Esoteric Meandering Shouting Into the Void

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

One of the most bewildering contradictions in modern foreign policy is watching the same administration justify military action against one nation over the possibility of nuclear weapons while simultaneously helping another nation develop nuclear capabilities.

Think about that for a moment.

The argument for bombing Iran was that it represented an unacceptable nuclear threat. Whether one believed that assessment or not, the justification was that the United States could not allow another destabilizing force in the Middle East to move closer to nuclear capability.

Then, almost in the same breath, we’re told that Saudi Arabia should receive American assistance to build a civilian nuclear program.

How does that make sense?

If the concern is nuclear proliferation, then shouldn’t our standard be consistent? Either spreading nuclear technology in one of the world’s most volatile regions is dangerous, or it isn’t. We can’t declare one country an existential threat while insisting another deserves American investment in nuclear infrastructure simply because it’s considered a geopolitical partner.

History should also give us pause.

The September 11 attacks remain the deadliest terrorist attack ever carried out on American soil. Of the 19 hijackers, 15 were Saudi nationals. That fact doesn’t mean Saudi Arabia as a nation was responsible for the attacks, nor does it mean every Saudi citizen shares extremist views. Those distinctions matter. But it does make the current enthusiasm for deepening strategic ties, especially involving sensitive nuclear technology, worthy of serious public debate.

Foreign policy shouldn’t operate on the principle that our adversaries are dangerous while our allies are incapable of making dangerous choices. Alliances change. Governments change. Regional politics change. Nuclear technology, once transferred, cannot simply be taken back.

This isn’t about defending Iran. It isn’t about condemning the Saudi people. It’s about asking for consistency.

If nuclear capability is truly one of the greatest threats to international stability, then our policies should reflect that principle regardless of which flag is flying over the facility. If we’re willing to use military force against one country over nuclear concerns, we should be extraordinarily cautious before helping another country acquire the same underlying technology—even for peaceful purposes—because history has a way of reminding us that today’s ally isn’t guaranteed to be tomorrow’s ally.

Consistency isn’t weakness. It’s credibility.

Without it, foreign policy begins to look less like a coherent strategy and more like choosing different rules for different countries based solely on convenience. And when that happens, it’s fair for Americans to ask a simple question:

Are we making the world safer, or are we simply redefining what counts as dangerous depending on who our friends are this week?

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

One of the things that has always fascinated me about social media is how easily a quote can be attached to a famous name. Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein—you can find them all saying things they almost certainly never said. Every time I see one of these quotes on Facebook or Instagram, I have the same question: Did they actually say that, or did someone simply decide it sounded profound if Benjamin Franklin’s name was attached to it?

One quote in particular has stuck with me, whether Franklin actually said it or not:

“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”

Whether those are Benjamin Franklin’s words or someone else’s, the sentiment is brilliant.

Think about it. Every single one of us enters this world ignorant. That’s not an insult. It’s a fact. A newborn knows absolutely nothing. Ignorance simply means a lack of knowledge. It isn’t a moral failing, and it certainly isn’t permanent. We spend our entire lives replacing ignorance with experience, education, curiosity, and discovery.

Stupidity is something entirely different.

Stupidity isn’t not knowing something. Stupidity is refusing to learn after the evidence is staring you in the face. It’s rejecting information because it challenges your beliefs. It’s deciding that your opinion matters more than facts. Remaining ignorant in the age of libraries, universities, documentaries, and a device in your pocket with access to nearly all of humanity’s knowledge—that takes effort.

I’ve noticed something else over the years.

If you tell someone they’re ignorant about a subject, many immediately respond, “So you’re calling me stupid?”

No.

I’m calling you ignorant.

There’s a huge difference.

If someone doesn’t know how an engine works, they’re ignorant about engines. If someone has never studied astronomy, they’re ignorant about astronomy. If someone doesn’t understand economics, medicine, or history, they’re ignorant in those fields. We all are. Every one of us is ignorant about thousands of subjects because no one can know everything.

Ignorance is fixable.

All it takes is curiosity.

But if I explain that distinction, provide evidence, answer questions, and someone still insists on believing something because it feels better than reality, then we’ve crossed into different territory.

At that point, if you insist that being called ignorant is the same as being called stupid, you’ve made the leap yourself.

As I sometimes tell people, “If I say you’re ignorant and you think I’m calling you stupid, then now I am calling you stupid.”

Not because you lacked knowledge.

Because you rejected the opportunity to gain it.

Perhaps that’s why that quote—whether it belongs to Benjamin Franklin or not—resonates so deeply. It reminds us that ignorance is the default setting for every human being. None of us chooses where we begin.

What we do choose is whether we keep learning.

In an era where answers are available within seconds, remaining uninformed isn’t nearly as understandable as it once was. We have more access to knowledge than any generation in human history. The real challenge today isn’t finding information.

It’s having the humility to admit when we don’t know something and the courage to learn.

That’s the difference between ignorance and stupidity.

One is simply where we all start.

The other is a decision.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

There is an old saying that government is only noticed when it fails. Most of the time, Americans never think about the inspectors examining food processing plants, the scientists tracking disease outbreaks, or the countless public servants whose job is to prevent disasters before they ever reach our dinner tables. Their success is invisible because nothing happens. But when those safeguards are weakened, suddenly everyone notices.

That is why the recent concerns over contaminated vegetables should serve as a reminder that government agencies are not abstract bureaucracies. They perform real-world functions that protect all of us. Food safety isn’t partisan. Neither are bacteria.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk have repeatedly championed shrinking the federal workforce and reducing the size of government. Supporters celebrate these efforts as cutting waste, but there is a fundamental question that deserves to be asked: at what point do efficiency cuts become cuts to the very systems that keep Americans safe?

Food inspectors, epidemiologists, laboratory scientists, and public health investigators are not luxuries. They are the people who identify contaminated products, trace outbreaks, issue recalls, and stop illnesses from spreading further. When agencies lose experienced personnel, every remaining employee is expected to do more with less. Eventually, something gives.

The troubling part is that food safety is only one example.

If agencies responsible for protecting our food can be weakened, what comes next? Will the next consequence involve air safety? Environmental monitoring? Disaster response? Tax enforcement? Medical research? Consumer protection? Government is a vast network of interconnected responsibilities, and weakening one piece often creates ripple effects throughout the entire system.

Healthcare oversight raises another concern. The Department of Health and Human Services oversees issues affecting hundreds of millions of Americans. Its leadership influences responses to disease outbreaks, vaccine policy, public health emergencies, medical research, and healthcare programs. These are positions that require informed, evidence-based decision-making because the consequences affect every family in the country.

Americans should expect competence from those entrusted with public health. This should never be viewed as a partisan expectation. Regardless of political affiliation, the person overseeing the nation’s health infrastructure should inspire confidence through expertise, respect for science, and the ability to manage complex public health challenges.

The irony is that many people who call government ineffective are often the same people applauding when government is stripped of the very resources that allow it to function effectively. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: reduce funding, eliminate experienced staff, watch performance decline, and then point to that decline as evidence that government never worked in the first place.

Most Americans never thank the inspector who prevented contaminated produce from reaching grocery shelves. They never know the scientist who identified a dangerous pathogen before it spread nationwide. They never meet the epidemiologist who traced an outbreak back to its source.

But when those people are gone, we notice.

Government isn’t supposed to be invisible because it does nothing. It’s supposed to be invisible because it’s doing its job so well that most of us never have to think about it. Weakening the institutions that quietly protect our health may save dollars on a budget spreadsheet today, but the costs can become painfully obvious when they show up on tomorrow’s dinner plate.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Before telescopes pierced the darkness, before rockets left Earth’s atmosphere, before a single human being set foot beyond our own world, we had already done something remarkable: we named everything.

Mercury. Venus. Earth. Mars. Jupiter. Saturn. Uranus. Neptune.

But here’s the question that keeps nagging at me: Who gave us the authority to do that?

Who granted humanity dominion over an entire solar system?

We often talk about naming things as though it is the most natural act in the world. Parents name children. Scientists name newly discovered species. Explorers have historically named mountains and rivers—often ignoring the names that indigenous people had used for thousands of years. Naming has always been one of humanity’s quiet ways of claiming ownership.

The planets are no different.

Our names come largely from Roman mythology. Mercury, the swift messenger. Venus, the goddess of love. Mars, the god of war. Jupiter, king of the gods. Saturn, the ancient titan. Uranus traces back to Greek mythology, and Pluto continued the tradition when it was discovered. Yet sitting quietly among these mythological figures is one glaring exception.

Earth.

Where did that come from?

It seems almost out of place. We have an entire family of worlds named after ancient gods, and then suddenly there’s… Earth. Not a deity. Not a mythological figure. Just a simple Germanic word that essentially means “the ground” or “the soil.”

I’ve always found that fascinating. We looked to the heavens and filled them with gods, but when it came to our own home, we simply called it dirt.

Perhaps that’s because ancient people weren’t standing on a planet in their minds—they were standing on the ground beneath their feet. They didn’t need a grand celestial name because Earth wasn’t just another object in the sky. It was home. Only later, when we realized it was another planet orbiting the Sun, did “Earth” become the odd one out among its mythological neighbors.

Watching John Carter made me think about this from a different perspective. The people of Mars don’t call their world Mars. They call it Barsoom. Earth is Jasoom. Suddenly you’re forced to realize something profound: names are a matter of perspective. If another civilization existed, why would they use our Roman mythology? Why would they care about Jupiter or Venus? To them, our carefully constructed map of the heavens would probably seem just as arbitrary as theirs would seem to us.

Imagine making first contact with an intelligent civilization.

“We come from Earth.”

“You mean… Jasoom?”

“No, Earth.”

“Never heard of it.”

Neither of you would be wrong. You would simply be using different labels for the same reality.

It raises an even bigger philosophical question. Humans often speak as though the solar system belongs to us. We talk about colonizing Mars, mining asteroids, harvesting the moons of Jupiter, and building bases on Saturn’s moons. We speak with astonishing confidence, as though someone handed us the deed to the neighborhood.

But who did?

Who decided this collection of planets, moons, comets, and asteroids belonged to one species that evolved on a single tiny rock orbiting an average star?

From a cosmic perspective, we’re newcomers. If the history of the universe were compressed into a single calendar year, humanity wouldn’t arrive until the final seconds before midnight on December 31. Yet in those few seconds we’ve already named every planet, drawn imaginary borders in space, and begun discussing which worlds we’ll someday possess.

That seems like extraordinary confidence.

Perhaps even extraordinary arrogance.

Maybe names aren’t ownership. Maybe they’re simply tools that help us communicate. There’s nothing inherently wrong with calling a planet Mars any more than there’s anything wrong with calling our own world Earth. Every language gives the universe its own vocabulary.

But vocabulary has a funny habit of becoming authority.

Once we name something, we often begin to believe we understand it. Once we map it, we begin to think it belongs to us. Once we plant a flag, we act as though the universe acknowledged our claim.

The universe, however, has remained conspicuously silent.

Perhaps that’s the lesson hidden in stories like John Carter. Every civilization sees the cosmos through the lens of its own culture. Every civilization has its own myths, its own languages, and its own maps of the heavens. Ours just happens to be rooted largely in Roman mythology—with one wonderfully ordinary exception.

Our home isn’t named after a god.

It’s named after the ground beneath our feet.

So the next time you hear someone casually refer to Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune, it might be worth asking a simple question:

Are those the planets’ names… or are they merely humanity’s names?

Because those are two very different ideas.

And if we ever discover we’re not alone, we may find that our greatest surprise isn’t that someone else exists.

It may be discovering that, in the grand conversation of the cosmos, we’ve been calling the neighbors by the wrong names all along.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Six years. Think about that for a moment. Six years after the 2020 election, nominees sitting before the United States Senate—people seeking to become attorneys general, cabinet secretaries, judges, or other high-ranking officials entrusted with interpreting and enforcing the law—still cannot answer one of the simplest factual questions imaginable:

Who won the 2020 presidential election?

Not, “What are your political opinions?” Not, “Who did you vote for?” Not even, “Do you support Joe Biden’s policies?”

Just one straightforward question: Who won?

And almost without fail, the answer comes wrapped in verbal gymnastics.

“Joe Biden was certified.”

“He served as president.”

“The electoral votes were counted.”

“The transition occurred.”

Those statements are all true, but none of them answer the actual question. It’s like asking who won the Super Bowl and getting the response, “Well, one team was awarded the Lombardi Trophy.” That’s not an answer. It’s an attempt to avoid saying the obvious.

The obvious answer is that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

He won the Electoral College by 306 electoral votes to Donald Trump’s 232. He also won the national popular vote by more than seven million votes. Those aren’t opinions. They’re historical facts.

Yet six years later, intelligent, highly educated lawyers and political appointees continue acting as though acknowledging that fact will somehow summon the wrath of Donald Trump.

One recent exchange perfectly illustrated the absurdity. A nominee admitted that Joe Biden received more Electoral College votes, was certified, and became president. A senator simply followed up:

“So you’re saying he won the election?”

Silence. Deflection. More carefully crafted legal language.

Apparently, saying every fact surrounding the election is acceptable—except the conclusion that naturally follows from those facts.

Imagine trying that logic anywhere else.

“The Diamondbacks scored more runs.”

“They were awarded the victory.”

“They advanced to the next round.”

“But I refuse to say they won.”

It’s ridiculous.

What’s most troubling isn’t that Donald Trump continues to insist he was wronged. Politicians have always struggled to accept defeat. What’s disturbing is watching otherwise qualified public servants refuse to acknowledge objective reality because they’re afraid of hurting one man’s feelings—or provoking his political retaliation.

These are people asking the Senate to trust their judgment, uphold the Constitution, and faithfully execute the laws of the United States. Yet many won’t utter a sentence that every election official, every court, every state certification process, and every peaceful transfer of presidential power has already established as fact.

If someone cannot answer a factual question with a factual answer, what confidence should we have that they’ll apply facts honestly when the stakes are even higher?

This has never really been about 2020 anymore. It’s about whether truth itself has become negotiable inside our government.

The irony is impossible to ignore. The same people who demand absolute honesty from witnesses, who insist on “just following the facts,” suddenly become masters of semantic escape whenever one particular fact might offend Donald Trump.

Not because the evidence is unclear.

Not because history is unsettled.

Not because there is legitimate doubt.

But because acknowledging reality has become politically dangerous.

A democracy cannot function if elected officials and presidential nominees are afraid to state historical facts simply because those facts bruise the ego of a former president. At some point, loyalty to one individual cannot be allowed to outweigh loyalty to the truth.

The question isn’t difficult.

Who won the 2020 election?

Joe Biden.

It took one sentence to answer—a sentence that, six years later, far too many people in Washington still seem unwilling to say out loud.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

One of the more fascinating political magic tricks of our time is watching a problem be identified, then immediately proposing a solution that has absolutely nothing to do with that problem.

Last Thursday, Donald Trump once again complained that America’s elections are vulnerable to foreign interference. If that is truly the concern, then let’s have that conversation. Election cybersecurity, foreign influence campaigns, hacking attempts, disinformation operations, and protecting election infrastructure are legitimate issues that deserve serious attention.

But then comes the punchline.

The proposed solution is the SAVE Act.

Unless someone can explain the logic that has escaped the rest of us, restricting voter registration for American citizens has absolutely nothing to do with preventing Russia, China, Iran, or any other foreign actor from attempting to influence an election.

Foreign interference isn’t accomplished by millions of undocumented immigrants secretly voting. Every investigation over the last several election cycles has shown that such cases are extraordinarily rare. Foreign interference happens through cyberattacks, propaganda, fake social media accounts, disinformation campaigns, ransomware attacks, and attempts to sow distrust in democratic institutions.

The SAVE Act addresses none of those things.

It doesn’t harden voting machines.

It doesn’t strengthen cybersecurity.

It doesn’t stop foreign troll farms.

It doesn’t prevent hacking.

It doesn’t stop deepfakes.

It doesn’t combat online propaganda.

Instead, it makes it more difficult for American citizens to register to vote by requiring additional documentation that many eligible voters don’t readily have available or that may not perfectly match their current legal names or circumstances.

That’s not stopping foreign interference.

That’s changing who has an easier time participating in American elections.

Now Senator Markwayne Mullin has escalated the rhetoric by threatening states that refuse to adopt these policies, suggesting legal consequences for election officials and state leaders who don’t comply. Think about how extraordinary that is. Instead of presenting evidence that these policies stop foreign interference, the conversation shifts toward threatening the very people responsible for administering elections.

If your stated problem is cyber warfare, why are your targets election clerks?

If your stated concern is foreign governments, why are you threatening county election workers?

If your stated fear is international interference, why is every proposed remedy aimed squarely at American voters?

Those questions deserve answers.

Because either the problem has been misunderstood, or the proposed solution was never really about the stated problem in the first place.

History teaches us that whenever governments claim they’re protecting democracy by making it harder for citizens to participate in democracy, skepticism isn’t cynicism—it’s civic responsibility.

If there truly is foreign interference, then invest in cybersecurity. Protect election systems. Strengthen intelligence sharing. Hunt down foreign influence operations. Work with technology companies to expose propaganda networks. Increase funding for election security experts.

Those are solutions that actually address the problem being described.

But if the answer to every election concern somehow always ends with making it harder for American citizens to vote, then eventually people are going to stop asking whether the solution fits the problem and start asking whether the problem was simply being used to justify the solution all along.

In any other field, we’d call that solving the wrong problem.

In politics, apparently, we’re expected to call it election integrity.