The best ones almost write themselves. The reader knows where it is going but is unsure of how we are going to get there. For me, that is the fun of it all. Bob approves.
I asked AI about “Confucius say” and Charlie Chan, who I watched as a kid. Here is its reply:
Yes—at least in American popular culture, “Confucius says” is strongly associated with Charlie Chan-style dialogue, even if the trope did not necessarily originate there. The phrase was popularized by the Charlie Chan books and especially the films, where Chan frequently delivered pseudo-Confucian aphorisms such as “Confucius say…” or similar “ancient proverb” lines.
So if you heard “Confucius says?” as a comic bit or familiar cultural shorthand, it very likely was filtered through Charlie Chan. More broadly, that style became part of a stereotyped American image of Chinese wisdom-speak, often tied to broken-English phrasing and later recognized as carrying racial caricature elements. Jim: Though I liked Charlie Chan even I could recognize at that early age that he was not SE Asian by any stretch.
Didn’t make any difference to this young mind just wanting to be entertained by good stories, memorable lines, and unknowable racial elements. I liked the way he solved crimes using his brain. That’s what stuck with me. Charlie Chan connected dots and used his superior intellect and patience to solve crimes. That was unusual. And it stuck.
If a man had a dog with four legs and a tail and you called the tail a leg how many legs with the dog have? The answer: four just because you call the tail a leg doesn’t mean it is so.
This is one of he most insightful essays I've read in the last few years.
Because it applies to almost everything that is contentious.
And this dynamic that is identified contributes to everything being contentious. It's not the root cause, but it becomes the root hurdle to being able to address the root causes.
And if we can solve this, there may be a chance for the US and humanity.
I've been thinking about this a lot. And certain political elements try to make one point a trend. When DOGE was happening, my mom heard about a forest ranger who was losing his job. Being a ranger was all he ever wanted, and his dream was being "stolen" from him. My mom thought it was just terrible. I said that it was, taken in a vacuum, but that the bigger issue that impacts the other 349,999,999 Americans is the trillions in waste, fraud, and abuse.
Sometimes cancer patients get really sick, and healthy parts get knocked out along with the cancer.
We're trying to save the patient, but few see that.
Government workers are necessary. But each one is paid for out of our taxes. That is not the case for the private sector. So we need to be careful about hiring in the public sector. I’ve been a part of both sectors at different times in my life — including the forest service. I prefer the private side.Great to see that 100% of new hires in recent months have come from private companies. That is good for the economy.
Thanks. That’s exactly right.
The first move is simple:
notice it—and say something about it.
That alone clears a lot of fog.
It is interesting, isn’t it?
One side seems to carry a long list of things you’re not allowed to question.
The other… not so much.
You start to see a pattern:
• One approach requires guardrails, language rules, and careful framing
• The other is more comfortable just… looking at what’s in front of you
Maybe that’s the difference between:
supporting a narrative
and
supporting the ground truth
One needs scaffolding.
The other doesn’t.
Simplistic? Sure.
But sometimes the simple frame reveals more than the complicated one.
Jim
There’s a difference between facts and feelings.
One can be shaped by persuasion.
The other cannot.
But distort the facts—hide them, misstate them, bury them under noise—and then layer on enough persuasion, and something strange happens:
Feelings start to win.
Not because they’re stronger.
Because the facts were never given a fair shot.
They should prevail.
They don’t always.
Scott Adams understood that better than most.
The best ones almost write themselves. The reader knows where it is going but is unsure of how we are going to get there. For me, that is the fun of it all. Bob approves.
I asked AI about “Confucius say” and Charlie Chan, who I watched as a kid. Here is its reply:
Yes—at least in American popular culture, “Confucius says” is strongly associated with Charlie Chan-style dialogue, even if the trope did not necessarily originate there. The phrase was popularized by the Charlie Chan books and especially the films, where Chan frequently delivered pseudo-Confucian aphorisms such as “Confucius say…” or similar “ancient proverb” lines.
So if you heard “Confucius says?” as a comic bit or familiar cultural shorthand, it very likely was filtered through Charlie Chan. More broadly, that style became part of a stereotyped American image of Chinese wisdom-speak, often tied to broken-English phrasing and later recognized as carrying racial caricature elements. Jim: Though I liked Charlie Chan even I could recognize at that early age that he was not SE Asian by any stretch.
Didn’t make any difference to this young mind just wanting to be entertained by good stories, memorable lines, and unknowable racial elements. I liked the way he solved crimes using his brain. That’s what stuck with me. Charlie Chan connected dots and used his superior intellect and patience to solve crimes. That was unusual. And it stuck.
If a man had a dog with four legs and a tail and you called the tail a leg how many legs with the dog have? The answer: four just because you call the tail a leg doesn’t mean it is so.
Think about that. Facts trump Feelings.
This is one of he most insightful essays I've read in the last few years.
Because it applies to almost everything that is contentious.
And this dynamic that is identified contributes to everything being contentious. It's not the root cause, but it becomes the root hurdle to being able to address the root causes.
And if we can solve this, there may be a chance for the US and humanity.
They told me I was a denier but I guess I just wanted to observe. One of your best.
Growing up, we often heard little fortune cookie snippets talk about what "Confucius Says..."
One that I heard and always took to heart was the one where Confucius says "two points does not a trend make ".
For some reason it came to mind reading your thoughts here.
I've been thinking about this a lot. And certain political elements try to make one point a trend. When DOGE was happening, my mom heard about a forest ranger who was losing his job. Being a ranger was all he ever wanted, and his dream was being "stolen" from him. My mom thought it was just terrible. I said that it was, taken in a vacuum, but that the bigger issue that impacts the other 349,999,999 Americans is the trillions in waste, fraud, and abuse.
Sometimes cancer patients get really sick, and healthy parts get knocked out along with the cancer.
We're trying to save the patient, but few see that.
Government workers are necessary. But each one is paid for out of our taxes. That is not the case for the private sector. So we need to be careful about hiring in the public sector. I’ve been a part of both sectors at different times in my life — including the forest service. I prefer the private side.Great to see that 100% of new hires in recent months have come from private companies. That is good for the economy.
I agree that SOME government workers are necessary :-)
The bigger problem is the reverse of your article--an exception is being used as a reason for DOGE to be stopped.