and Mexico’s major cell phone controller, is the major stock holder in the other. Since he’s a shady character, it’s alleged he became top owner in the Times to prevent negative press about himself.
WYSIWYG NOT.
It gets better. We knew where the real media bias was pretty early on in the Obama presidency. GE owned NBC when Obama invited GE’s CEO into the White House and made him a major player in Obama’s green energy transformation of America. GE got sweet light bulb deals and a lot more, especially some major contracts in China. NBC, a major media player, was fully in bed with the POTUS.
WYSIWYG NOT. But at least Obama was transparent in his corruption.
We now have what we were never supposed to have, the APN, the American Propaganda News. It purports to be unbiased but we know it isn’t. It pretends to be fair, but study after study shows it leans heavily left, and this year in particular it isn’t even trying to hide it much. A lot of it is owned by big moguls whose private interests control much of what it does.
Unbiased, First Amendment protected, free press? WYSIWYG NOT.
By Peter Weiss
Certain things are beyond belief. Especially some things we’re seeing in America today are way beyond belief.
So let’s get simple and start with a simple statement. America was created to be and has always been proud of being run by a government for the people, by the people and of the people.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself to begin to see where we are at and to understand America today.
40 million people are out of work due to this pandemic. Why would anyone put another 10 thousand people out of work for a political reason?
Why is there such a thing in America as a political class comprised of full-time career politicians who now rule us like a group of tyrants?
What is a career politician a specialist in? What does a career politician know or do that a simple layman can’t?
We know about Covid that the elderly and those with co-morbidity are most likely to die from it, by far and clearly demonstrated. Why would anyone not vaccinate their elderly first (not counting health care workers and first responders)?
Why would anyone curtail energy production and call for tax hikes on gasoline when so many people are out of work and hurting economically?
Why would American leaders take us back into energy dependence on the Middle East?
Democracy and government of, for and by the people.
Any logic in what our leaders are doing here here?
Some things to think about in understanding the state of America today.
By Peter Weiss
Are you a payer or a payee? Or are you both?
As the tax bill looms in conference and is being formulated into one bill to be sent to the president, we hear a lot of information about the bill. Most of what we hear from the left side is scare tactics and divisive rhetoric, about how us regular people will pay more in taxes and the rich will get big tax breaks, about how it will increase the gap between the rich and the poor, about how it will decimate Medicare and Medicaid, and on and on. Nancy Pelosi called it Armageddon, as if she, with her more than 115 million dollar net worth has any understanding of what such Armageddon would be.
Most of what we hear from the right side is about how it will stimulate fiscal growth and corporate growth, put people back to work again, put more money in the pockets of us regular people who have been paying taxes, repatriate a lot of cash that is overseas which will in turn help corporations to invest in themselves and grow, thus employing more people, not touch Medicare or Medicaid, and on and on.
Somewhere in between the left side’s rhetoric and the right side’s selling points is something getting toward truth.
Remember balance? The first rule of real research aimed at truth is balance, an honest look for and appraisal of the bonafide research about the issue.
So which shoes do you wear and what do you want to believe?
If you are a payee, and have mostly been a payee, and if you have no real incentive to be anything other than a payee, you can choose to believe the left’s point of view and sit on your sofa and feel angry about those who will maybe pay less and are richer than you while those others go out to work to pay for your benefits. And you can choose to believe the left’s divisive talk about how the rich get richer, which is actually true, while they neglect to tell you that the rich actually work for their riches and employ most of us regular people who make regular wages, which is also true.
If you are a payer, a tax payer, someone who’s been wondering for a long time how come the government takes a good chunk of your modest income and then the state and city governments come along and take another good chunk of your modest income, you might tend to believe what the right’s selling points are trying to show you, that you might have to pay a little less, which, since you are paying for everything for everyone who is a payee, doesn’t seem like a bad thing at all.
So there are some facts out there, that are really facts that give some indication as to what’s actually going on here and what is political BS. who pays taxes latest Federal tax data
The top one percent (1%) of Americans pay forty-three percent (43%) of the Federal taxes. Forty-five percent (45%)of the people pay no federal taxes at all. Those of us at different levels in between pay the rest. The two links show slightly different percentages and so you can see what’s close to real.
Once again, you can cut and paste onto your Facebook page the misleading headline bullet-list points of either side, left or right, and thus be part of the left’s divisive, fear-mongering rhetoric or part of the right’s economic selling points, true or not.
But if you’re one of the ones who pay nothing, receive everything and have no skin in the game, it seems like you should really stay pretty quiet. And if you are one of ones who are giving a chunk of your pension and Social Security to the government to pay for those who pay nothing, then it seems like you really ought to find out what is real and accurate and support that.
Which shoes do you wear?
By Peter Weiss
How you look at things really depends upon which shoes you wear. We all think we know everything, and yet we actually know very little. Even those of us who have many years of advanced education know very little, and if our advanced education was any good (because nowadays the “goodness” of the education being presented is really in question), the first thing it should have taught us is that even when we’re experts we actually know very little of what there is to know.
My Doctoral adviser told me, when I first started my Doctoral studies, that none of the professors wanted to know my opinion about anything until I had the letters after my name. What he was saying, and he did articulate this directly, was that the word I should be absent in my papers, that the professors were only interested in valid research to support any thesis presented. He was careful to assert the necessity for balance at the same time. When one looks at an issue, one must look at all the research, not just one strain. When one ignores the opposing point of view and its valid research, the balance scale is tipped and the end result is often skewed if not visibly ridiculous.
So what my Doctoral Adviser was actually saying was that there are rules to research that must be followed and that when the rules are not followed the research and findings are generally not valid.
A good example of this is the climate change issue in America. When all the research is funded by the agency (the US Government) and the researchers’ funding is dependent upon findings which support the best interests of the agency’s position (in the Obama administration it was that climate change was our biggest problem and concern), there’s a good bet that all the research is going to reflect the agency’s position. Compound this with the Attorney General and many State Attorneys General literally prosecuting researchers whose findings contradicted the government’s position—yes for those of us with short memories, which our government officials count on us having, that is what happened—it becomes a really safe bet that the research, its findings and premises then being sold to us by people with political agendas is very skewed and imbalanced.
This does not mean to say that none of the research is valid or that climate change is not an issue. It is only to attest to the notion that research needs to be balanced to actually aim toward discovering truth. When people in power rewrite the rules of research to obtain the results they want and use the powers of money and litigation to suppress differing research, we’ve got a real crisis and it’s a good bet they’re not interested in truth.
A good example of balance is when Al Sharpton and Newt Gingrich went on the road together in support of supporting failing schools in the cities. Sharpton and Gingrich on the road together. Now those two don’t see eye to eye on much, but when from their differing viewpoints they come to the same conclusions, it’s a good bet that overall they were heading toward a truth. In this case it was that there is a real problem with inner-city education.
So which shoes do you wear? There are many different viewpoints in many different areas, and none of us really know anything compared to what there is to know. When we start acting like we know everything and are right about everything and we use power to demand others see it our way, we’re in real trouble.
Take a look out there. Maybe stop and think sometimes before you cut and paste something on your social media whose veracity you haven’t checked out. It’s time to get back to real research and move away from believing our politicians (on both sides) who continually spout all or nothing arguments. Anyone who knows anything about debate knows the all or nothing argument is a fallacious one.
Einstein said: “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
By Peter Weiss
Hard to believe that we’re living in America. Hard to believe that we’ve come to here, to this point in our country’s development, the point where I can’t say what I believe or feel.
It’s nothing really new. I was a teacher in New York. In case you hadn’t noticed about New York… In case you hadn’t noticed, the UFT and AFT have been in the Democrats’ pocket forever, so there in the Bronx where I taught anyone who did not sign-on to the left-wing shenanigans had to stay quiet, to form a kind of secret society where they could speak their minds.
America?
Not really!
Here where I live now some five or six years ago I made a comment about something political that leaned toward the right. A bit afterward, one of the people in a supervisory position at the place where I made the comment approached me privately to tell me they (gender purposefully not indicated) agreed with what I said but would I please be careful not to let anyone know and to refrain from outwardly making such comments in the future.
America?
Not really!
Well, so… You can’t put a Trump sticker on your car or a sign out in front of your house without worrying about being harassed and vandalized. You can’t state any opinion other than the current mob-think ridiculousness without putting your job I jeopardy, fear of ostracism or even maybe persecution or prosecution.
America?
Not really!
Not the America I envisioned or once thought I lived in.
By Peter Weiss
I like to think we do things that are representative of us and of how we are. I like to think that our actions count for something and that our words represent rather than belie our actions.
I like to think that some things stand for other things. I’m talking about bigger metaphors than those like A=B without using like or as. I’m talking about one action standing for a whole group of actions.
Here are a few past examples. One I’ve mentioned before is Harry Reid lying and saying that Mitt Romney had not paid taxes in ten years. It was a lie but Romney could not get out from under it and other mistruths cast by those wonderful Democrat leaders we have.
Later, Mitt Romney having lost, of course, Harry Reid was called out for lying and he said, so what, he lost didn’t he?
That act of lying while pretending to tell the truth has become the overall metaphor in the Democrat playbook.
It would be pointless to go over the past four years because the sides are drawn. Nearly seventy-four million people believe the Democrats stole this election and that says it all. In fact it is a good metaphor for the division in this country.
That said, going back to Harry Reid and the Democrat lying playbook, Joe Biden said he would never take a vaccine developed under Trump and he used that to help his plight in this past election, as a tool. As he said it, as he proclaimed to the people that Trump couldn’t be trusted, he knew all the precautions and measures that had to be taken for a vaccine to be declared usable.
He was lying.
Then he was first to take that vaccine developed under President Trump.
Metaphor for the Democrats, lie as you see fit, even when you know you are lying. And then do as you do.
Metaphor.
Biden is lying all over the place and the media is covering up for him.
We deserve better. We deserve a better metaphor to live by, to be led by, maybe ones established by the likes of Jesus or Martin Luther King Jr.
By Peter Weiss
It would be insanity to think that because tonight turns this night into a new calendar year starting tomorrow morning things will be different.
I’m good at insanity. I’ve practiced it a lot in my life and still do sometimes. But I do know that tomorrow morning if we all do what we’ve all always done, nothing will change.
The notion of New Year’s is one of the hope of change. Hence we make resolutions, which I gave up on a long time ago. If I actually followed my resolutions I’d be skinny now instead of still needing to diet.
That said, I continually pray to God. I’m not an atheist, so to any atheists out there, just consider that statement as an affirmation of hopefulness. For me it is faith and more.
Overall, I have little hope for us. Man is by nature selfish and greedy. Look at our ruling class, the American Politburo. I don’t expect them to change. First reasonable sign of change coming from them will be a simple one-size-fits-all imposition of strict term limits.
Not gonna happen because man is by nature selfish and greedy, and they (as a group) exemplify in real time the worst of that.
I don’t think 2021 will be much better than 2020. In fact I think it will be considerably worse. I think Covid will only be partly, and a small part at that, the reason as to why.
The average shelf life of a democracy is about a quarter-century. The way we educate our kids these days, that’s about 250 years. Seems to me we’re doing a great job of killing ours.
One thing 2020 has done for me is given me back gratitude. I am grateful. I’m thankful for so much it’s too much to elaborate here and now. Another time.
So on New Year’s Eve if you think there’s a magic bullet out there that’s gonna make things better starting tomorrow morning, forget about it.
If you think our leaders and the world leaders are going to do better, nice thought, but forget about it.
Regardless, think good thoughts, look to the sun and keep love and gratitude in your heart.
By Peter Weiss
We’ll keep this one short too. For all you Democrat-dogma supporters, nah, nah, nah, boo boo on you. Only one thing left to say besides imploring you to think for yourselves independently and that is: be careful — you may just get what you ask for.
You/we all have choices. You can believe what Pravda USA mainstream media Democrat lapdogs want you to believe, or you can look at things independently for yourself. You can question, or you can accept. You can act like an ostrich and bury your heads in the sand or…
Once again, and straight out for the record…
In 1970 at the Ohio State University demonstration in which six hundred people were arrested, I was the first one. Six unidentified FBI agents were beating on a demonstrator, a small kid not more than 135 pounds soaking wet. I went to help him, they knocked me out, I came to in a paddy wagon. An undercover policeman led us through a conversation that was recorded and showed up verbatim at my trial.
Here was the offer: plead guilty to misdemeanor assault and battery on a police officer, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct and be allowed to graduate (not be expelled from the University), get sixty days in the workhouse and a two hundred fifty dollar fine. The trial would be held off until I finished up my last trimester and graduated.
Or:
Don’t plead guilty. Be re–arrested for a felony, rioting one. Go to trial almost immediately and be facing a year in the state penitentiary. Bail would go up so high I couldn’t post it and I’d be expelled, hence not graduate, upon being found guilty.
My lawyer refused to let me do anything other than take the plea deal. He said they would surely find me guilty in the political climate there at that time and that I wouldn’t last a week in the penn. What he actually said was a young boy like me, they’d kill me (literally) in the first week.
My lawyer also said that if I refused to take the deal he’d quit my case and he’d make sure that any other attorney I got made me take the deal.
So I lied. I didn’t lie about being innocent. I lied about being guilty. I said I did something I surely didn’t do.
Think independently. Look what they did to Flynn. Check out who did it, who lied about what they did and why they did both.
They are guilty. Not Flynn.
Flynn was the key to… We all know what the Democrat-dogma-people can’t/won’t say.
Two things to remember: be an independent thinker, and, you lefties, be careful because you may just get what you want and discover it’s not at all what you think it is or you thought it would be.
