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Still holding on to summer. Today - Manhattan Beach 🌊

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David Bowie on the anti-intellectualism of American media:

In American media, particularly sitcoms and animated series, there is a persistent trend that elevates ignorance as a virtue while mocking intellectual curiosity. The ideology of “ignorance is bliss” is woven into the cultural fabric of entertainment, shaping generations of viewers to equate intelligence with alienation and foolishness with belonging. While comedy has long relied on exaggeration and absurdity, the steady glorification of stupidity goes beyond humor and enters the realm of subtle propaganda.

Sitcoms such as Married… with Children, According to Jim, and Two and a Half Men construct entire narratives around the bumbling, clueless father or male lead who succeeds despite laziness, arrogance, or sheer idiocy. These men are not punished for their lack of insight but rewarded with acceptance, family loyalty, and steady laughs. Their smarter counterparts - wives, neighbors, or children - are depicted as uptight nags or outsiders, undermining the value of critical thought. This formula quietly reinforces the idea that intelligence is undesirable, even socially corrosive, while ignorance is charming and relatable.

Animated series often push this further. The Simpsons’ Homer, Family Guy’s Peter Griffin, and Beavis and Butt-Head all became cultural icons precisely because of their stupidity. Their ignorance is framed as endearing, humorous, and quintessentially American. In contrast, characters who display knowledge - Lisa Simpson, Brian Griffin, or teachers and authority figures - are mocked, sidelined, or portrayed as pretentious and ineffective. This dynamic ensures that intelligence is not something to admire but something to ridicule.

The cumulative effect of these portrayals is not neutral. In a society where media shapes identity and aspiration, constant reinforcement of “it’s cool to be dumb” nurtures an anti-intellectual culture. At best, it conditions audiences to distrust expertise and prefer gut instinct over critical reasoning. At worst, it serves as cultural anesthesia, dulling the drive for education and reflection. The laughter becomes a mechanism to normalize mediocrity.

Whether intentional or not, this trend aligns neatly with the interests of power. A population trained to laugh at intellect and idolize ignorance is less likely to question authority, resist manipulation, or cultivate independent thought. The ideology of celebrated stupidity, packaged as harmless comedy, functions as soft propaganda: it perpetuates a culture of complacency where critical thinking is not only unnecessary but uncool. In this way, television comedy quietly reinforces the oldest control mechanism of all—keeping people entertained enough to stop asking questions.

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My Dream Job

* * * *

when the eye stops the heart

What then are we to do with all those moments when the eye stops the heart

That gesture there, that glint of beauty going by

And the thought, Who will remember it if I don’t? That daub of heaven on a half-lowered eye- lid

— Vasiliki Katsarou, “A Dab of Blue Paint” in Memento Tsunami (Ragged Sky Press, January 1, 2011)

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DEVGRU

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Today is the anniversary of D-Day. A day we should think of and remember what the Allied forces did and why they did it. We should be remembering REAL heroes for their selfless sacrifices made in the interest of others. The young men and women who stormed the beaches, dropped from the skies, fought in the clouds, and cared for the wounded.

Real Heroes. Like Major Richard Winters, of E Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. The group came to be known as Easy Company.

The unit experienced heavy turnover because of battlefield casualties. One Easy Company soldier later wrote that among his colleagues, the Purple Heart “was not a decoration but a badge of office.”

Maj. Winters graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in 1941 before enlisting in the Army. He was selected to attend officer candidates’ school, earned a commission in the summer of 1942 and then - drawn by the promise of extra pay for hazardous duty - volunteered to join a newly formed paratrooper unit.

Of about 500 officers who volunteered to join the elite unit, only 148 made the cut.

Maj. Winters excelled as a infantry leader and a paratrooper and became a hallowed figure among his men for his “follow me” attitude.

He received the military’s second-highest decoration for valor, the Distinguished Service Cross, for his actions on D-Day.

That morning, after landing and untangling from his parachute, Maj. Winters gathered a small group of men for a raid on German cannon emplacements near Brecourt Manor.

Guarded by a platoon of 50 German sentries, the heavily fortified battery had been firing on Utah Beach, causing significant casualties and slowing the Allied advance.

In their assault of the position, Maj. Winters and his men killed 15 German soldiers and took 12 as prisoners. Maj. Winters and his men destroyed three German cannons and completed the action with near-textbook efficiency.The assault Maj. Winters led on those fixed positions is still taught today in our military academies.

Throughout the war, Maj. Winters’s leadership skills earned him commendations and promotions. He served as Easy Company’s commander and was promoted to lead the 506th Regiment’s 2nd Battalion, which included Easy Company.

Maj. Winters and his men eventually saw the end of the European campaign while occupying Adolf Hitler’s mountainside retreat, the Eagle’s Nest, nestled in the Alps above Berchtesgaden. They celebrated by drinking champagne from the Fuhrer’s 10,000-bottle cellar.

Late in the war, one of Maj. Winters’s soldiers, Floyd Talbert, wrote him a letter from an Indiana hospital, thanking him for his loyalty and leadership.

“You are loved and will never be forgotten by any soldier that ever served under you,” Talbert wrote. “I would follow you into hell.”

One of the most harrowing experiences of his military service came in late April 1945. The men of Easy Company discovered a German working camp near Landsberg that was part of the Dachau concentration camp. Maj. Winters found wheels of cheese piled in a nearby cellar and ordered that the nourishment be distributed among the inmates.

“The memory of starved, dazed men who dropped their eyes and heads when we looked at them through the chain-link fence, in the same manner that a beaten, mistreated dog would cringe, leaves feelings that cannot be described and will not be forgotten,” Maj. Winters wrote of the experience. “The impact of seeing those people behind that fence left me saying, only to myself, ‘Now I know why I am here.’”

Richard Davis Winters was born Jan. 21, 1918, in Lancaster, PA. He died on January 2, 2011, in Hershey, PA.

THANK YOU Major Winters and all of those whose lives changed forever on that day in the name of freedom.