Old Man Pondering

What’s more damaging to our national discourse and the education of children, an utterly ignorant fool who knows nothing, or a half-informed zealot armed with dangerous fragments of knowledge? Let me put it to you this way, like a Kentucky farmer explaining the difference between harmless rat snakes and venomous copperheads. Is someone who has never heard the definition of anecdotes and trends more dangerous than someone who confidently misapplies these concepts by thinking anecdotes are trends with evangelical fervor? I actually think it’s the latter, like a blind man confidently leading others through a minefield.

As an independent I maintain friendships across the political landscape—from gun-toting conservatives to hemp-wearing progressives. Some on the right clutch their remote controls with white knuckles, treating Tucker Carlson as if he were Moses descending from Mount Sinai. Others on the left scroll through their phones with the glazed eyes of the converted, hanging on Rachel Maddow’s every syllable. My daily struggle as an independent thinker is watching both extremes package moronic opinions in the plain brown wrapper of fact, while the complicated truth lies abandoned somewhere in the middle.

For years, I’ve scrolled past the digital billboards of falsehood on my feed—the doctored images, the context-free quotes, the cherry-picked statistics, the absolute crap that is shared by friends from idiotic biased sites—but there’s one particular acquaintance whose posts have become as irritating as poison ivy on bare skin. We once exchanged messages almost daily, but now my tolerance for their particular brand of misinformation has worn thinner than the traces of hair left on my head.

This person spends too much time hunched over their glowing screen, collecting anecdotal stories that reinforce their pre-existing worldview. What truly grates on me is how they’ve transformed into a digital street preacher, sharing isolated incidents and false stories as if they represent universal patterns. In the past I let their posts drift past like autumn leaves on a creek, but something else gnaws at my conscience—and surprisingly, it’s the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein.

Two supposedly great leaders, Trump and Clinton, were “close friends” with Jeffrey Epstein. That’s not an opinion, but cold, hard fact. Trump knew him well for over a decade—they visited each other’s gilded homes, clinked champagne glasses at glittering Manhattan galas, and Trump’s name appeared in Epstein’s black leather contact book with multiple phone numbers. He flew on Epstein’s gaudy private jet—nicknamed the “Lolita Express”—at least 14 times, and Trump even invited Epstein to his lavish second wedding at Mar-a-Lago, where Epstein mingled among the tuxedoed guests like any other respected businessman.

In Clinton’s case, the evidence sprawls across years like a spider’s web—over 26 meticulously logged flights aboard Epstein’s private jet, plus a decade of photographed handshakes and shoulder-clasps at galas. The White House visitor logs show Epstein’s name scrawled multiple times. Most damning was the handwritten note Clinton penned for Epstein’s 50th birthday, “Jeffrey — Happy 50th — It’s reassuring isn’t it, to have lasted as long, across all the years of learning and knowing… and also to have… the solace of friends”.

Friends? Yes, both Presidents—one with his folksy Southern charm and saxophone-playing charisma, the other with his gold-plated Manhattan swagger—maintained decade-long friendships with Jeffrey Epstein, that convicted predator whose Palm Beach mansion and private Caribbean island became temples to the systematic abuse of underage girls. The same man whose black leather contact book bulged with powerful names.

So here is the question both tribes should ponder. Is it possible to have a decade-long friendship—sharing holiday meals, swapping family photos, exchanging late-night confidences over bourbon—and never catch a whiff of depravity? Not a single off-color joke about young girls, no lingering glances that made your skin crawl, no comments that in retrospect should have set off alarm bells loud as tornado sirens? As a 73-year-old father of four daughters, seven granddaughters and two great granddaughters I know the answer is …. of course not you idiots! Even a mere suspicion—just the faintest shadow of doubt about someone’s God awful predilections—would send any decent person running like a startled whitetail through our Kentucky autumn cornfields.

And that brings me back to my friend. His direct comments and social media persona have become a hellscape of raw hatred masquerading as “common sense”—memes with homeless people photoshopped as rats feeding from dumpsters, immigrants portrayed as knife-wielding invaders scaling fences, articles seething with references to “urban thugs” destroying neighborhoods, homophobic slurs, support for corporal punishment, and venomous warnings about avoiding establishments where “places turn a little too dark” after sundown. These anecdotes, and often false stories, are shared as systemic issues and beliefs in an effort to influence others toward unprincipled behavior and bigotry.

It would be one thing if my deranged friend kept his opinions to himself, but he is loud in the ugliest way and refuses to change regardless of my attempts to broaden his horizons. So, it’s time for me to again cut a little more cancer from my life, like a surgeon removing a malignant tumor. Sure, I could remain silent pretending I don’t realize the harm his outspoken influence can do. Most people do just that, pretending harmful missives and beliefs do not influence children or adults, but I grew up in Chicago. That environment taught me to “welcome conflict if it can intentionally help or protect even one person from harmful beliefs“, so I’m done being complicit.

Every second we spend tolerating or quietly condoning vile garbage we encourage people to spread it, letting poison seep into families and communities “unchallenged”. You see, by ignoring wrongs you unknowingly hand people a megaphone. At best, that is something both Trump and Clinton didn’t understand or at worst ignored due to their own ugly predilections.

Yes, some friendships deserve to die and this one’s getting a bullet between the eyes today.

Such is life.