One person’s irony [FN1] could be another’s hypocrisy [FN2] or, to someone else, pure bullshit. [FN3] Negatives around us today aren’t new, but they flared up, driven, like forced air from old bellows, by a militant embrace of ignorance-as-cudgel. In undergrad, during summers, 1/8

I worked construction. An “energy crisis” made ppl treat gas mileage seriously. During a break on a job site, a guy was defiant when he said, “I’ll always drive my gas guzzler.” He didn’t cite love of aesthetics resident in a Ford LTD w/a V-8 of 460 cubic inches or 2/8

extol the feel behind the wheel of an American car designed to be as comfortable as a La-Z-Boy as it flew down the interstate. If anyone would do something to improve mileage or pollute less, he would hit the gas that much more. His attitude was redolent of a rude aphorism. 3/8

“They say if you’re not the lead dog, your view doesn’t change.” wtf!? There is no context given. Either take the lead & shove your ass into someone else’s face or they’ll do that to you. There’s no mention of learning skills for a job or task [FN4] or mention of cooperation. 4/8

This administration has “weirdos and Russian Stooges” in charge of national security [FN5] & its HHS Sec’y gutting vaccines & our national healthcare. We have to chuck irony and hypocrisy & go straight to bullshit to describe trump’s administration as kids & others die. 5/8

Footnotes:
FN1. “use of word[] to convey a meaning that is the opposite of [its] literal meaning.” Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, 2d ed., 2001, p. 1009.
FN2. “a pretense of having a virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not really possess.” Id., p. 943. 6/8

FN3. “nonsense, lies, or exaggeration.” Id., p. 276. Yes, the word is in Random House Webster’s, but not delineated by type, e.g., “pure” as contrasted with “unadulterated.”
FN4. No mention is made of a lead dog having gone to school, graduated from a training program or access to a laptop or a smartphone. 7/8

FN5. Stuart Stevens, Lincoln Project senior consultant and adviser in 2012 Mitt Romney campaign, “The Beat w/Ari Melber,” MSNBC, 09/03/25. 8/8