In Plato’s Republic, Plato discusses the need to educate the populace about role models. As far as Plato was concerned, it was harmful to suggest that deities and heroes and great men had any flaws. Instead, he said that it was necessary to paint them as perfect, and beyond all criticism.

One key problem with this approach is that heroes cannot grow – they have to be, in a sense, perfect for their entire lives. If that is the case, then we remove the possibility of character development, of a person maturing and learning and changing as they learn from their experiences. In other words, we lose the most important component of most good plots: how the hero overcomes his flaws and achieves redemption. So when we insist that our heroes were perfect, even when they were little children, then we make them so different from ourselves that we cannot relate to them in any way. Each of us, we would hope, are not the same person we were when we were children or teenagers.

Not that long ago, journalists would get offended if they were accused of presenting the news with a liberal bias. Now, they are publicly stating that “fairness is overrated.” A Los Angeles Times reporter recently wrote an op-ed in which she stated that the extreme views of Republicans mean that they are not a serious party and should not be taken seriously: “This is a Republican Party that is not serious about governing or addressing the nation’s actual problems, as opposed to faux ones like critical race theory … Democrats can’t be expected to deal with these guys like they’re on the level. Nor should journalists cover them as if they are.”

Journalists and others from all over the country chimed in with their hearty agreement. Bill Buzenberg wrote: “Great Op Ed — important message for every journalist. (NPR and PBS this includes you). Please don’t ‘balance’ the truth with an outright, calculated lie, and call it objective reporting or interviewing.” NBC anchorman Lester Holt said, “I think it’s become clear that fairness is overrated … The idea that we should always give two sides equal weight and merit does not reflect the world we find ourselves in.”

Just a brief jumping-off point here. A Politico article begins with the following sentence-graph: “Republicans have been feuding for months in Nevada’s largest county after a pro-Donald Trump insurgency with ties to far-right activists threw the party into chaos.” Well, I haven’t conducted a study of the thing, but informally, I cannot recall the last time I saw the supporters of Black Lives Matter, Antifa, ACORN, Organizing for Action, or any of the rest of that stuff referred to as “far-left activists” in an ostensibly balanced news outlet, especially when casually name-dropped as “tied to” a prominent figure on the left, such as a former president. Perhaps you can educate me, but I figured that likelihood of juice isn’t worth the squeeze, so I certainly did not bestir myself.

I don’t know what is going on in Nevada. Don’t care. Never heard of whomever it was mentioned in the article. I support the Trump guy. Hope he doesn’t suck.

I figured I’d be at least 90 years old before I made this discouraging comment about getting old. My older friends have said that they have already set limits on how much time they allow for groups they visit to complain about their aches and pains, their doctors, their hospitals, their nurses, pulled muscles, raging allergies—well, you get the picture. If you’re not careful as you get older, your entire conversation can be dominated with mumblings and grumblings, punctuated with the comment, “Getting old isn’t for sissies.”

Well, I’m trying to nip this personality modification and distortion in the bud. Yes, my elbow hurts, my right quad is aching, my body is stiff when I first wake up, my wrinkles are getting wrinkles (notice how I snuck all that in there!) but I’m taking charge of my internal dialogue and my conversations with friends.

It is all maintenance from here. And frankly, that’s how G-d intended life to be. But by gosh, I’m alive! And I can still think for myself (mostly) and take brisk walks on the days I don’t work out. And when I do work out, I work my upper and lower body, every other day—a three-pound weight in each hand. And people still “like” my funny comments here on Ricochet—whether that’s out of pity or amusement!

We have seen many posts recently bemoaning the sad state of affairs in our country, and even in the world.  There have been calls to resist, laments of despair, concessions to the inevitability of a Marxist, Socialist, Woke society.

I present to you Pastor Artur Pawlowski who has now been sentenced by the Canadian Government to probation with a condition that he must parrot “the majority of medical experts in Alberta” regarding social distancing, mask-wearing, and vaccines, even when he speaks in church.

This business of the supply chain being “broken” is a joke.  The supply chain is not broken. It is being deliberately crippled by the man-boy governor of California, who has forbidden independent truckers or union truckers driving trucks more than three years old (as I understand data from other Ricochetti) from taking loads away from the piers to local distribution points.  With the number of union truckers driving new rigs being finite, Mr. Xiden’s “24/7” claims are useless.

This is easily remedied.  A real president would jawbone the man-boy governor of California into suspending the regulations for the good of his state and his nation. If this failed, a real president would go on national TV and announce that due to the State of Emergency he had just declared, he was suspending the regs, that he was authorizing the Secretary of Commerce (who would actually be at work, not trying manfully to breastfeed a baby) to seize control of all rigs from Austin to Walla-Walla, that he was diverting the Coast Guard to line the 70 waiting ships up to be offloaded, that he was ordering the Secretary of Defense to divert military resources to the area to assist, etc.

“At present, a person’s fully vaccinated status cannot expire and is unrelated to boosters.”

This last week it was the airlines. Today’s headlines point towards a spread to the aerospace unions:

Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller was court-martialed on Thursday, October 14, charged with five counts of violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice including: showing contempt towards officials; showing disrespect towards superior commissioned officers and failure to obey an order or regulation.

He pled guilty on all counts, as he surely must have, given his call for “accountability” in the ranks.

Prior to the hearing, a deal was reached between prosecutors and the defense team, in which Scheller agreed to accept a maximum punishment of a letter of reprimand, forfeiture of two-thirds of a month’s pay for a year, and the processing of his request to resign from the Corps, the disposition and type of discharge to be determined by the Secretary of the Navy.