They’re over Alaska! They’re over Montana! They’re over Lake Huron! They’re over … oh, wait, they just got shot down. Whew! That was close!

Tesla’s engineers are gathering this week in Washington with an eye on dramatically improving their vehicles’ acceleration profiles by studying how fast the US government managed to get from “nothing there,” to “balloon of some kind,” to “spy balloon,” to “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon,” to seemingly flying squadrons of military aircraft over every child’s birthday party and using expensive missiles to take down stray helium containers.

From, you know, an abundance of caution. Wouldn’t want the Chinese to find out about those low, low prices at the Walmart in Billings, Montana on pretty much everything but the giant sub-$100 helium balloons which US Senator Josh Hawley finds “very disturbing” (as if we didn’t know he’s already very disturbed in general). To surreptitiously gather THAT information, they’d have to surveil an Amazon.com distribution center.

Perhaps we should all hide under our beds — except that they were probably made you-know-where — or before long we may end up carrying surveillance devices around in our pockets and purses 24/7, inadvertently feeding Beijing valuable information on cosmetics use and videos on the gustatory joy of laundry pods.

In the immortal words of Joe Biden: “C’mon, man!”

In anything like a sane world, “there’s a balloon over [insert latest location here]” wouldn’t make the news at all, crowding out important information like the local Pop Warner league’s box scores and someone’s great-aunt’s recipe for peanut butter no-bake cookies, let alone become the basis for Defcon Freakout.

Quick, no search engine cheating:

How many billions of your dollars has the US government given to Ukraine since last February?

For how long, and why, has the US government had in place the crippling sanctions on Syria which it lifted over the weekend to facilitate earthquake relief?

Heck, how many face piercings is your own teenager sporting these days?

If you can’t answer those questions, but can point at a spot on a map (to within 50 miles of) where a US F-22 finally shot down that first “Chinese spy balloon,” it’s not because you’re a bad person.

It’s because you’re being conned by politicians who’d rather distract you with made-up issues of no real importance whatsoever than risk the possibility that you might start paying attention and take notice of the crazy stuff they put over on you 24/7/365.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

In 1970, economist Milton Friedman set out a bold claim in a New York Times op-ed: “The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase its Profits.”

More than 50 years later, we find ourselves embroiled in episode X of “OMG, a restaurant is introducing a food I find suspicious, they’ve gone  WOKE.”

Last August, it was Cracker Barrel’s “Impossible Sausage[TM]” offering. Now it’s Chick-fil-A’s  cauliflower sandwich. Twitter’s a-twitter. Fox is flummoxed. Another social conservative foodie favorite off the reservation and catering to those dirty hippies! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!

Don’t these folks ever calm down?

While often wildly misinterpreted as calling for the freedom of corporations to poison its customers directly or indirectly if it enhanced their bottom lines, Friedman’s point back then was more nuanced and made quite a bit of sense:

Increased corporate profits are — all other things being equal, anyway, even if that seldom happens — a function of customer satisfaction. If what you sell and how you sell it pleases more people, you end up selling more stuff to more customers.

Making more people happier is pretty much the only measurable way to define “social responsibility.” And the profit and loss statement tells the tale of success or failure at doing that.

So, why did Chick-fil-A put time, money, and work into developing a “plant-forward” product? “[I]t was becoming more and more prevalent,” the chain’s director of menu and packaging, Leslie Neslage, told USA Today, “that customers really want to find ways to increase vegetables in their diet.”

After experiments with e.g. mushrooms and tomatoes, cauliflower won out with focus groups. It pleased more people. It seemed likely to bring in more customers, be they chicken-lovers doing Meatless Monday or health-conscious eaters, perhaps dining with their chicken-loving families. And, therefore, to sell more food and generate higher profits.

It may or may not work out, but it seems pretty “socially responsible” in the Friedmanite sense. And pretty much the opposite of “woke,” if that word means anything other than “sure to feed the emotional fires of the perpetually outraged.”

Simmer down, social conservatives. Don’t panic. Chick-fil-A isn’t replacing its to-die-for Spicy Deluxe sandwich or delectable waffle fries. You’ll still be able to get them, if I don’t get to them first. And since you probably use the drive-thru window, the likelihood of   a scary encounter with one of those filthy, bike-riding, cauliflower-eating hippies is minimal.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On February 9, US Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and ten Republican co-sponsors introduced a resolution “expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States must end its military and financial aid to Ukraine, and urges [sic] all combatants to reach a peace agreement.”

When Matt Gaetz is right (which really isn’t very often), he’s right.

If two authoritarian regimes — and make no mistake, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s gang has proven itself just as violent and authoritarian as Vladimir Putin’s — want to fight, there’s not much the supposedly “democratic” US regime can or should do to stop them. Not our circus. Not our monkeys.

The resolution notes, at length, the financial and military aid the US government has delivered, or pledged to deliver, to Ukraine. Every dime of that money comes out of Americans’ pockets, either through taxation or as a future extortion demand to pay off new debt.

Every bullet, bomb, artillery shell, and rocket delivered or pledged is explicitly intended to inflict violent death on men and women most of whom almost certainly would rather not be where they are or doing what they’re doing. And every bullet, bomb, artillery shell, and rocket delivered or pledged has a non-trivial chance of inflicting violent death on innocent civilian non-combatants.

The resolution does cite one, and only one, positive effect of US military aid to Ukraine: It has “severely depleted United States stockpiles, weakening United States readiness in the event of” the US government deciding to go inflict violent death on other, future battlefields.

Even assuming a “legitimate defense” function for government — which is sort of like believing the guy mugging you on the street might help you out if a second mugger shows up — those stockpiles could be “depleted” by 90% without impeding such a “legitimate” function, as it would still leave the US regime well-equipped to fend off any likely threat to you (or, more to the point, its own power), as opposed to “going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” But hey, baby steps, right?

I don’t have to like Gaetz or the resolution’s other sponsors to know that it should (ideally, minus “urging” other regimes to do anything) pass the House faster than beer through a college freshman on his first pub crawl. It won’t, but should.

I don’t often suggest that my readers contact their supposed representatives in Congress, but this is one of those times. You can do it via USA.gov. If nothing else, putting a politician on the spot concerning this resolution may help you discover whether he or she is careless with, or careful of, other people’s lives and money.  You probably won’t like the answer, but it’s a good thing to know.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY