There is, under development, a Smart Litterbox that senses use (“and can send you an alert, if you like to know such things”), and self-scoops out the poop.
There is a mirror, mirror now available on the wall which, installed in your bathroom, ensures who is the smartest of all. It can show you who is at the front door; enable multi-tasking with your calendar while texting friends; choose your commute, check the weather, let you watch a movie.
No more magazines by the toilet if you’ve a SmartMirror on the wall.
However, when it comes to making right decisions, being guided by higher principles than those of avarice, or subscribing to convictions of conscience as opposed to catering politically to whims of popular opinion, we are – in this world of smart gadgets – to put it bluntly: dumb.
We’re ships without rudders, much less – increasingly so – is there anyone on board with a hand on the tiller who, if they were, would thus know the rudder was gone.
Hopelessly adrift, subject to every shift of wind and tide, we’re headed, helplessly, toward the rocky shoal.
When “The Washington Post” added its new phrase below the online masthead – “Democracy dies in darkness” – the message was self-serving in that readers of this particular news source would be assured that under the watch of these journalists the light of scrutiny would shine in the dark places revealing what otherwise would stay hidden behind closed doors.
Anymore, however, the doors are flung wide open and democracy is dying in the sweltering heat of a desert sun.
While we lounge about sipping lemonade.
How else do you describe a presidential candidate’s call for the legalization of prostitution?
How else do you describe Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) for children in public libraries and schools which is passed off by the Public Library Association as if it were hardly any more than clowns in costume when, in fact, “pissed off” is how a sex work magazine editor – and promoter of a New York DQSH – described her abhorrence toward anyone who abhorred her support of day-work – reading to kids in DQSH – and night-work – prostituting on the streets?
Of such did Jas. Lindsay, D.D. write: “The shifts and windings of those who are guided by no higher principles than those of pride and avarice would be truly ludicrous if they were not accompanied with serious mischief.”
Lindsay’s topic was integrity. Stephen L. Carter, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of law at Yale University, has a book by that title. Carter is persuaded that “nothing but an all-out effort to demand integrity of our political leaders will preserve democracy.”
Integrity however can describe certain models of cars, windows and doors manufacturers, and it’s even the name of an organization working to include LGBT people in all the sacraments of the church.
Integrity, Carter points out, actually “comes from the same Latin root as integer (conveying) the sense of wholeness, undivided, completeness”.
In other words, however unfashionable, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, “gaining the ends”, writes Lindsay, “by upright means.”
But when the ends end up justifying the means, you get what’s happening today.
“Things move in an irresistible line,” observes Bryan Fischer for American Family Association, “from unthinkable, to permissible, to mandatory.”
We are not, however, anymore frogs in a kettle. What’s happening – in our schools where everything is taught but morality, and in our libraries, let alone on the national stage – is not creeping normality, nor death by a thousand cuts.
Not anymore.
Democracy is dying in the broad light of day.
Odd that david frets about the morality of potential candidates and remains unconcerned about the morality, or lack thereof of the current president.
This article did wander a bit, but I also noticed a lack of concern about the current occupant of the White House. I believe he would like nothing more than darkness surrounding his deeds, and those of his minions.
Ernest Heller. Nailed it! Mr Anderson is always so busy judging and moralizing (very selectively) he lacks obtaining basic education on the effects of religious dogma and seems to forget that not all of us subscribe to his brand of moralistic outrage – or that the Post is actually rated as Balanced in reporting overall with being slightly skewed to the left (HORRORS). I’m sure we shall hear another 4 pages of quotes now, and that’s just fine. This country is allegedly built on freedom of speech and freedom of the press and more importantly a separation of church and state, another thing the current squatter in the White House has worked very hard to destroy.
So as not to disappoint readers who prefer to live in relative ignorance – as if citing sources was somehow the equivalent of a diagnosis of leprosy – here’s another quote, one which should help hopefully not only salve the wounds suffered from having not only their left-leaning favorites assailed (all while missing the main point of the article I might add), but to show that I am in fact fair – and thus agreeable – in assessing all candidates and current office holders at any level of government, of any political stripe as guilty until proven innocent:
“Trust takes generations to build. It can be destroyed in a terribly short period of time. Something to keep in mind given the news out of Washington on any given day.”
For those who care – you know, who like want to broaden the horizons of their thinking, admittedly too time consuming for most – that’s from “National Review”, March 5, 2019, an article by Kevin D. Williamson entitled “The Importance of Trust.”
You’re welcome.