Hello again, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of Freedom's Creed. Today's Tuesday, June the 14th, 2022. Hope you're off to a fabulous start to your week. Today is Flag Day. As far as I'm concerned, every day is Flag Day, but Truman signed a law in I think 1949 establishing the 14th of June as Flag Day, so here we are. People often wonder how I came up with the title to my episodes. Well, most often it just comes to me as I prepare for the episode, but in this case, today's episode, came about from my wife and I traveling in the car together, and we were talking, as we often do, about uh the state of the economy, the world, politics, you name it, we talk about it. And I made the comment that is today's title. This title is not meant to be derogatory or defamatory towards anyone. It's a fact of life that you can actually fix stupid. Now, ignorance is quite another matter, and we're not talking about that today. I'm actually talking about stupid and how it can be fixed. And here's one of the beauties about stupid it can be fixed, but it doesn't have to be permanent. One can apply oneself to learning something new, which will then help one to overcome being stupid. And as hard as we might try, no one can know everything. However, there are some people who seem to walk around thinking that they do know it all or know everything, and I usually try to steer clear of those folks. So without further delay, I want to look at some areas where I would consider we have an opportunity to fix stupid. Now, I'm mainly talking about fixing stupid on a macro level. I'm not going to get down into the minutiae about uh individual stupidity, but I'm simply going to focus on what we might be able to all agree is stupid. And as usual, there's debate, of course, on every topic, and I consider this topic to be no different. But anyway, let's move it along. Here's the number one thing that I have listed that I think we can fix that I believe is really stupid, and that is overseas manufacturing, primarily in China. Given the tension between our country and China, why is it that we continue to do this? I don't get it. Just because the almighty dollar, it's better for us to pay less to have things manufactured overseas. Why do we continue to do this when China has such antipathy towards the United States? It doesn't make any sense to me at all. The attitude of the Chinese, now I'm talking about the Chinese Communist Party, not the Chinese people, but the people who are in charge and who run the country. In my view, this is something that we should have been looking at years ago, long before Trump was in office, long before Bush, either Bush for that matter. It goes back a ways, and it doesn't matter what president was running the country or in charge or in office at the time. That has nothing to do with it. It all has to do with are we willing now in 2022 to make the transition from China back to the United States? That's the question I would have for anyone, but particularly those who are in charge of running the country, quote unquote, right now. No doubt it'll be a painful transition to make, for sure, but it needs to be done. Why do we continue to do this just so that corporations can save a little bit more money? Why don't the corporations and the government get together and decide on a tax rate that would be fair and equitable so that people could be employed and that companies could pay their employees a decent wage and have it work out like that? Why can't we do that? We get corporations and the government together to do other things that are much less important. Why not something like manufacturing here in the States so that we're not dependent upon China, especially China? And again, nothing against the Chinese people, have nothing against the people in China. Not a thing. We also manufacture in other countries as well, not just China, but the bulk of manufacturing seems to emanate from China. You can't go to the store and look at where something was made without seeing made in China on it. It's just ridiculous to me. We need to fix this version of stupid and bring manufacturing back to the states. Plain and simple. Get it done. That's what I say. Number two, blaming others for that which we should take responsibility for ourselves. And when I say we, I'm talking about the people who are in elected office today. I don't care what political party they are, doesn't matter to me at this point in time. They all want to just look the other way, blame other people for the things that are going on instead of just being a leader and coming up with solutions and figuring out how to best overcome this tendency to not take responsibility for action taken. It's a joke. For instance, like blaming Putin for the reason why gas prices are so high. This narrative caught hold in the media and it's grown like wildfire. That's now seems to be the only thing that's acceptable for why gas prices are so high. It's it's unbelievable. Here's an idea. If we're going to blame Putin for high gas prices, then we need to find other people to blame for every other constituent aspect relating to inflation, no matter what it is, if it's food, if it's any other commodity, doesn't matter. We need to find someone to blame for the reason why these things are so high right now and why inflation is going through the roof, why it's at a 40-year high in the United States. Let's find someone else to blame for everything that we can think of because we don't want to take responsibility for our own actions. As I say this out loud, it just seems to me that it's almost not necessarily childish or juvenile, but it conjures up within me feelings of complaining. Typically, I don't like to complain about things without offering a solution to the complaint. It doesn't mean that I always do that, but it just simply means that there's gotta be something that we can do to make things better. There's got to be something I can do as an individual to make things better. Not just complain about them, but offer solutions. And that's what I'm striving to accomplish through this podcast. And today is no different. But I'm naturally, as I said earlier, talking about this idea of actually fixing stupid on a macro level. So I would kindly suggest that our leaders take action and fix this stupid idea of blaming others for things that they should take responsibility for themselves. There's no other way to say it. Our leaders must take this responsibility on themselves to bear the responsibility that they have and that was given to them in a sacred trust by the voters. Period. Number three on the list of things that we can actually fix that are stupid is attempting to go cold turkey and leave a petroleum-based society. And please don't get caught up in the internal combustion engine as the only petroleum-based product that we should be concerned with, or that I should say some people are concerned with right now. In other words, oil-based products, not just for transportation. There are apparently thousands of uses for petroleum. And I'm sure a lot of you ladies and gentlemen have heard of these products before, but I want to share a few with you from a website that's called WHGBETC.com. On that site, uh, to be fair and full disclosure here, there are some duplicates that are listed on the partial list that they have. So take that into consideration. I think if any of us go to a website, we can find out the uses of petroleum products. And if you should like to and you should verify some of these things, you may do that on your own, of course. But some of the items that are petroleum-based are things like nylon rope, guitar strings, refrigerators, ink, rubbing alcohol, insect repellent, hand lotion, golf balls, artificial limbs, eyeglasses, soft contact lenses, and the list goes on and on. And as I said, you can find your own and you should. And let me just say this about the internal combustion engine. When the automobile was invented, the engine, of course, was very rudimentary compared to what we have today. Nevertheless, when it was invented and it was introduced to the people, to consumers, did they get rid of all the horses that were used for transportation at that time? No, of course not. That would have been stupid. They made a transition from horse and buggy to automobile. It didn't happen overnight. I wasn't there, so I have no idea how long it took. I haven't done the research at this point. Frankly, I don't care. My point is they didn't just automatically just get rid of what they had before because something new had come along. That's dumb, or shall we say, stupid. The bottom line is that before we get rid of petroleum, we need to have viable alternatives for all that we use in our lives on a daily basis, not just the internal combustion engine, but everything else that we use because of petroleum. We need to fix this version of stupid by intelligently integrating viable alternatives to petroleum and to our society instead of trying to do it all at once, as it seems to be the current approach to this challenge. Well, finally, my number four on the list of stupid things that we can actually fix is we need to detach ourselves, and when I say we, I mean corporations, from this idea that they have accepted and embraced that they need to adopt this woke mentality. And in truth, unfortunately, it's not just limited to corporations. We have the entertainment industry, we have sports and everything else that has no business being mingled with the personal beliefs and opinions of everyday citizens. The outright poison that has infested our culture, creating fear in people to speak up, must be eliminated. We need to fix this version of stupid if we ever hope to remain a culture of freedom, liberty, and independence for all, because it seems to be quickly evaporating as I see it. I truly believe that this woke ideology is affecting our society in a way that I thought I'd never see. I'd never thought that I would see professional athletes, entertainers, corporations walking a certain line or towing a certain line that is in lockstep with a woke ideology. It is a poisonous route to take, folks. This kind of behavior is not in harmony with the Constitution. Certainly not in harmony with the First Amendment. Don't we have the right to speak up freely in our society to say what we want, to speak our mind? And I'm speaking about the micro level of speaking our minds, not the macro level. Businesses, entertainers, sports, whatever you want to call them nowadays, I don't call them professional or just people who play sports and get paid for it. They have a craft that they have perfected and that they have turned into an enormous income stream. And I don't fault them for that at all. In fact, I applaud them for it. I think that it's the American way, certainly. But guess what? When we go to the movies or we go to a sporting event or we go to some other event where there's a public figure there, we don't go to see them to hear what they think about politically. We go there to watch them play, we go there to watch them act, to do whatever it is they do, and they do it well. That's why we go see them. We don't go to see them to get political advice or any other advice about investing or about real estate or anything else. We go to watch them perform, and that's it. This version of stupid could be easily fixed if all of those that I just mentioned were to focus on their craft, focus on what they do best, and let the rest of us make up our own opinions about what we think politically or about anything else relating to society. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have enjoyed this as I always do. I enjoy providing the content that I hope you enjoy yourselves, and I want to continue to do that for each of you who have taken the time to listen and who do listen on a regular basis. I thank you for that. I would like to end this episode with a quote from Groucho Marx. He simply said this quote, Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies, close quote. I think that's quite apropos for what we are experiencing today. And with that, if you can think it, you can plan it. If you can plan it, you can do it.