We had passed several days in Amsterdam on our first European trip, our first trip abroad together ever. At one point my wife remarked, out (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
How Deep Do We Go Into Project 2025?
09/14/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe truth is, many or most of the people involved with Project 2025 do know what it portends for America if they succeed in implementing (Continue Reading)
1960s Redux
09/07/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentNo, not those sixties. The ones Black people lived in. I found out about those other sixties, the ones where the Civil Rights Movement touched (Continue Reading)
A Sign of a Shift?
08/17/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentWe were sitting in a restaurant after delivering a four month project to the police department. We were in an emotional state mixed with the (Continue Reading)
Miniature Buds
08/09/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentMy memory was of sitting at the bar in Gypsum, Ohio drinking a small bottle of Budweiser. I was around 5 or 6 and I (Continue Reading)
Infernal Contradictions
07/30/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentWe often read about internal contradictions viz. those of Marxism, capitalism, polygamy (?) and so forth. What about oligarchy? Everywhere we look we see oligarchs (Continue Reading)
A Letter to David Frum on reading his Atlantic article 7/27/25
07/27/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentHaving lived well past the current life expectancy of Americans and reading your critique of socialism, I realize I have always straddled that fence between (Continue Reading)
The Institution of Violence
07/20/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentFukuyama says the reason we have institutions is to control violence. What happens when violence is institutionalized as in the Inquisition and Klan lynching – (Continue Reading)
Let’s get this straight…..
06/23/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentAll of the Americas were seen as something to be mined for the wealth of Europeans. Period. Only in New England were a few small (Continue Reading)
Health stats and questions
06/09/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentRecently I had reason to bound up our 17 steps two at a time. I found the last few required some hustle. Since then I (Continue Reading)
Goofy professors and racist teachers do not a school make
06/09/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentWhen three goofy professors publish a paper suggesting we try harnessing mice to carriages to replace the car, the pundits declare the end of the (Continue Reading)
What’s with this Asians are superior to Whites stuff?
05/23/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn his attempt to establish tests scores as definitive indicators of comparative cognitive status among groups, Charles Murray in The Bell Curve states that Asians (Continue Reading)
The Price of War
03/11/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentWe were having our usual Saturday morning breakfast, my dad and I, and talking about the war, something we often did. He fought through a (Continue Reading)
Unlikely Heroes for a life-long liberal Democrat (think FDR)
02/15/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentTwo of the most conservative people you could imagine have emerged as heroes (heroines would emphasize that both are female and further emphasize that an (Continue Reading)
This from a cartoonist, Oliver Markus Malloy
02/14/2025 Pat Barrett Add Comment“MAGA dumbfucks think America turned to shit in the 1960s, when women, gays, and black people got equal rights. In reality, America turned to shit (Continue Reading)
New Way To Categorize Conservatives
02/14/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentThis from David Brooks: you can tell what kind of conservative a conservative is by what era he wants to go back to. He says (Continue Reading)
Maybe someone could correct me on this………
02/10/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentEverywhere pundits and observers of the American scene decry the fall in trust of institutions. Larger and larger swathes of us feel a growing loss (Continue Reading)
They’re catching up to me
02/09/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentRecently I’ve heard Francis Fukuyama refer to the Libertarian underpinnings of the Project 2025 movement and even mention Integralism. Others are now seeing the involvement (Continue Reading)
The Judge, the Bishop, and Phyllis Fong
01/31/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentTwo high profile people and a civil servant – a trio of heroes.Judge Howell wrote a scathing decision on Trump’s illegal moves as president; Bishop (Continue Reading)
These irk me…..
01/29/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentI want to give free rein to some of my less accountable and self-indulgent thoughts. In the coterie of my friends there arises an impatience (Continue Reading)
A Conservative Hit List
01/29/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentInternational aid groups that depend on U.S. funding appeared shocked. “The recent stop-work cable from the State Department suspends programs that support America’s global leadership (Continue Reading)
What Democrats, liberals and progressives have to stop doing
01/29/2025 Pat Barrett Add CommentStop using words like ‘quite.’ Quite is a mollifier, and softener, a ameliorator, and it smoothes over harsh, true statements. Susan Collins has made the (Continue Reading)
Is this gas lighting on the left?
12/01/2024 Pat Barrett Add Comment“The American people didn’t vote for all this ridiculous bullshit, and we need to keep fighting.” Gas lighting is defined in my entry To Start (Continue Reading)