Hopelessness and Patience

I haven't been blogging much in awhile, mostly because of a sense of hopelessness. I have experienced and so understand on a much deeper level how entrenched people are with their own beliefs. They simply ignore evidence, no matter how glaring, that their position is wrong and latch onto anything, no matter how stupid, that their position is right. Weighing the evidence and making a rational decision is apparently a trait that is incredibly rare in humans.

Let me give an example. The top 1% of income earners in the US now pay, as a percentage of their income, more than at any time in history. They pay more than they did when the incremental tax rates were 90%. They pay more of the total tax burden than at any time in history. This was true in 2008, even before Obama took office. Yet, many clamor for yet even higher taxes on these people. Many, even in this class clamor for higher taxes. Yet none of those rich people asking to be taxed higher are willing to just write a check to the IRS for what they think they should be taxed. Look at Warren Buffet. He complains that his taxes are too low while at the same time has a tax dispute in the millions of dollars that has be running for years. WTF? Do any of you that want higher taxes really believe the government will make better use of your money than you can? That society would be better off with yet another school lunch program rather than more jobs?

Here's another easy example. Look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One said teaches that the other are pigs, sub-humans, and deserve death or worse. The Palestinians repeatedly say they want to push the Israeli's into the ocean and kill all Jews. The other side simply wants to live in peace. Israel has many Arabs living in Israel that enjoy full citizenship, and some even serve in their Parliament. Palestinians have a history of terrorism against the Jews long before the modern Israel was formed. Yet a huge percentage of the US and world population cannot distinguish the good guys from the bad guys in this conflict. Worse, they think Israel is the bad guy.

I have a word for people that cannot figure these two things out. Morons. Or as Lenin called them, Useful Idiots. Of sure, they will spout off all kinds of various arguments, that all boil down to irrelevancies. For instance, out pop the statistics on income inequality. As if that matters at all. I don't care how much money Warren Buffet has. So what if people can become insanely rich? That probably means I will be paid better for my work. Or on the Palestinian conflict, they will pop out with Israel did this or Israel did that. Mistakes and bad things will happen in war. Even the good guys do bad things sometimes. But you can never lose track of who is good and who is evil. Look at 9-11: we were treated to videos of the Palestinians dancing in the streets because of the slaughter of 3000 innocent Americans. Ever see Americans or Israeli's doing that?

Anyway, now we come to patience. I have not been arguing here, because there is no point. Nobody is going to change their mind. Facts are apparently irrelevant. So I wait. Soon, in the next few years, reality will make clear the truth in both of these matters. Some of the idiots will recognize how wrong they were, just as I did sometime during the Reagan years.