As today’s boys grow towards manhood, neo-feminists are attempting to derail the forces of Mother Nature to suite their own agendas.  It has been described as the “Chickification” of America by one conservative pundit while others use terms like “metrosexual” or the more old-fashioned, and my personal favorite descriptor, garden variety pantie-wastes.  Call it what you like, the point is that American men are being cowed, (pun intented) into trading in their testicles for an over-the-shoulder man-bag and marching orders from women who are attempting to exchange their estrogen for testosterone.

The forces of Political Correctness, (PC), and the constant indoctrination of gender-neutral or even gender-hostile propaganda aimed at delegitimizing masculinity is threatening the natural maturation of today’s young men.

Take for example a TV ad running today featuring car insurance coverage for Liberty Mutual.  The ad shows a mom and her teenage son standing, facing the camera.  Mom has her arm around the boy, who appears perfectly healthy and is a few inches taller than her.  She describes how relieved she is to know that the insurance company will pay for roadside services in the event her little snowflake should have a flat tire.  The son never says a word, nervously and shyly fiddles with his hands looking sheepishly downward, and slightly squirms as his mommy glorifies the insurance company for keeping her little pumpkin safe.

The ad then shifts to another scene, showing two young boys alongside a disabled car, the one boy on the phone with his dad, attempting to get instructions on how to fix a flat tire, only to learn that his insurance does not cover such incidents.  The ad ends with the boy on the phone indignantly insisting he knows what a lug wrench is, but clearly demonstrating that he really has no clue.  Even the two boys together cannot figure out how to change a flat tire.

Great job mom, dad, congratulations, you have successfully raised overly dependent, overly entitled, dainty and incapable excuses for young men.  In addition, a special thanks to Liberty Mutual for justifying this crazy entitlement, raising the rates of every other policyholder because a few of these modern pantie-wastes can’t figure out how to change a tire.

These were I’m sure, the same kids who grew up played games without keeping score and watched Inconvenient Truth in science class as if it was incontrovertible truth, sold as “settled science” and consequently ineligible for further debate.

Author Johnnie Dent Jr. reminds us that, “As parents we have a tendency to overprotect; it’s okay to try and show them all positives but we cannot forget that the real world has teeth.”  Those “teeth” are best shown and dealt with in adolescence, when the stakes are lower than in the adult world and the lessons of the harsher side of life are more controlled and formative of instruction by example when you have to negotiate with the unreasonable, fight or flee, and determine, in your own mind, what kind of a man you will eventually become.  Mom and Liberty Mutual can’t help you with that.

Author Pam Leo tells us, “Let’s raise children who won’t have to recover from their childhood.”  I would ad that we should raise children who actually leave their childhood.

Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower reminds us that, “We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.”  Allowing the controlled harshness of real life to fall upon our children is the sort of “tough love” act that many of today’s parents reject as unsuitable in their modern version of the world.  These parents see their roles as “friends” to their children, and will do nothing to interfere with that friendship.  That outlook is a huge mistake.  Your willingness to allow your kids to fend a bit for themselves is your obligation.  Having raised two children into adulthood, I can tell you that both can ward off bullies, out perform most of their contemporaries in the work force, and without question, change a flat tire.  When one of them spots one of your snowflakes stranded on the side of the highway, it is likely they might stop and lend a hand.

  You’re welcome.

If you’re over 30, this article will provide information about the actual meaning of some of today’s new phrases I’m sure you’ve probably heard but didn’t quite understand.  If you’re under 30, this piece will no doubt confound you, yet I hope by the end, it serves to help you unravel your words from your actual thoughts.

As a writer and observer of behaviors, I take seriously words and their meanings.  Three commonly used phrases have crept into the younger person’s lexicon, and I think they serve as a good example to both users and listeners, as to what they actually mean.

The first of these phrases is pretty simple, yet very telling about the high levels of conformity today’s youth attach to their speech.  Listen when young people are talking to each other, and when they are in agreement, you’ll hear repeatedly the phrase, “yeah-yeah-yeah” as agreement and acknowledgment.  Not “yes”, or, “OK”, or “I understand”, or “yeah”, or “yeah-yeah”, or “yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah” but specifically and precisely three times, “yeah-yeah-yeah,” spoken rapidly, almost as a single word.  I have no clue as to where this phrase started, but in my travels, I have observed that it is not a regional phenomenon but appears to be widespread in use.

I’m old enough to add some historical context to the modern use of this phrase.  I remember when it’s older use, (slightly modified,) meant something quite different.  In the past, “yeahh…yeahh…yeahh, spoken slowly, and with a hint of disinterest, meant that the speaker was boring the listener, or that they had heard enough, almost like the use today of the phrase, “whatever,” which is really nothing more than a not-so-nice polite way of saying I’m done listening.

If you find yourself using the phrase “yeah-yeah-yeah,” the point of this article is to illustrate to you how unwittingly susceptible you are to unconscious conformity, likeness and peer pressure; over-kill for the desire to deliver positive affirmation.

The second and third new-use phrases I hear repeatedly in the younger crowd share a similarity in the fact that they both couch nuanced displeasure packaged as faint praise.  Old-school jargon used to call this “passive-aggressive behavior” but today’s kids use it often and freely in the following lines.  “It’s all good” and “No worries.”

Unlike “yeah-yeah-yeah,” these two phrases actually mean exactly the opposite of what their face-value states.

For example, a group of kids order breakfast and the waitress mistakenly brings the wrong style eggs and wheat instead of rye toast.  As the kids point this out and as she is apologizing and offering to make the mistake right, they declare, “It’s all good,” and accept scrambled for over-hard and wheat for rye.  Mild admonishment followed by acceptance and forgiveness.

I have quizzed kids on the use of this phrase in this circumstance and they deny any element of complaint, instead emphasizing the praising component of the phrase.  However, if that were accurate, why point out the mistake at all?  Simply accept the substitutions and move on, but that is not what happens, it seems requisite that the waitress is reminded first of her error and then quickly forgiven.  A little shaming served up with an order of plausible deniability rendering one both superior and benevolent in one fork-filled bite.

“No worries” I’ve observed, ratchets-up “It’s all good” and is generally employed when someone says something the listener finds wrong or insulting.  The times I have seen and heard it repeated more than twice, fights have broken out.  It seems that the more “No worries” is repeated, it signals that you had better commence worrying.

Words mean things.  Once we allow the words meanings to be transformed or changed outright, that shared meaning turns to ambiguity and eventually misunderstanding due to meaninglessness.  Once words and phrases become codes and secret languages known only in shared circles, this serves to separate and divide us.  It benefits us all to refine and improve our collective ability to effectively and creatively communicate with one another and not create barriers in an already challenging environment.

Now, if you’re rolling your eyes and saying to yourself, “whatever”, yeah-yeah-yeah, I understand, really, it’s all good, no worries, and I really, really mean that, no seriously.

Binghamton City Mayor Richard David has announced that a network of automatic license plate readers, (ALPR) will be strategically placed along all roadway entrances and exits to the city.  David states that the cameras will be linked in a high-speed fiber-optic network fueling a database recording information on every vehicle.  In public statements, David touts decreasing criminal activity as the impetus for this $700,000.00 expense.

This is government over-reach in Constitutional proportion, directly violating the 4th Amendment protection against “unreasonable search.”  A system of 24/7 continuous surveillance of the comings and goings of every vehicle in the city is outrageously intrusive and insulting to the law-abiding residents who have a reasonable expectation of not being tracked by their own government.  Many Binghamton police cruisers already have these cameras installed.  What the public likely does not know is these readers consolidate their data into a mega-database that has little to no judicial oversight.  The information gathered includes the license plate number, the time of day, the date, and the location of every vehicle that passes by.  This information is then cross-referenced with another database that matches the registration information of the vehicles ownership to that license plate number, thereby disclosing the vehicle owners name, address and any current wants, warrants or other legal information that might alert officials to stop that vehicle.

This idiotic endeavor is the antithesis of what we know in America to be freedom.

Casting this wide of a net over the law abiding to catch the less than one percent involved in criminal behavior, or even something as minor as an unpaid parking fine, is over-reach by any reasonable observation.  Rationalizing this program as legal and just on the basis of the fact that the City of Freeport on Long Island has already done something similar is equally idiotic.   Since when does proof of legality and validity exist on the basis of the theory that someone, somewhere else is doing it too?  Freeport reports a drop in crime since they implemented their program, but again, at the expense of our liberty?  What sad irony that a place in New York with the word “free” as a part of their name, has volunteered to lose that freedom.

Over-reach is over-reach.  No justification exists sufficient to topple a fundamental right citizens have to be left alone, scrapped for a few more arrests, no, that is a trade-off not to be made in America.  These kinds of social privacy sacrifices are common in socialist countries but not to be tolerated in a free society.

Tightening the legal system to keep criminals off the streets in the first instance is a better solution than performing mass surveillance on a free people.

Who better to consult with then one of our Founding Fathers?  Benjamin Franklin was looking into the future when he said, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty or safety.”

Mayor David, this is a bad idea, scrap it.

Binghamton City Councils recent resolution affirming support of legal immigrants and refugees provides a teachable moment in understanding the culture of the politically correct, (PC) and how it serves to demand compliance while censoring dissent.

Caught up in the Trump era of addressing illegal aliens and not wanting to be shown up by the Ithaca City Council that recently adopted legislation affirming their status as a sanctuary city, a lone liberal Binghamton council member felt compelled to jump on the immigration bandwagon and drag Binghamton into that politically volatile bailiwick.

By putting a few dozen “fellow travelers” in the council gallery, making speeches about the history of immigration in the country, this lone, liberal voice managed to cow his fellow members into submission, for fear of violating the codes of conduct towards the PC, that being that the sentiment, the emotion, and the intent are core components of legislative resolutions, at the expense of logic, reason, and accurately measuring outcomes while holding people accountable.

Affirming that Binghamton supports legal immigrants and refugees is simply restating the obvious.  Who after all, does not support legal immigrants; it is clearly the illegal aliens that are the focus of the problem, not those here lawfully.  This is a case of hearing other voices in the wilderness and being unable to resist the temptation to say something, anything, so as not to feel left out, and just to hear the sound of their own voice.

Clearly, Binghamton leadership has much more pressing business when it comes to the actual tangible aspects of managing a city.  This senseless resolution, a total reaction to the world around us, offers a solution in search of a non-existent problem.

Unfortunately, once the proposed resolution gained traction with the media, the other six city council members, for fear of being labeled as racists, lent their support and endorsement of this silly statement when they should have counseled their junior colleague about the proper role of governance.  Isn’t crushing debt, the expense of debt service, high taxes, blighted properties, a dwindling population and the over burdened police department bigger and grander priorities than some senseless statement that affirms the obvious?

True statesmen would have had the backbone to not align themselves with this trite work of self-aggrandizement.  Furthermore, a real leader would have successfully counseled his fellow legislators towards greater goals, higher priorities and more noble endeavors that properly support those voters who elected them.

Manage a city that has little or no debt, crime under control, a bustling and thriving business climate, affordable taxes and a well-maintained infrastructure and then perhaps the more frivolous and erudite niceties like rose-colored resolutions proving to the world how enlightened city council members are might be a tolerable endeavor.

Another installment in what should be a long list of helpful articles in service to the women who so desperately need them when it comes to understanding men.  I can’t promise that I will author them all, but lets start with the topics that seem to be the most troubling to the women I know.  Although I have had this discussion in person with every single woman in my sphere of influence, my communication skills must be lacking because I’ve yet to see a break-through in this area, so I’m resorting to the written word and perhaps this will be more durable and understandable.

This is the classic case of a woman meaning one thing and saying another and then blaming the man for his misunderstanding of the inaccuracy of her statement.

This is how it goes, you can use any variation on the theme you would like, but this is the gist of it.  A guy asks a woman to go out with him on a date.  The woman says she can’t because she’s busy, or makes up some other excuse.  What the man hears is that the woman would love to go out with him except his timing is bad, she’s busy.  This almost insures that he will ask her out again in the future.  What the woman really meant was that she is not interested, not today and not tomorrow.  When brought to her attention the reality of how her excuse of being busy actually invited a future request for a date, she says that she doesn’t want to be rude or hurt the guys feelings.  Somehow, women have rationalized the lie that misleading the guy is better than being honest with him, all in the greater interest of not hurting his feelings.  Hey, if you’re that worried about hurting a strangers feelings, SIMPLY GO OUT WITH HIM, that will certainly sooth his feelings.

So, getting back to the point of simply being honest with the guy, to that they say that level of honesty is hurtful and therefore they won’t do it.  Again, it’s the all-or-nothing mentality that seems so pervasive in women when having this conversation.  Telling him thanks but no-thanks can be done very daintily, it doesn’t have to be, “are you kidding me pal, get the hell away from me…”how about,” thanks very much, but I’m just not interested.”

Now, in deference to the lovely women in my life, their defense is that men should be better attuned to nuance, reading between the lines, getting the hints and non-verbal suggestions.  One of my gal-pals described a situation where the same guy emailed her 7 times when she failed to respond.  She told me this as an example of how dense some guys are, and I think, to her surprise, I agreed with her, without question I told her, 7 emails with not a single response is ridiculous, obviously this guy is clueless, but then I asked her, doesn’t this situation help and make my point?  The words women use should be carefully chosen and leave no room for ambiguity or misunderstanding, especially when addressing the kind of moron that can’t understand why 7 emails is 5 too many.  To a guy like this you have to say, “Thanks but no thanks, I’m not interested.”  If you tell him, “thanks but I’m busy this weekend”, you’re inviting him to ask you out next weekend because what he heard you say was, “I would love to go out with you, but I’m busy on the weekend you have asked about.”

Perhaps I’m a slow learner when it comes to understanding the minds of women, matter of fact, I’ll stipulate to it, but it recently dawned on me that many of the women afflicted with the bad communications skills I have outlined above are not really lacking an understanding about what it is they are doing or what kind of signals they are leaving, but instead know exactly what they are doing and use the excuses as plausible deniability when called out on it.

Here is my theory about this sub-set of women.  Even when the woman has no intention of ever agreeing to go out with a particular guy, she nevertheless uses the language I am critical of, purposefully leaving a tiny shadow of doubt about her willingness to eventually accept his offer.  She does this for two distinct reasons.  Number one, in a small town like ours, she wants all of her options open, even if that option is as small as the likelihood that when she runs into this guy, he won’t hold her in distain, and if he continues to pay attention to her, it just might increase her currency socially, as others observe her ability to attract guys.

Second, just knowing that she has the attention of this guy, even if she doesn’t want it to go any further, is still an ego boast and allowing it to remain unsure in his mind, encourages him to keep pursuing her and this conveniently fuels her ego, convincing herself that she still has what it takes.

What I initially mistook as a woman’s lack of understanding about how men’s minds work is really a rather complete understanding of exactly how it works, and the brilliance of manipulating it to serve their own purposes.  That level of cunning is a little scary.

Abortion is to the 21st century what slavery was to the 19th., hopefully without a civil war.  With President Trump and the appropriately aligned Supreme Court, this stage 4 cancer on the American soul can be cured.

We can only ponder what else died with the 58 million American lives abortion has extinguished; cures to all diseases, a President, the greatest thinker of all times, inventors, poets, popes and paupers, all gone, we’ll never know.  And what about the poor mom’s with their scarred souls, in many cases lied to, forced into clinics, unwarned about the aftermath, kept ignorant of adoptive options, spiritual help and the grace of God.

The experience seers the soul of the woman and her family while extinguishing a life in this world, but souls survive the worldly, returning to their maker for an accounting.

When the biblical prophet Jeremiah questioned God about why he was chosen, God said, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.”  A few years ago, the letters WWJD suddenly appeared throughout pop culture, meaning, What Would Jesus Do?

Dare we ask what the Creator of life thinks about man extinguishing it?  Dare we stand for that accounting?

It’s so much fun to watch, the big government experts, expats, fresh off  careers courtesy of that big and bloated government, fat with pensions, living in socialist society abroad, chirping loudly against Trump; a simple request, ala Steve Bannon:  SHUT UP, you lost.  Time to sit back and let the adults straighten this cesspool up.  The society in which you worked your whole life and never made better is getting a much-needed makeover.  You’re welcome, stay offshore.

It’s so much fun to watch the snow flakes, crying, ranting, raving, frantically looking for their safe spaces, cuddle dogs, rescue toys, dildos, pacifiers, stuffed animals, rallying annoyingly against Trump;  a simple request, ala all the adults:  SHUT UP, you lost.  Don’t worry, we’ll make it better in spite of your ignorance and you’ll benefit as well.  You’re welcome cupcakes.

It’s so much fun to watch the main stream media, struggle with their relevance as they are outed for the scoundrels they have always been, benders of the truth, protectors of the propaganda, out and out liars in many cases, continuing to lie about Trump; a simple request, courtesy of all frustrated Americans:  SHUT UP, you not only lost the election, you lost whatever slim measure of credibility you had left with those fellow travelers of the twisted news you portray.  Good-bye and good riddance.

In addition, a special kind of “up yours” to those 10% of counties who voted for Hillary thinking that simply winning the popular vote would do it.  You were out-smarted by those who understand the Electoral College.  Thank God for the wisdom of our founders in anticipating that the tyranny of the majority might overwhelm the wide-open spaces that make this great country tick.  It is especially gratifying to see your wide-mouthed amazement when the dust settled on the Hillary campaign and reality set in.  The condescension of big city liberals has always been a grin worth slapping off of their artificially whitened smiles.  Cry into your 8 dollar lattes over a copy of the New York Times.

Here is the new reality.  Political correctness is dead.  You’re feeling don’t matter a wit.  It is the truth that matters.  If that somehow affects your “feelings”, tough shit, adjust your feelings buttercup.  Today’s world will be defined by what is logical, makes sense, is thoughtful, practical, doable, not merely by the intentions of the actors.  It matters not a bit what your intentions were if you fail.  Failure is still failure in a thinking person’s world.  And today going forward, we will be thinking, reasoning, debating, discussing, and refining ideas, not singing Kumbaya around an imaginary campfire.  Reality awaits us.  You can awaken and join the conversation, or you can sulk, despair and linger in your safe spaces.  Good luck with that because we’re just getting warmed up.

The recent comments of Democratic Congressman John Lewis of Georgia declaring President-elect Donald Trump to be an “illegitimate President” perfectly demonstrates the tools of political correctness and censorship when used as weapons.  By threatening the branding iron of racist, and promising demonization and marginalization should one dare to have the temerity to challenge Lewis, liberals believe they have won the day by emboldening their weaker comrades while silencing the critics.

Taking a line from Trump himself:  WRONG!

Lewis is an illegitimate Congressman, a one-trick pony, courtesy of the civil rights movement.  He and others courageously staged their marches, sit-ins and other events in order to advance the concept of equality and for these acts of bravery they should be properly venerated, understood and appreciated.  Lewis was bloodied,  beaten and mistreated during those times, however those facts do not qualify him for high office or exempt him from criticism.  Quite the contrary, those repeated blows to the head in Selma 54 years ago might better have been a disqualifier to wiser voters.  No one should make elected office a career, especially offensive when Lewis, after 77 years on the planet and 30 years as a Congressman, has never held a private sector job in his life.  Armed with a BS in Religion and Philosophy from Fisk University, he is qualified for painfully little.  Had Lewis sat out Selma, he would have been bagging groceries at Piggly-Wiggly.

Lewis has marketed his early life in the civil rights movement into a political suit of armor in deflecting, defeating and delegitimizing his critics.  Even when proven a liar for alleging that Tea Party members used racial slurs against him, Lewis the Legend survived.  The Congressman might have taken a page for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s book that describes why Thomas majored in English as an undergraduate at Holy Cross.  Thomas, who also grew up in the deep south said, for him, majoring in English was, “like majoring in a second language.”  One thing literature had taught him was the value of clear communication.  Thomas said, “The court’s opinions should not be incomprehensible.”  In contrast, listening to Lewis speak is to get a quick lesson in Ebonics.  A sitting United State Congressman ought to have at least a basic command of the English language yet Lewis in incomprehensible.  How does one graduate from college and yet be barely understandable when speaking?  Lewis not only sounds like an uneducated street thug, he reads from a script clearly produced by others.  He is given a free pass because of his history and it’s about time he was called out on being a race pimp in a threadbare, empty suite, circa 1963.

John Lewis, Jim Brady and Gabby Gifford’s all serve the same thematic purpose to the Temple-Masters of the Politically Correct; optics over substance, feelings over reason and intention over outcomes, ceremonial hood ornaments adorning the political vehicle of the moment.

So Congressman Lewis, you go ahead and sit-out this inauguration.  Why don’t you and your courageous colleagues do what you did the last time you called for a temper-tantrum and have a sit-in on the house floor?  So much for the strength of Democrats convictions.  Back in June, 2016, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi joined Lewis at the gun-control sit-in and promised that they would continue, “until hell freezes over.”  24 hours later the pity-party was over and the babies went home, after their photo-ops ran out of political value.

Hard to fathom that Lewis sees “illegitimacy” where it doesn’t exist but is clueless to the fact that his own Democratic party uses him as their lucky token, Congresses version of the family drunk uncle everyone pretends to like at Thanksgiving and laughs about the rest of the year.

King Andy is at it again, giving away other peoples money and bragging about it.  Hitching his liberal cart to the tired socialist plow horse Bernie Sanders, His Eminence tells New Yorkers that his free-college give-away will only cost $163 million.  Really Andy?  Sixty-four campuses, hundreds of thousands of eligible students, a SUNY combined budget of some 30 billion dollars, more like a billion plus taxpayer dollars dumped into a corrupted system run by corrupt men, all to buy votes.

Andy is so trust-worthy, look at his handpicked leader of SUNY Polytechnic Institute, currently under federal indictment for fraud, Alain Kaloyeros, or close personal assistant and loyalist Joseph Percoco, also facing federal corruption charges.  And Andy knew nothing?  Claiming so makes him either stupid or a liar.  Andy is not stupid, but he is a snot-nosed rich brat who has never had a job outside of the public arena, happily riding the slimy, liberal coattails of his father and former New York Governor, King Mario the Pious, who also never worked a private sector day in his charmed life.

The only calluses on Cuomo’s hands came from begging for money from the blood-sucking lobbyists who control him.  Nothing is free.