James Pyle – Author

Back in the `70s I spent seven years with Collins Radio Company (the country’s pre-eminent avionics manufacturer, now part of United Technologies). As a result, I am drawn naturally to events involving aircraft accidents, especially when electronic malfunctions are suspect – Boeing’s 737 Max being the most recent.

Following every accident, equipment malfunctions and crew error are the first places investigators look for blame and the inevitable finger-pointing begins, cheered on by a headline hungry press.

A legion of industry experts, infinitely more qualified than I, is involved in the Boeing investigation, looking for the root cause of the two tragic crashes and whom to blame. Eventually someone, probably Boeing’s CEO, will take the fall even though he likely couldn’t tell an MCAS system from the landing gear switch.

The real villain in this recurring tragedy is the U.S. Congress which, in 1978, passed the Airline Deregulation Act (ADA) removing government control over fares, routes, and market entry of new airlines. It also created a free market in the commercial airline industry, leading to a large increase in the number of flights, a decrease in fares, an increase in the number of passengers and miles flown, and a consolidation of carriers. Thank you, Jimmy Carter.

Business travelers resisted flying with hordes of vacationers and unruly children; thus was spawned a private aircraft industry adding dramatically to the number of aircraft in the sky (and demanding landing slots) at every hour of the day at every airport in the country.

Under ADA, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) retained regulatory power over all aspects of safety, but without additional funding by congress to staff and monitor this unexpected surge in the number of new aircraft. That lack continues today.

Too many aircraft and too few experienced pilots, coupled with a demand for more cheap seats, has spawned an aviation industry organized, and now implemented, by computer software. But unimaginable things can and will happen at 45,000 feet in an ether littered with satellites, drones and North Korea’s latest rocket failure. A nerdy programmer cannot, nor should he be expected to, design fixes for every possible eventuality.

The military now relies heavily on drones and automated airborne delivery systems and thus turns out far fewer pilots than in years past. That works because no life is lost if a drone or automated plane is shot down. No one screams; the press in uninterested. But airliners, with between 200-400 souls aboard, are a different matter altogether. There need be different, more stringent, metrics involved when designing commercial airplanes. Plan B should be in the form of a trained, beating heart able to take over, unencumbered by a faulty computer chip.

But Wall Street loves technology because a micro-chip is cheaper than an experienced pilot or an inexperienced CEO. And we all know that congress is the handmaid of Wall Street. The pressure is on. Boeing will survive. It’s too big and important to fail. It’s CEO, not so much!

Sorry, Mr.Muilenburg, you are expendable. Problem solved!

Back in my Collins Radio days, whenever boarding a commercial flight we’d glance left when passing the open cockpit door, looking for that gray-haired eminence with four stripes on his epaulettes before settling down, drink in hand, knowing we were in good hands. You just never know when you might need him (or her). I still look.

But the real failure lies with Congress for passing legislation without considering the unintended consequences. Too bad we can’t fire them.

You are welcome.

For more, go to: http://www.jameshpyle.com

Are you a doomsayer like George Orwell in 1984, or a cockeyed optimist like Julie Andrews of South Pacific fame?

Me? I’ve always been a glass-half-full guy.  Until now.

The world has survived famines, floods, dinosaurs, etc.. In modern times we’ve had AIDS, alien invasions and climate change – even sex change. All of which were conquered or normalized because they were identifiable and quantifiable.

We’ve had Popes, Dictators, Jesus Christ, Allah and now, Donald Trump – all of whom thought they were placed on earth to protect us from ourselves. Somehow, we have and will continue to survive; or so I’ve always thought. If some wacky despot fired a missile at us, we’d know how to retaliate. He may fire one rocket successfully, but we have 35,000 to send back his way. If ISIS gets frisky again in some remote corner of the world, we know how to find and obliterate them.

Until now.

Now, comes the biggest challenge ever to confront this earth . . . and it’s not climate change. It is Space Warfare.

If our entire communication system is incapacitated and our electricity no longer flows, if commercial and military aviation is halted because pilots cannot navigate and our reservoirs become contaminated, who is to blame? Who do we punish? Who decides whom to punish? (Refer to the recent attack on Baltimore’s computer systems.)

Bedlam would be the best of all possible outcomes.

Congress was intended to be a collection of our wisest citizens, chosen by the people, to represent us in matters of state – and in matters of defense (survival).  So much for good intentions!  Sadly, the people’s representatives are not equal to the task. What we have is a collection of 535 poorly informed, self-serving politicos whose sole objective is not the welfare of the country – but perpetuating their own careers.

Eliminating the threat of space warfare lies not in token phrases like ‘nationalism’ and/or ‘making America great again’. It requires the full time engagement of super intellects with high moral fiber with a willingness to sacrifice and speak truth for the good of all.

Warfare conducted from lethal orbiting platforms is a global threat that should involve not just the pseudo-intelligentsia on our west and east coasts but every thinking person on earth.   It makes global warming look like Chicken Little’s fear of the sky falling – something to worry about after paying for our kids’ college tuition and saving enough to retire.

President Trump has addressed the issue in a tepid manner by proposing a U.S. Space Force. Maybe a good start – but not adequate. He, in the absence of Luke Skywalker, is best qualified to gather the other world leaders and announce: “The first one of you clowns to launch an attack from an orbiting space platform will find his country’s capital in ashes.”

Who would not believe him?

Now imagine Elizabeth Warren or little Pete Buttigieg in the same scenario.

The laughter would be heard from Beijing to Moscow to Riyadh.

Unidentified enemies are reportedly developing weapons designed to turn our technology against us. Space is being weaponized and our Congress is clueless.

Silicon Valley is running amok and Wall Street is sponsoring the race.

Trump wants to build a “Space Force” akin to the Air Force. But who (what) will be the target? Every orbiting orb in sight? That would be akin to General Custer standing atop the St. Louis arch with a shotgun pointing west, hoping to hit a few Indians somewhere out there.

If we ever needed a leader, not a committee of Congress, – it is now.

In November, 2020 remember who first warned you.

You are welcome.

For more, to to: http://www.jameshpyle.com

I love metaphors.

Like subtle tunes playing in a darkened night,

They radiate meaning beyond the words.

I especially love mixed metaphors.

They’re fun to hold & caress, being careful not to get pricked by their acid truths.

The 2018 election of Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gives rise to one of my own creation:

Once the camel gets his nose under your tent, you’ll be relegated to the dustbin of history.

I love this country, what it stands for, and the specificity of the English language.

Former Senator Alan Simpson gave a eulogy at GHW Bush’s funeral, that included:

Those who travel the high road in Washington are never bothered by heavy traffic.

Think about it.

You are welcome.

For more, go to: http://www.jameshpyle.com

An Old Man & A Bucket Of Shrimp

This is a wonderful story and, true!

It happened every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun resembled a giant orange and was starting to dip into the blue ocean.  Old Ed came strolling along the beach to his favorite pier.  Clutched in his bony hand was a bucket of shrimp. Ed walks out to the end of the pier, where it seems he almost has the world to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now.

Everybody’s gone, except for a few joggers on the beach. Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts…and his bucket of shrimp.

Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky a thousand white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier.

Before long, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds. As he does, if you listen closely, you can hear him say with a smile, ‘Thank you. Thank you.’

In a few short minutes the bucket is empty. But Ed doesn’t leave. He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place.

When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach, a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the stairs, and then they, too, fly away. And old Ed quietly makes his way down to the end of the beach and on home.

If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like ‘a funny old duck,’ as my dad used to say. Or, to onlookers, he’s just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding the seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.

To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty. They can seem altogether unimportant….maybe even a lot of nonsense.

Old folks often do strange things, at least in the eyes of Boomers and Busters. Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down there in Florida.  That’s too bad. They’d do well to know him better.

His full name:  Eddie Rickenbacker. He was a famous hero in World War I, and then he was in WWII. On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his seven-member crew went down. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft.

Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger and thirst. By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were or even if they were alive.

Every day across America millions wondered and prayed that Eddie Rickenbacker might somehow be found alive.

The men adrift needed a miracle. That afternoon they had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle. They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose. Time dragged on. All he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft…suddenly Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap. It was a seagull!

Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck. He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal of it – a very slight meal for eight men. Then they used the intestines for bait. With it, they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait….and the cycle continued. With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued after 24 days at sea.

Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first life-saving seagull. And he never stopped saying, ‘Thank you.’ That’s why almost every Friday night he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart full of gratitude.

PS: Eddie Rickenbacker was the founder of Eastern Airlines. Before WWI he was race car driver. In WWI he was a pilot and became America’s first ace. In WWII he was an instructor and military adviser, and he flew missions with the combat pilots. Eddie Rickenbacker is a true American hero.

 You’ve got to be careful with old guys; you just never know what they have done during their lifetime.

You are welcome.

Alexandria Octavio-Cortez (28) is the current darling of the left and a media sensation after a stunning primary upset over Joe Crowley (56) who represented NY’s 14^th congressional district for 20 years. Then, in the general election, she easily bested Republican Anthony Pappas, a lackluster professor of economics at St. John’s University. The artfully constructed district represents portions of Queens and the Bronx, where Alexandria was born and raised.

She is young, attractive, articulate and smart (B.S. Brown Univ.).  She is also a proud socialist.

It’s easy to understand why Alexandria leans toward socialism (the only course taught at Brown). What’s less clear is why the people of the 14^th found her espoused policies so appealing. She garnered 78% of the votes cast. Demographics and Pappas’s inept communication skills explain part of the reason, but there is a more incipient movement afoot worldwide, not just in NY’s 14^th. The demographics of the 14^th (shown below), give a clue, and a heads-up, to careful observers.

For centuries, the world has suffered divisions – Chasms across which détente, much less agreement, has proven elusive if not impossible: Religions, Tribal rivalries, Economic disparity, Race and recently, Politics, are all flashpoints. More often than reason would dictate, these chasms have led to wars, insurrections and/or inviolable borders between differing factions. Take another look at the above table: All those factors are represented – and sizzling at a slow boil.

It occurred to me, while reading the Wall Street Journal this week, that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s victory was a sign post that whole uncoordinated segments of our ‘Not-so-United States’ are shouting at one another across several of these immutable chasms. The political class has lost control. Decent people with deeply held beliefs are choosing sides, purchasing weapons and building walls. I am reasonably sure that the fine folks voting in the South Bronx are not concerned about the topics covered by the WSJ: trade wars with with China, rising interest rates on loans to big banks, Brexit, the war in Yemen, the price of crude oil. But 50% of those folks have relatives in Mexico and/or Latin America. They also believe the government should solve all of their problems and address all of their needs.  That 50% was enough for AOC to win big-time.

Someone smarter than me once opined that ‘one spark is unlikely to cause a fire, but the confluence of several can launch a maelstrom’. Imagine one lightning strike in a dry-tinder forest and you have a California disaster of epic proportions; or witness the riots in France. There, Giléts Jaunes are on the verge of taking down the government – to a naïve President Macron’s amazement over a proposed eco-tax on Diesel.  The French economy is threatened, as is Britain’s, due to Parliament’s screwed up approach to Brexit. Germany and the Scandinavians are overwhelmed by illiterate immigrants demanding asylum and threatening the same chaos they left behind. Then there is Greece and Italy — but let’s not get carried away. At least they have great olive oil and wine.

People all over the world (below the radar) are making more choices, not necessarily informed choices, augmented by social media, and so-called leaders are clueless about how to deal with them.

After Octavio–Cortez’s win, Speaker Nancy Pelosi also quipped: “Let’s not get carried away. They made a choice in one district.”

So beware, Nancy, the first spark has sputtered and it has a name: Alexandria Octavio-Cortez.  Leaders like you, Trump, Macron, el Sisi and others would do well to recognize it and to recall the refrain of La Marseillaise.

Aux armes, citoyens !
Formez vos bataillons !
Marchons ! Marchons !
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons !

Or, for you non-Francophiles:

Grab your weapons, citizens!
Form your battalions!
Let us march! Let us march!
May impure blood
Water our fields!

We have now elevated an avowed Socialist and a Muslim activist to the halls of our Congress, I think of the words of another icon: “God bless us, every one!”  Dickens repeats that phrase at the end of his allegory signifying Scrooge’s change of heart towards Tiny Tim and Christmas.

May, that we also have the courage to see the light, resist the bad and encourage the good through enlightened leaders.

We can only hope!

You are welcome.

For more, go to: jameshpyle.com

I was drawn to an article in today’s WSJ under the headline: Kim Overture Draws Trump Praise. Having earlier read a translation of Kim Jung Un’s year-end message, I was intrigued by how anyone could wax ebullient over this “new peace overture”. (It was a 30 minute ‘fireside chat’, 2/3 of which was devoted to the PRK achieving economic and energy independence. The balance dealt with North Korea’s development of a high-tech combat weapon and the hoped-for détente with South Korea.) But a former U.S. intelligence officer, now an ‘expert’ on North Korea’s secret regime and a fellow at the Stimson Center (a Washington think tank) was quoted: “I am confident that the U.S. will probe this and unpack what the North Koreans mean,” he solemnly said.

Whaat !!  Sounds like another giant leap for mankind.

During a needed coffee break, I Googled What do think tanks do?  Now, more informed, though no wiser, I know how these ‘thinkers’ spend their days –They smoke legal marijuana.

The “think-tank” label became popular in the 1950s, by which time there were already plenty of such organizations in existence. Many of America’s most venerable tanks, including the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, were founded in the early 20th century. Britain’s Royal United Services Institute was created in 1831 by the Duke of Wellington. But modern think-tanks blossomed in the second half of the 20th century when universities began churning out graduates who were unqualified for employment that would contribute to the country’s GNP.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania reckon there are now approximately 6,850 think tanks worldwide.

These tanks aim to fill the gap between academia and policymaking. Academics grind out authoritative studies, but at a snail’s pace. Journalists’ first drafts of history are speedy but thin. A think-tank attempts to help the policymaking process by publishing reports that are as rigorous as academic research and as accessible as journalism. (Bad ones have a knack of doing just the opposite.) They flourished in the 20th century for two reasons. Governments, ignoring historical reference, were expanding everywhere, meaning there was lots of demand for policy expertise (Enter the think tanks), and the arrival of 24-hour news created an insatiable appetite for informed interviewees to spin the new information, now called breaking news. The same trends are now causing think-tanks to take off in developing countries.

Yet the world may have reached peak tank. The Pennsylvanian researchers found that in 2014 the number of new tanks declined for the first time in 30 years. One reason is that donors nowadays prefer to make project-specific grants, rather than funnelling money into mere thinking. Another is increased competition. Professional consultancies such as McKinsey publish a fair bit of brainwork, and members of opinionated “advocacy organizations” can make for more compelling interviewees than balanced think-tankers. So the tanks are rethinking themselves. The Pew Research Centre describes itself as a “fact tank”, focusing on information rather than policy recommendations. And the Sutton Trust calls itself a “do tank”, putting its own recommendations into practice.

Voila!  A whole new industry has self-spawned.

So, how do these guys/gals/trannies spend each day while earning outsized salaries/fees, mostly paid by philanthropists (think Soros, Steyer and Gates) or, by taxpayers?  Do they, like me, stare at the ceiling while drifting off on afternoon naps, or lying in a chaise longue by the beach ogling thongs and spaghetti halters?

Now, dear readers, you know why recreational marijuana is legal. It has become taxable soul food for the thinking but unemployable elites graduating in great numbers from Harvard, Brown and the Seven Sisters (or brothers or trans or whatever the hell they are.)

One moment, please. I think I hear a rocket engine powering up, somewhere west of here.

You are welcome.

For more, go to: http://www.jameshpyle.com

Regular readers of this blog know that I specialize in “Simple Solutions to Complex Problems’. As far back as 12/12/15 when I first wrote about the solution to the Ukraine/Russia crisis (fist fights in Kiev’s Parliament), I have advocated for: 1) easy solutions to world hunger (corn, modified to sterilize), 2) funding the Wall at our southern border (sell ads on the wall); among others. Readers have now called upon me to solve the latest crisis – Central American criminals threatening to enter the U.S. illegally.

SOLUTION:

NASA has just demonstrated (at a cost of $994 million) that we can successfully land a spaceship on Mars.  My immediate reaction was: Why?

What the hell can we possibly learn about Mars that will benefit American taxpayers?

Are we afraid China might decide to build cars up there?

Or, might Russia build a pipeline from Mars to France before we do?

Teflon, Tang, MREs, plastics and LEDs have already been invented, thanks to NASA’s lunar excursions. Do we really need more space-related stuff that comes with unanticipated consequences?  I think not.

Ahh, the insanity of politicians and their unfettered hold on our wallets!

HOWEVER!   After reading of NASA’s latest ‘accomplishment’ I awoke at 3:00 a.m. with another ingenious brain fart: I know what to do with the illegals pounding at our southern doors: A free flight to Mars on a luxurious American spacecraft for all who manage to cross the Rio Grande.

On board we would offer:

• Free English lessons during the nine years en-route
• All the MRE’s you can eat
• Plenty of time for siestas on comfortable hammocks.
• Peeing into plastic tubes – no need to get up!
• Membership in Marriott rewards program
• In-flight mariachi music performed by Trini Lopez, singing This Land Is Your Land; and much more.

Upon arrival on the red planet, you will find:

• Unbelievable views of earth
• Tax free land – 50 million acres per person
• Genetically modified corn, packaged for easy planting
• Abundant Red clay – enough to build adobe huts for 25 relatives (and their goats)
• Woolen serapes for those cold winter nights

I get so excited by the potential that I may give up blogging and open a travel agency in Tapachula. Write me for a free travel voucher.

You are welcome.

Trump is spot-on in his criticism of General Motors and its Chairwoman, Mary Barra, for the proposed closing of several American plants and terminating 14,800 employees. The blame does not lie with the workers. Clearly, Ms. Barra and her marketing ‘experts’ mis-read the automobile market, overreacted to environmental activists and squandered $8.9 billion of taxpayer dollars granted to it through the TARP program in 2008. Japanese, Korean and European automakers waltzed into the U.S. and stole the market by offering better design, better performance, better warranties and better values (tariffs included).

It’s too late to re-trench now; the cars have bolted the garage. Ms. Barra and her team should resign in disgrace, as her Japanese counterparts would do if they performed as miserably.

Bailout Details

Here’s the bailout breakdown for GM only. It shows what the government invested, what Treasury sold the shares for, including what it received in its debt repayment. It then calculates the taxpayer’s profit or loss, but the breakdown does not account for losses due to subsidies (up to $7,500/vehicle) offered to purchasers of GM’s failed Volt.

Shame on the government that brought us the TARP program in the first place, and shame on GM for being such a sloppy guardian of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars.

Don’t buy GM: neither their stock nor their cars!

You are welcome.

(The third rail for businesses)

Last Sunday, on April 15, CBS’s 60 Minutes featured Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com extolling his leadership theory: He holds quarterly reviews of salaries seeking inequality between men and women in his company. Notably absent was his plan for normalizing the salary structure, except a bland statement to make everyone ‘equal’. By taking time off from his CEO duties and travelling the country to promulgate his equality program (including the time spent working on the CBS episode) he hopes to position himself as a world voice demanding equality for all of womankind.  My first thought was: He’s running for political office. Unsaid, but hopefully relevant, in Salesforce’s pay structure would be the consideration of tenure, academic background and experience, as well as attitude, comportment in the work environment and management responsibility. Do demonstrated performance and leadership skills factor into Salesforce’s salary review? Perhaps all entry level file clerks, regardless of gender, should receive the same salary; but newly hired computer scientists, regardless of background? Count me as dubious.

Also left unsaid by Benioff, and presumably unconsidered, is the far greater social impact of absent parenting on young and adolescent children when both parents work. Serious studies have been performed and untold numbers of books have been written detailing the emotional and academic performance differential between ‘latch key kids’ and kids who grow up in a home where at least one parent is monitoring and mentoring the children on a full-time basis. For the record: I have no problem with single women holding responsible business positions – just not mothers.

Raising well-balanced children is a full-time job; not a menial task left to a baby sitter, housekeeper or child care agency – and certainly not teachers (armed or not).  Grandparents are typically good at nurturing but lacking in the discipline department. They are usually short term as well.

Competent house cleaners are readily available – competent child care workers – not so much. Every day one can read in the news where a baby-sitter (usually foreign) has abused a child – or worse.

Educational and opportunity deprivations within the African-American community are often cited as resulting from the absence of a full-time parent.  Now we are witnessing the first generation of young adults emanating from middle class families where both parents were working – subcontracting their children’s up-bringing to others. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 61.1% of married households have two working parents, up from 47% in 1970.

The related absence of concerned parental guidance/oversight leads to young lives inordinately influenced by TV time and social media – where violence, crime and pornography are glorified – to the detriment of homework, reading and developmental play time.

It is bad enough that the education system has failed us as a society, we don’t need the decimation of family life exacerbating the problem: especially should it come about solely for money.

Spoiler alert!! Here is where I leap, headfirst, onto the politically incorrect third rail and risk electrocution by my own pen: All men are not created equal!

There: I’ve said it. (Sorry, Thomas Jefferson, you were wrong then and you are wrong now.)  For the sake of our progressive friends; let’s assume this country’s founders meant ‘people’ and not ‘men’. Also, note that our Declaration of Independence never intended to include people beyond our borders.

God created us differently for a purpose. Some of us have a penis, some do not (ignoring transgenders). Females were invented to bear and care for children. Males were invented to be ‘hunter-gatherers’. It’s been that way since before Adam and Eve learned how to drive.

The sex drive is an uncontrollable urge. I get that. And women do get pregnant. But recognizing and controlling urges is an important part of any business (And, until recently, government). If you have an urge to be a mother – don’t expect to succeed at business – at least until you’ve fulfilled your maternal duties and needs.

If you are already in a business (especially a large company) be prepared for the pressure to depart. It is too difficult to serve two masters, the baby and the boss. This advice is directed at those hoping to crack the glass ceiling; not the assembly line worker.

The emotional side of motherhood conflicts with the ruthless style of competition required of high paid executives.  Overnight travel, long meetings after office hours, office rivalries, 24 hour availability to resolve global issues, all conspire against mothers with young children at home.

The solution: Pay married men with children, whose wives do not work, a premium. (GASP) The prototype has already been established by our fatuous Congress in the form of tax credits for children and deductions for child care. Presumably, men would then earn enough to properly support their families in these times of inflated health care, unaffordable housing and overpriced generic foods without needing a spousal income. Individual companies could improve on this idea without governmental hassle.

Women could then return home to a higher calling and CEOs like Mr. Benioff could get back to work doing the stuff his shareholders expect of him. If mothers really want to work for reasons of personal satisfaction, the Internet provides the solution.

Benefits to the company would be many including: fewer bathrooms, shorter meetings, smaller parking spaces and fewer sexual harassment charges (real or alleged).

I realize this politically unpopular position would need further clarification and some adjudication (the reason God invented lawyers) but that may be a modest societal cost for saving the next generation from poverty, crime and ennui.

I’m available for speaking engagements in opposition to Mr. Benioff.

Somebody had to say it.

You are welcome.

For more go to: http://www.jameshpyle.com

Ralph Waldo Emerson famously wrote:

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children . . . to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition, to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived – that is to have succeeded.”

Poor Ralph Waldo.  It’s clear no one was listening back in the late 1800s when he wrote his optimistic hope for future generations.

Twenty five years ago, I retired and passed to my children the following admonition: “The world is in good shape – no war and a good economy.  Don’t screw it up.”  That was 1993: The first Gulf War was behind us and the Reagan/Bush economy had the U.S. economy booming.

Sadly, their generation screwed it up, royally.

I suspect it all began with the modern-day perception of success, i.e.: the accumulation of great monetary wealth: things, not qualities. How many vacation homes? How many vintage cars? What color is your credit card? Even superficial things: How many followers do you have on Twitter? How many friends on Facebook?

Not healthy children, green garden patches or concern for folks unlike us.

‘Win at any cost’ is today’s mantra for raising children. Parents vaccinate their kids with distorted value serums, starting with the patronizing practice of handing out trophies for merely ‘showing up’ at community organized soccer practice.  Success to kids today means destroying the competition, as they do so avidly when playing video games. Example: A recent TV commercial for FIOS features a teen gamer responding to his father’s request to ‘take out the trash’ by responding: ‘Daaad, I already took out Brian’, meaning his video game opponent has been electronically killed. Welcome to millennial success!

Likewise, real war has become a video game in young minds. Distant conflicts seem like games with animated enemies, not ones who spill real blood.  Foreign combatants are nameless, uneducated ‘bots’. When the U.S. gets involved it employs young people with GEDs , not ‘successful’ PhDs or MBAs. These latter groups are busily writing position papers for government funded think tanks.

Since I first appeared in 1938 the country has been involved in seventeen major conflicts (Trust me, I Googled it.) around the globe, beginning with WWII through Afghanistan, Syria and Somalia. The last three are still ongoing.

Why has the modern world veered so sharply from Emerson’s vision of success?  Do we truly believe that success can be achieved by killing others as in video games? Maybe there is a primal need to conquer every perceived enemy at any cost.

Some would argue that we war with others for financial gain. Not so. If that were true, we’d simply bomb the crap out of the Middle East and take their oil as spoils of war. Instead we sell (or give) the Saudi, Jordanian and Turkish governments arms to protect their ‘God-given’ mineral and oil deposits and used to kill their religious enemies.

Nor is it to conquer other countries for prestige. Who would ever be proud of owning Burkina Faso, Syria, Chad – or even Iceland, for God’s sake?

No, devoted friends of Emerson. . .  I’m sorry to report that success is not found in flower gardens, health clinics or kindergartens. Nor is it found in the ACLU, the EEOC, the Black Lives Matter movement or the Democrat or Republican parties.

Since the days when cave dwellers killed wooly mammoths for food and/or sport, success, and satisfaction, has been found by over-powering one’s fellow man.  Sad, but true.

Be comforted, by whatever God you subscribe to, that we live in a country with the strongest, most capable defense capability on earth because the evil bastards will come at us, again and again.

Paranoid?  Perhaps. However, we must be doubly aware; next time the bastards may be us.

Where’s Waldo when we need him?  (Ask Martin Handford)

You are welcome.

For more: go to http://www.jameshpyle.com