Glenn K. Beaton is a writer and columnist living in Colorado. He has been a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, RealClearPolitics, Powerline, Instapundit, Citizen Free Press, American Thinker, Fox News, The Federalist, and numerous other print, radio and television outlets. His most recent book is "High Attitude — How Woke Liberals Ruined Aspen"
About a year ago, a cop arrested, handcuffed and foolishly killedftnta violent career criminal, drug addict, thief, robber and ex-con named George Floyd who was high on fentanyl and methamphetamine.
Last week on the anniversary of Floyd’s death, the left marked the day. Not with mournful candlelight vigils as civilized people might, but by celebrating in the usual Third World way by shooting guns into the air, into windows and into other people.
The left lives for these tragedies. It gives them an excuse to go out rioting, and they did. Not because they give a damn about Floyd, but because they like to riot. They like to riot because they hate America.
“. . . leftists are morally disordered people . . . . perhaps the best way to prepare yourself for contending with them is to pretend you’re dealing with Satan.”
— Selwyn Duke
“Pretend”?
Satan may not be much more to you than a medieval caricature, looming large only in the minds of 17th century Puritans. The European Enlightenment, after all, disinfected such bogeymen with the light of Reason.
But one is tempted to ask, to what end? As Goethe wryly observed in Faust, thanks to The Enlightenment “The Evil One is gone, the evil ones remain.”
Who is this dude Satan? Jesus spoke of him a lot. As told by Matthew, he’s the subject of Christ’s first two parables. The second is particularly chilling, reading like the original screenplay for The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Early in the pandemic, Dr. Fauci said, “there’s no reason to be walking around wearing a mask.” He said masks might cause more harm than good.
In the kind of pirouette for which he’s now famous, Fauci later told us all to wear masks indoors and out. Fauci himself starting wearing two at a time. (Why not three?) His baffled boss, Joe Biden, wears them for Zoom calls – even though he’s been fully vaccinated.
As it turned out, Fauci lied about his reason for initially telling us not to wear masks. The real reason was that he wanted to save them for doctors such as himself.
Fine, Fauci didn’t want to spark mask hoarding similar to the toilet paper hoarding we saw early on. (By the way, how’s that closet full of toilet paper working out for you hoarders?) In short, they lied to us to protect us.
But lying is not the way to manage grownups. Fauci should have explained that masks are probably effective to some degree, but that for a few weeks we needed to save them for front-line health workers who were in daily contact with the virus.
This song was for an movie that became a leftist icon. How ironic that the lyrics now speak to the right.
Because the left’s politics of hate, envy and greed — all done dishonestly in the name of heaven — will end badly. On judgment day, our nation of liberty will be gone. Just one tin soldier will ride away. Listen HERE.
Listen children to a story That was written long ago Bout a kingdom on a mountain And the valley folk below. On the mountain was a treasure Buried deep beneath the stone. And the valley people swore They’d have it for their very own.
So go ahead and hate your neighbor, Go ahead and cheat a friend. Do it in the name of heaven, You can justify it in the end. There won’t be any trumpets blowing Come the judgment day. But on the bloody morning after One tin soldier rides away.
So the people from the valley Sent a message up the hill, Asking for the buried treasure Tons of gold for which they’d kill. Came an answer from the kingdom “With our brothers we will share All the secrets of the mountain All the riches buried there.”
Now the valley cried with anger “Mount your horses, draw your swords.” And they killed the mountain people So they won their just rewards. Now they stood beside the treasure On the mountain, dark and red. Turned the stone and looked beneath it “Peace on earth” was all it said.
So go ahead and hate your neighbor Go ahead and cheat a friend. Do it in the name of heaven You can justify it in the end. There won’t be any trumpets blowing Come the judgment day. But on the bloody morning after One tin soldier rides away.
United Airlines has apparently conquered such mundane issues as late flights, canceled flights, uncomfortable flights, rude counterworkers, lost baggage, multi-hour delays in answering their phones, that plane urchin who keeps kicking the back of your seat and the ample passengers who’ve sandwiched you into the middle seat and the moron in front of you who’s thrown his seat back into your knees at about Mach 2.
Not to mention United’s pesky problem of occasionally terrifying the passengers moments before slicing, dicing, incinerating and vaporizing them.
And so United has announced they’re joining the woke wars. They boast that they will reserve 50% of their new pilot slots for People of Color and women. The wokerati applaud.
This presents a question. Why doesn’t United already have at least 50% POC and women pilots? Instead, United’s pilot corps are about 13% POC and 6% women.
There are two potential answers to this question, and only two. Both lead to the conclusion that United is sexist and racist.
One answer is that United actively discriminated against POCs and women over the years. Plaintiff’s lawyers, are you listening? Department of Justice, are you listening?
The second possible explanation is more persuasive. There just aren’t many POC and women pilots out there to be hired. Indeed, less than 7% of all licensed pilots – not just pilots who fly for a living – are women and less than 4% are black, for a total between them of about 10% of the entire population of licensed pilots. Those numbers roughly correspond to the pilot ranks at United.
OK, that explanation gets United out of the discrimination frying pan for having so few POC and women pilots. But it gets them into the discrimination fire for their announcement that they’ll reserve 50% of new pilot slots for POCs and women.
Let’s assume that the skill of POC and women pilots is about the same as white male pilots. Given that POCs and women comprise roughly 10% of the potential hires, while white men comprise 90%, United will have to delve about nine-times deeper into the ranks of POCs and women.
That means that a white male pilot of average skill will have very little chance of being hired, while a POC or woman pilot with the same average skill will be a nearly-certain hire.
For that matter, a pilot in only the 10th percentile of skill – a pilot who relatively speaking can only be characterized as a bad one – will stand a good chance of being hired if, and only if, he or she is POC or female (and an even better chance if she’s both, since that would check two quota boxes).
This constitutes sexual and racial discrimination explicitly prohibited by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. United is back to civil rights discrimination that was outlawed half a century ago – and proud of it. The “friendly skies” are now officially more friendly or less friendly depending on one’s sex and race.
What’s next, will POCs and women passengers get priority in boarding the plane? That sounds ridiculous, but it’s less ridiculous than POCs and women getting priority in hiring.
What about United’s passengers who’ve effectively been told that United’s priority is not to hire the best pilots available to fly these 50-ton machines going 600 mph at six miles above the ground, but to fill woke quotas?
The most common cause of airplane crashes is pilot error. Maybe it’s racist or sexist these days to say this, but I will anyway: Bad pilots make more errors than good ones. I want to fly an airline that hires the best pilots available. Period.
Note: Glenn Beaton is a former aerospace engineer for Boeing.
the Aspen beat 