Am I jaded? The simple answer is “yes.” Every shiny new thing seems to be a less shiny older thing that’s been repackaged, renamed, or re-purposed. So, no, I ain’t gettin’ too excited.

Personalization? It’s been around since before Noah learned the length of a cubit. It just wasn’t automated, digitized, and distributed in multiple media. When the guy who ran the General Store in Colonial Williamsburg noticed that Mrs. Harrison preferred patterned fabrics, he’d send her a note when patterned textiles arrived in the shop. The Renaissance cabinet maker didn’t build things on spec. He built them to order, sized to fit a particular purpose or space.

Content marketing? Take some collateral (brochures, how-to guides, spec sheets, videos, sales aids, and anything else used to market and sell in place of face-to-face discussions) and make it available in print (for the past 150 years) or online (for the past 30, give or take), and tailor it for specific individuals involved in the buying process. Old process. New name.

SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW WE’RE STUPID
Artificial intelligence? It’s been standard in government for years, though it’s reached new heights in 2021 in places like the Florida governor’s mansion and the Texas legislature. 

Yet A.I. that’s related to computer analysis isn’t all that new either. In the early ’90s, A.I. was already proving itself at companies like American Express, Dun & Bradstreet, and Swiss Bank whose A.I. systems were reducing errors, increasing productivity, and providing solutions in seconds, rather than hours, days, or weeks. The difference today is that the programming technologies have caught up with the business intent and can capture knowledge and detect patterns that used to take programmers ages to accomplish.

WAS STILL IS
Podcasts? They used to call them radio. Of course, you had to tune in at a scheduled time on a specific station, and now you can listen to the audio whenever and wherever you want (if you have the right equipment: computer, tablet, smartphone). The problem is that, while radio shows needed discipline to fit the information into a limited time, podcasts (the business kind) tend to be lazy journalism. Too much chit chat, not enough focused interviewing skill that keeps the participants focused on the subject, and discussions that can ramble on for… ever.

Podcasts that offer serialized stories, whether fictional or true, are radio, too. Just digitally available on demand.

Email? Oh, deJoy of not having to rely on the Postal Service. It’s eminently adaptable — automatically and manually — saves a fortune on production and printing and postage, and can arrive anywhere outside autocracies in seconds. But, c’mon, it’s mail. It’s Pheidippides in bits and bytes (and without the threat of death for showing up with bad news).

NEARLY AS OLD AS CIVILIZATION
Video? It’s theater, speeches, product demos, pictures from a trip to Carpathia all transformed onto digitized visual media. Yes, there are things that you can do with computers and special effects that enhance things to the point of disbelief (pick any Marvel super hero movie) or real danger (vaccines will lead to a zombie apocalypse), but it hasn’t been new since Thomas Edison and the Lumières.

Media have evolved and, with their evolution, they have influenced our perceptions. As Marshall McLuhan phrased it, “the medium is the massage” that manipulates us on sensory levels. That puts the modern equivalencies of all the earlier approaches in a category of “new is different”; not necessarily “new is better.”

YOU ARE NOT ME AND THAT’S A GOOD THING
People still learn differently. Some prefer to read about things, others to hear about them, some want to see words and pictures or just pictures or maybe walkthrough demonstrations. That’s why we need so many distinct approaches. We just shouldn’t view them as brand spankin’ new. Consider them upgrades or enhancements or “new and improved” — things that, unlike Athena, did not spring fully-formed from the head of Zeus. 

These babies have been around since the dawn of civilization. They’re just learning new abilities to adapt to the times.

There are too many articles to count about diversity and inclusion. Most of them are delusional.

They talk about ensuring equal representation for women, for people of different races, for different nationalities and culture, and for LGBTQ individuals. That’s the way it should be.

Yet take a look at the images that accompany those stories. Everybody’s young. There’s no gray hair, no wrinkles, nothing that identifies the organizations as inclusive of people over 50… or even 40. The ideal seems to be female, Black, Asian, White, male, disabled, and transgender employees who are all much younger than 40.

There are even regular annual features titled “40 Under 40” (though, to be fair, Campaign Magazine has run “40 Over 40” for the past five years, but it’s an outlier… and British… while Fortune Magazine has been running its “40 Under 40” since 2009), and this year I encountered “The Queer 50” which, if I were homosexual or bi-sexual, I wouldn’t consider a flattering description. (Personally, I think it’s time for a more neutral descriptor — if there’s a need for one at all — to distinguish between people who prefer partners of the same and those who opt for people of the opposite gender; perhaps straight and curved, though I’m certain that that’s sure to raise somebody’s hackles.)

A PEEK AT PEAKING
Mathematicians tend to peak young. So do computer scientists. Yet writers get better with age, as do researchers, historians, lawyers, doctors, and accountants (even the honest ones). I’d assume that HR professionals learn more as time goes by about how to identify the right personalities for particular positions, and CEOs who’ve weathered several turnarounds are valued for their insights and guidance.

Call me jaded (or judgmental or, for all I care, Ishmael), but when a company that claims to be expert at managing retirement finances doesn’t have anyone of retirement age on the staff, it doesn’t make me trust their expertise. When ad agencies represent clients who 

• sell drugs for age-related conditions
• manage retirement communities
• offer reverse mortgages
• or provide investments that lower risk for retirees

and don’t have anyone of retirement age on their creative staff, something’s wrong. 

NO REFLECTION
When TV shows and movies have lots of kids and parents and either no grandparents in regular or recurring roles or no grandparents at all, I wonder what world that is. Maybe that’s why “Everybody Loves Raymond” endured and why “Modern Family” seems normal… mostly. 

This isn’t to suggest that “Superman” have children and resurrect his parents in a new “Superman: The Spanx Years,” but it might be funny (or a subtle examination of human fallibility and the power of imagination). At least Superman has a vulnerability, which makes him almost like a human with arthritis or irregular heartbeats. 

THE DISCOMFORT ZONE
There is sure to be some level of discomfort in shifting the calculus — from older people guiding younger ones to younger people hiring their elders. There are psychological ramifications that might range from “telling mom and dad what to do” to “feeling that they’ll think they know better” to “believing that ‘the chemistry’s not right’” and the like. Get over it. That can happen with anyone.

What can’t happen with just anyone is the perspective of experience. It’s been said (about multiple industries) that “Our most valuable assets go down in the elevator and out the door every night,” and those people take with them a degree of knowledge that’s unique — to themselves, to the company, to its clients and customers, and among their colleagues. 

Someone trained to work on modern cars who relies on computers that analyze problems and offer solutions won’t be very much help to the person who drives a classic ’56 T-bird. The person who’s mastered Photoshop masking inside out might not know what to do when the power fails and there isn’t any amberlith and X-Acto knives. The spreadsheet whiz who’s mastered the pivot table might not finish the what-ifs by the deadline if they have to do them manually when Excel won’t boot up.

Shaw said that youth is wasted on the young. So is diversity and inclusion that’s restricted by age.

The Bill of Rights contains no amendment granting people the right to be stupid. Unfortunately, millions of Americans are insisting there is.

They want to be stupid about science, medicine, religion, guns, and the restrictions of the Constitution itself. They’re Constistupiditists, attempting to convince those “other” people that the "Consties" have Constitutional protections you don’t and that you don’t have protections you do. It’s the underbelly of idiocy that drags along the soil of ineptitude.

A brief history of bias
America is rife with past examples. There’s America’s “peculiar institution” that insisted that the people we enslaved were inferior — mentally if not physically. We’ve made a market in bias against the Irish, Italians, Jews, Asians, and just about anybody born somewhere else. 

In the 20th Century, after running through the usual ethnic victims, there was the vituperative hatred of Father Coughlin. The Catholic “radio priest” couldn’t seem to remember — in the midst of his venomous condemnation of Jews — that Jesus just so happened to be Jewish. 

McCarthyism thrived on willful ignorance. The junior senator from Wisconsin made claims (like today’s) with no basis in fact against people who were guilty of nothing. People whose behavior was permitted. By the Constitution. 

The John Birch Society joined in on the fun of a political kakistocracy. Back then they hated Russians. Today’s heirs apparently think that Russia has the right idea: no opposition, no dissent, no choice, and no room for intelligent thought.

Looking back...wards
After having defeated Nazis in Germany, George Lincoln Rockwell still rose his stiff armed salute with a swastika armband and persuaded too many Americans that Adolf was right about the whole master race thing. In a sense, he was the ideological godfather of modern white supremacists. It wasn’t the Klan. That crowd was at least smart enough to wear a mask.

Another George (Wallace) had the sense to understand that racism was, well… stupid. Strom Thurmond did not, at least not until he had to admit he had a daughter whose mother was Black. 

Nixon, who should have had the wiles to work around the perceptions that he knew he should avoid, was almost clinically moronic. What made things worse was that the people he relied on were even less insightful than he was. It’s too bad he was allowed to resign. It was a “for the good of the country” maneuver that set a pattern for tolerance of unConstitutional behavior. It was, yes, stupid.

Trickle me, Gonzo
Reagan? Oh, God. He was the best snake oil salesman the White House has ever let in. Nothing that he said or did helped the people that he said he was helping. And they weren’t smart enough to see that his actions helped the wealthy, not them. The “Great Communicator” was, in fact, a great deceiver. 

All the highly vocal men in Congress who went after Bill Clinton for his lies about sex with an intern turned out to have committed far greater sins of the flesh. At least they didn’t have the gall to claim “I wasn’t really that into her.” Just brainless enough to have opened their mouths after previously opening their flies.

If Cheney was Tweedle Dum, poor Dubya was Tweedle Dumber. Instead of accepting the world’s willing help to eliminate the threat from Al Qaeda and terrorism, he listened to neocon nincompoops and put us even further in harm’s way. Apparently, too many of his cronies ate the yellow cake.

The highest low point
By the time Mr. Trump stumbled into the Executive Mansion, H. L. Mencken was proved right after nearly a century.

    …All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the
    notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office  
​    represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain
    folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
                                                                                                                                                                               [Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920]

Those plain folks are now — thanks to decades of descent in the quality of education, the lack of compromise in politics, the belief that facts are optional, and the assurances that “there are good people on both sides” — the prevailing idiocracy. They all have the right to be stupid, but the rest of us should never be so stupid that we ever admit that they’re right.

As Will Rogers observed (close to 100 years ago), we have the best Congress money can buy. The Supreme Court — in Citizens United and McCutcheon — seems to believe that, too.

Yet, at its heart, though corporate financial support of candidates may ensure access if those candidates are elected, the primary objective is stability. More than favorable laws (which may help companies while endangering the public), businesses want to know what to expect. With that knowledge, they can plan their strategies and tactics for the future… with or without restrictive regulations.

Insurrection, anarchy, sedition… they’re the most extreme causes of instability. So, naturally, businesses don’t like them.

In 2021, however, following a developing trend over the past decade, corporations recognize that consumers expect more than good products and services. Young consumers, especially, want to feel that those corporations are not harming the environment, not contributing to social inequity, and not being part of the problem. With clear outrage among the general public and with elected officials condemning incitement that led to the attack on the Capitol, CEOs are both among the affected and aware of the bottom line impact of neutrality.

Removing or suspending political contributions, however, is only one weapon, but it’s not the most important. If CEOs truly want to ensure stability by lessening the adversarial relationship between liberals and conservatives, whites and non-whites, white supremacists and BLM supporters, and members of Congress, they have to stop supporting the merchants of mendacity. They have to stop advertising on Fox News and Sinclair stations, on talk radio that traffics in untruths, and on websites that promote disproved conspiracies.

If money talks, this is the best speech that a CEO can make.

We are officially a nation of nincompoops. Thank you, Ronald Reagan.

It’s taken awhile for the reduction in education spending, which Reagan initiated at the federal level, to reveal its deleterious effects. Yet the United States’ level of educational achievement in science, math, and language skills now ranks below more than twenty other countries. We are, in act, not smarter than a fifth grader.

A downward spiral
We used to be the envy of the world, and our universities still draw thousands of students from abroad. Those attendees, however, are often here because they didn’t make the cut “over there” where competition is often so fierce that applicants suffer from multiple psychological maladies — before, during, and after the entrance exams.

Republicans have tried on multiple occasions to eliminate (or further emasculate and eviscerate) the Department of Education. The latest Cabinet secretary may have achieved a new high in lowness. Fortunately, the ineptitude of Betsy DeVos is on its way out. What is unfortunate is that she’s given cover to countless members of the idiocracy who are further encouraged in their ignorance by Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting, and the likes of Rush Limbaugh and his misleading legion of radio and online companions.

Without the rigors of high quality education, American students have lost the analytical skills that help them determine fact from fiction or, at the very least, a healthy skepticism about claims that “just don’t seem right.” Any current conspiracy theory would be quickly dismissed in the 1960s, an era when Americans watched “The G. E. College Bowl” and knew the answers.

The profit of propaganda
Today, to our national detriment, the most brazenly outrageous claims are given credence by people who aren’t smart enough to know they’re stupid. Senator Ron Johnson is a standout in this cretinous crowd. Or by broadcast “personalities” who, as long as they can profit from the spread of disinformation, seem determined to do so. Confront them, and they’ll claim to be expressing opinions, not fact, and providing entertainment, not news. 

Our allies look at us in horror as political partisans try to turn a loss into a victory, judicial decisions into temporary obstacles, and reality into a distortion field of absolute nonsense. It is in this mindset of myopic arrogance that the State of Texas has sued four other states in the U. S. Supreme Court, claiming that the election results in those states were obtained through unconstitutional means. 

Illogical losing
If the Dallas Cowboys lose the next Super Bowl they play in, will Texas claim they really won and sue the winning team? Or will they go further to assert that the victor’s earlier triumphs were illegally obtained and, therefore, the winner wasn’t qualified to play against the Cowboys?

That’s the approach the Lonestar State is taking. It’s the approach that Republicans have backed. And it’s the surest sign that, from one end of the political spectrum at least, we’re not only not the bright shining light on the hill any more (and Reagan helped reduce it to the wattage of a night light), we’re a nation of grifters. 

What has become of America?

Where is the nation that used to believe in the law, the Constitution, and the ballot box? How did we descend into conspiracy theory as guidance, into megalomania as acceptable, into support for a man who believes in the divine right of self-serving privilege?

The Anti-role Model
What is appealing about someone who has cheated his vendors, welched on his bankers, ignored obligations, assaulted countless women, committed adultery multiple times, engaged in non-stop slander and, according to his siblings, has lied from the moment he learned how to speak? Exactly what do his supporters think that they’ll gain? 

Is it power alone? Dominion over working class citizens? A return to the era of kings and aristocrats who owned all the land and waged war to gain more? 

Or are they simply a Third Reich of riches? A new iteration of the robber baron era when money meant everything and nothing else mattered? When Federal troops were used by corporations to fend off strikers… or kill them for standing their ground?

Anarchy Incarnate
The nation is confronted by a traitor in the White House — a president more comfortable with tyrants than the U. S. Constitution. A man who believes he deserves to get his way all the time.

So, like tenants in his buildings who were served with eviction notices, he may need to be forcibly removed. But who will serve as marshals when the nation’s Department of Justice is led by an enabler of lawlessness? Who will show him out of the building when his army of supremacists are likely to show up fully armed?

Mr. Trump is terrified of going to jail and, based on the cases that are pending in New York, that is, indeed, a real possibility. Are there that many Republican officals who fear their misdeeds will emerge and, without Mr. Trump in the White House, they will never be pardoned?

It’s got to be something that the rest of us don’t see, but what we do see is psychosis in an ill-fitting suit.

I believe in certain things. Deeply. But I still double check when those concepts or systems or programs or beliefs reappear in conversation, on the air or online, or in print. To skip that step could affect all the other ideas and activities that those things are connected to.

COVID-19 is an instructive example. When it first was announced, we knew almost nothing about it. There was a connection to bats, Chinese markets, and Wuhan. Then there was evidence of massive infection with no clue about how to treat it. As it spread around the globe, we saw how nations were responding, how contagion expanded exponentially, and what people could do to avoid  (or increase) contamination. 

From the start, I heard of the ways we could protect ourselves. Most of them were based on things we knew about: the flu, measles, plague, and epidemics that has decimated people in Third World nations. 

Valid inquiries
That’s when the questions began. “What’s the same about these conditions?” “What’s different?” “Why is the country in a panic about toilet paper?” “If masks are good, which ones are better and why?” “How can the government provide proper guidance?” “Why aren’t laws that could help being enforced?” 

As answers began to arrive, though, the questions evolved. “Since existing treatments do not seem to work, what will?” “Is the latest suggestion truly effective or truly dangerous?” “Since officials seem at odds, who’s more accurate (and why)?”

It’s so easy to accept rosy assumptions or statements from experts when they fit with the world as you want it to be. Yet doing so without a raised eyebrow, without wondering whether it’s true, and without being willing to both verify and validate is, possibly, a shortcut to disaster.

The virtue of verification
Whenever there’s a hint of the arrogant myopia of ignorance, all of us need to be vigilant. We need to look out for ourselves by checking facts and proceeding only after we get all of them. That’s what makes professional journalism so vital: the best reporters get three sources to confirm a stated fact before they accept it as actual. I did that myself when I worked at NBC, ABC, and PBS. Without confirmation, my reports would have been based on mere hearsay, and that’s not journalism. That’s gossip.

So be a journalist for your own best interests. Be suspicious. Check things out. And pray that the people who won’t make that effort to uncover the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth are just as lazy when it comes to standing up to those who will.