Social scientists tell us that men think about sex 99.9728% of the time. The remaining 0.0272% occurs immediately after sex, when their only thought is how quickly they can exit the scene.
Women, on the other hand, live in a different universe entirely. Their minds juggle roughly 400 simultaneous thoughts—many unnecessary, most contradictory. “I wonder if I should wear my Lilly Pulitzer dress to the Thompsons’ July 4th party in 2029.”
The eminent German social scientist Edison Von Megahertz once compared the female brain to a softball-sized knot of copper wire attached to a 240-volt electrical panel—fuses popping, sparks flying, breakers tripping in sequence. Men have learned that the only safe window for romantic engagement occurs about two hours after a fuse blows and just before the next breaker is scheduled to trip. We shall call this the Blown Fuse Rule. Everyone knows it’s true; it’s been manifested to us by the universe.
But have you ever wondered how people who are supposedly “well-educated” can be so shockingly stupid?
Remember William F. Buckley’s astute observation?
“I should sooner live in a society governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the 2,000 members of Harvard University.”
Buckley was speaking of the sort of people who reject universal truths like the Blown Fuse Rule. These are the same people who pour ginger ale over good bourbon and watch WNBA games. They don’t believe in spanking their children—thus ensuring they become little snots. They dismiss every time-tested social and economic principle in favor of theories that contradict human nature. They believe that what has never worked will somehow work now.
The ancient Greeks had a word for this condition: amathia. To the untrained ear, it means ignorance. But its true meaning, dating back to 450 B.C., describes a highly educated person who embraces willful ignorance—someone with intellectual horsepower but no practical wisdom. Aristotle called practical wisdom phronesis and regarded it as superior to the fashionable, speculative nonsense that still infects academia today.
And so we arrive at our modern catechism: Men can become women. Not arresting criminals reduces crime. Government waste is virtuous. Censorship equals democracy. Anti-loitering laws are cruel because heroin addicts should be free to defecate in front of the Ann Taylor store. Wear a mask while driving alone. Bill Gates wants to guard the Earth from the sun. Cow farts threaten the planet. Ivermectin is deadly; fentanyl is not. Potheads and gamblers are role models. Guns act independently of human agency.
The Amathiates are so brilliant they are dumber than rocks. I trust the judgment of a tobacco-chewing, tractor-driving good ole boy from Appalachia far more than these credentialed sages of serial stupidity.
Neither Socrates, Plato, nor Aristotle explained why this “thinking virus” persists. Fortunately, dear reader, you have me, Mr. Rob Is Right—clad in my toga at the Agora—to do so.
Harvard would collapse if it acknowledged the Blown Fuse Rule—or the thousands of other truths the universe has validated over millennia. If professors taught what everybody already knew, nobody would pay $400,000 for purification in the temple. Hubris and self-preservation demand the invention of new doctrines—thin-air theories peddled as esoteric wisdom by modern Druids. Their acolytes, having sacrificed fortunes for this knowledge, defend it with the fury of the newly converted. And so the disease spreads through cognitive dissonance, narcissism, and blindness to objective reality.
This brings us to Obamacare, now facing its demise as its subsidies expire on December 31. When enacted in 2010, everyone except the Amathiates knew it would fail. It violated the Rule of Other People’s Money, the Ain’t No Free Lunch Rule, and the Check Is In the Mail Rule. It ignored personal responsibility (the Fat, Dumb, and Lazy Rule) and defied the iron law that anything subsidized becomes more expensive. Massive government programs inevitably breed fraud, corruption, and inefficiency (the Government Sucks Rule).
As stated in a recent article, the real problem began under Roosevelt, when America embraced the third-party payer system—a model that makes about as much sense as trying to smooch on a woman in the middle of one of her tizzy fits. Visit Raymond at Grove Avenue Auto Care for new brakes and you’ll see the comparative insanity: you’re forbidden to negotiate with your own mechanic because a company 1,000 miles away “owns” the relationship. Raymond can’t install the brakes you want because your provider requires Shifty Sam’s Body Shop to do the work, and it can only install Slippery Brake Company brakes, not the ones you want. The paperwork costs more than the brake job.
Today, Obamacare subsidies flow directly to insurance companies, who then manage care downward. There is no free market—only bureaucracy and government mandates.
Trump’s idea to give subsidy money directly to the patient is a good start, but subsidies invariably raise costs (see electric cars and higher education). Big Government programs always produce enormous fraud and waste. Real efficiency comes from direct, voluntary transactions between producer and consumer.
A sensible system would be one of massive deregulation which rewards good personal lifestyle decisions: the healthier you are, the less you pay. For those who genuinely cannot help themselves, here is another Rob Is Right brilliant idea. All taxpayers should be able to allocate a portion of their tax bill to nonprofit healthcare providers, who could use that funding both to treat patients and assist those needing help to buy insurance. This bypasses Washington’s fraud machine and directs resources locally—where waste shrinks and accountability grows.
I forgot to mention the Rob Is Always Right Rule, but by now, it should be apparent, even to the Amathiates……
