As a soon-to-be-furloughed civilian employee of the United States Air Force, currently hunkered down in the icebox that is Northern Virginia, I’ve got some thoughts on the pathetic state of leadership—or complete lack thereof—among our elected officials.

To be crystal clear: I’m not diving into the specifics of the funding fights or the policy battles right now. Those matter, and I have strong views about them, but this isn’t about that. This is about the bigger, more fundamental failure.

There was a time not so long ago when movies were played at a theater for several weeks in a row. In 1983, while living in High Point, NC, and making my way as a young physician, Mrs. Pessimist and I saw the movie mentioned above. We liked it. We recognized that it was cheesy, but it made us feel slightly more alive than when we entered the theater. We actually watched it in a movie theater three times before it descended into the purgatory of cable reruns. On the last viewing, we ran into a high society friend as we were leaving. She said, “Can you believe how awful that movie was. Totally ridiculous!”

She was astounded when I told her it was the third time we had seen the movie and loved every minute of it. Even to this day, when I hear the opening song: “First when there’s nothing, But a slow glowing dream, That your fear seems to hide, Deep inside your mind…”  I am back into the mindset of the person I was in 1983, when every dream seemed possible and life was all before me.

We’ve just passed the 20th anniversary of the premiere (at the 2006 Sundance Festival) of former US Vice-President Algore’s soi-disant documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.

Full disclosure: I’ve never seen it.  What I clearly remember about it, though, are the 2007 Oscars (it won two, one for Best Documentary and one for Best Original Song).

I was “something-pilled” during that awards broadcast. TBC, that was in the days when I still watched the show for 1.) the Joan Rivers commentary, and 2.) because I am a pretty good seamstress, and often found myself in a state of fascination, analyzing the cut and fit of celebrity outfits, in the waning days of haute couture and tasteful design.

Thomas Sowell delivers a sweeping critique of American education, affirmative action, and modern universities, drawing on his own life story—from Harlem classrooms to Ivy League institutions—decades of research, and hard data. Sowell argues that ideology has replaced knowledge and that well-intentioned policies often harm the very people they are meant to help. He explores intersecting issues of race, charter schools, universities, AI, and the future of American institutions—with his usual clarity, candor, and unmistakable intellectual force.

A distinguished federal judge in Minnesota (not the ditzy Menendez recently overruled by the 8th Circuit, but Judge Schlitz) is ordering ICE to do bond hearings and otherwise accommodate hundreds of spurious habeas corpus petitions.

This Court has been extremely patient with respondents [U.S. Dept. of Justice], even though respondents decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota to detain aliens without making any provision for dealing with the hundreds of habeas petitions and other lawsuits that were sure to result.

I keep hearing these incredible figures…1.6 million…1.9 million…2 million self-deportations. Yet the DHS never tells us how they get to these numbers.   It certainly isn’t from the new CBP Home app, where illegals who self-deport can get a free flight home plus $1,000 from Uncle Sam. (This was recently upped to $2,600.) DHS admits that the number of folks using that app is in the tens of thousands. Are 1.6 million people that dumb that they turn down a free flight and $1,000? I don’t buy it, and am calling BS on the self-deportation numbers.

Ditto for the “100% of the new jobs went to Native Born workers” claim. I know where that number comes from. It’s from the household survey. They ask, “Were you born here?” and take the answer they get as gospel. No checking. So, when the government is making a big to-do about illegal immigration and the government survey guy asks, “Were you born here?” what do you answer? “YES! I was born here.” Even if you can’t answer in English.

This is good advice from Walter Kirn. And it goes to the question I pose in the title of this post: “Weather Forecast or Creation?” Let me explain.

I have had a theory for some time that, as humans are part of the natural order, so, too, is mass behavior. Mass behavior is the sum of individual behavior, but something different in the sense that people operate differently in isolation than in crowds. So, like mass natural phenomena, like weather, where forces are acting upon it to move in various directions and create benevolence (gently rain on parched land) or wreak destruction (tornadoes), forces acting upon masses of people create beneficence or destruction.