Hate, hunger, and pride make better levers of propaganda than do love or impartiality.
Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (1962).
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Virginia’s Declaration of Rights
In 1776, on June 12, the Fifth Virginia Convention at Williamsburg, Virginia, unanimously adopted a Declaration of Rights, several weeks prior to the adoption of the state’s constitution. George Mason, who drafted the document, stated clearly in the preamble that rights must be “the basis and foundation of Government.”
The first four planks run as follows:
I. That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
II. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.
III. That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation or community; of all the various modes and forms of government that is best, which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration; and that, whenever any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.
IV. That no man, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services; which, not being descendible, neither ought the offices of magistrate, legislator, or judge be hereditary.
A term in pop culture analysis, now a bit passé, is worth reviving: “jump the shark.”
The term refers to the moment in the nostalgic TV show Happy Days when, running out of ideas, the writers cooked up something so out-there and silly that it’s cringe. (To use a more recent faddish term, now also passé.) An episode in the fifth season of the sitcom where the Fonz “jumped a shark” — in water skis.
A spectacle so goofy that it can serve as a marker for any great moment when something really goes into steep decline.
The second Trump Administration has had many such moments, but are any as odd and stupid as the president’s recent remark about the Consumer Price Index?
Asked about the CPI having “jumped 4.2% over the last year,” according to Josh Boak’s June 10 AP article, the president replied, “You know what I really love? I love the inflation.”
The AP article quoted some Democratic politicians making hay of Trump’s quip, but then went on to Rep. Emilia Sykes (D-Ohio) pressing, in a hearing, Energy Secretary Chris Wright “whether he, too, loved inflation.”
‘I love ending Iran’s ability to have a nuclear weapon,’ Wright answered. He only conceded after being pressed: ‘No, I would prefer lower inflation.’”
What is Trump trying to communicate? The idea that when crude oil prices come down, inflation rate increases will level off too. And that’ll be good.
But that all depends on a cessation of the Iran conflict, which keeps dragging on with no end in sight.
Trump’s said dumb things. And funny things. But we who have been living in the Age of Inflation are . . . not amused. This response wasn’t funny and it wasn’t insightful. Or clever. Or worthy of the president’s past hits.
Donald Trump has jumped the shark.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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No nation keeps its word. A nation is a big, blind worm, following what? Fate perhaps. A nation has no honour, it has no word to keep.
Carl Gustav Jung, interview with H. R. Knickerbocker (1939), quoted in A Life of Jung (2002) by Ronald Hayman, p. 360.
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Declarations
On June 11, 1776, the Continental Congress appointed John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman to draft a declaration of independence from Great Britain.
On the same date in 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk, doused himself with gasoline and set himself aflame in a busy Saigon intersection as a protest against South Vietnam’s lack of religious freedom.
This year marks the semisequicentennial year of the United States, and 63 years since 1963’s sad Thich Quang Duc self-immolation.
Nothing is so permanent, wrote Milton Friedman, as a temporary government program.
Six years ago, Americans learned that not only vaguely temporary measures go on and on, even precisely marked-out periods with clear starts and stops stated at the outset can be dragged on well past their expiration date.
Last week, Robby Soave “celebrated” the most astounding example of this in an article for Reason titled “This Was the Moment the COVID-19 Experts Betrayed Us,” about how the “two weeks to slow the spread” rationale for the lockdowns was shown to be a lie.
I wonder how many people were like me, at the time, noticing that the lengthening of the lockdown period was almost never justified by hospital numbers — a key point in the initial rationale, since we feared overwhelming the hospital system. The opposite happened almost everywhere, with hospitals becoming ghost towns in most locations, stressing the system in the opposite manner. By extending the duration of the near-universal quarantine, government officials and employees and their hangers-on showed how little interest they had in taking our health seriously.
What Soave focuses on is one tweet by National Public Radio, about how all crowds were bad for public health except those marching in protest of the death of George Floyd, a criminal with a long, violent rap sheet. NPR’s post began “by condemning the protests against lockdowns” and then drew “an explicit contrast with the racial justice protests, which are explicitly condoned.”
Soave calls this “junk science.”
But it wasn’t any kind of science at all. It was pure ideological perversity.
Knowledge of that moment must be kept alive. Our expert class betrayed us by prioritizing their riot apologetics over our health.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
NOTES:
See Milton Friedman, Tyranny of the Status Quo (1980) p. 115.
For a “Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States (2020)” see Grokipedia.
The encouragement of the riots was, many hazard, an opportunistic psy-op to unseat President Trump in the 2020 election. It seems to have succeeded.
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Man, if he is to remain man, must advance by way of consciousness. There is no road leading backward. . . . We can no longer veil reality from ourselves by renouncing self-consciousness without simultaneously excluding ourselves from the historical course of human existence.
Karl Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age (1968).
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Beginnings
Apple shipped the first Apple II computer on June 10, 1977. It was typographically styled as the “Apple ][” and the series continued long after the specific II model was superseded by the Apple II Plus and was discontinued in 1981. The last II-series Apple in production, the IIe card for Macintoshes, was discontinued on October 15, 1993.
Born on this day (June 10th): historian, jazz critic and civil libertarian Nathan Irving Hentoff (1925); children’s writer Maurice Sendak (1929); scientist and pioneer of “sociobiology,” E. O. Wilson (1929).
Hentoff wrote several works on the history and nature of free speech in America, including The First Freedom (1980). Sendak is most famous for Where the Wild Things Are (1963). Wilson’s many books include Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998).
Sendak died in 2012, Hentoff in 2017, while Wilson died on December 26, 2021.
“We are capitalist, not socialist.”
Those words are from the “Promise to America” pledge promoted by a new group of the same name and unveiled last week by Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-New York) and Rep. Adam Gray (D-California).
“Two Democrats in Congress who flipped Republican-held seats in 2024 are launching a pledge for their party’s candidates they hope will act as a rallying cry for centrists,” explains a Washington Post article, dubbing it “a direct rebuke to the party’s leftward tilt as democratic socialists such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) capture the party’s energy and activism.”
“We want safety,” their “Promise” continues, “not lawlessness.”
“No, duh,” would have been the response to such a statement years ago. But today? “Refreshing!”
These Democrats call for “secure borders, safe communities, honest government, and an orderly immigration system that protects the country, strengthens the economy, and treats people with dignity.” It’s a far cry from: Free healthcare for those here illegally!
“We believe America remains indispensable to global stability, democratic values, international security, and strong alliances,” the document expounds. “In a dangerous and uncertain world, America must lead with strength, purpose, and partnership.”
In closing, they declare: “We are proud, not ashamed of America.”
The Post suggests, however, that this slogan “could be polarizing on the left.”
Sure, it is a much different message than Maine Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner has expressed. On an online forum back in 2021, in a discussion on securing disability benefits from the VA, a fellow veteran vented, “Fuck Uncle Sam,” to which Platner added a clarification: “Fuck him and take his money.”
Which message for Democrats?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Note: Sorry for the foul language but, frankly, I did not want to cushion the blow.
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When we become conscious of that which determines our life we attain the highest degree of freedom.
Jacques Ellul, The Betrayal of Technology (1993).