Why I don't read or review works by dolts

Life's short, then you're dead a long time. Don't waste time where you shouldn't.

You get 30,000 sunrises if you are very lucky—but that’s still not enough. Why waste any of them on things that have little value?

A few housekeeping notes.

Several of you have noticed and remarked lately about a more strident, specifically blunt and profane, tone appearing in my collected writhings. You are not wrong. While no one who knows me very well would ever accuse me of holding much back, I am, in fact, holding back even less than before. I’m getting cantankerous in my old age. Life will do that to you.

My first published work was a seventh-grade essay, which won a school contest sponsored by a local newspaper. That was 57 years ago, and I’ve been at it ever since. Though I’ve never lacked for inspiration, I’ve occasionally struggled with tone—especially during the last few years. Finding one’s voice, as it turns out, is less epiphany than process.

In writing, as in all things, decorum, I think, is important. Too bland, and you can’t sell anoraks to Eskimos. Too colorful, and your messages gets lost in bombast. It’s a fine line, and one’s skill in navigating it is, more often than not, determinative of success.

I’ve always done my best to approach my subjects with the awareness that there may be valid perspectives other than just my own. I’ve tried to extend percipience to those with whom I disagree, forbearance for ideas originating outside of my own thick skull, and grace to opponents. Unlike the wokesters, frauds, and thieves in suits who drove me out of academia, I get the fact that in a free country of 340 million, everyone has the right (within certain limits) to think and live as they please, likely different from me, without being shat upon for no good reason other than smugly enjoying the effects of gravity from way up high where the air is thin.

Live and let live. You want to be a flat-earther? Knock yourself out. Just don’t be upset by my laughing at your dumb ass if you make the mistake of getting into my wheelhouse about it. That’s my creed.

But, truth be told, COVID broke me. I saw the entire COVID pandemic as one gigantic fuckupathon that I and many others could only watch unfold while being powerless to stop. The lies, deceit, fraud, and authoritarianism—much of which came from former colleagues in the media and sciences—had me questioning what constitutes a valid perspective. Newly minted too-much-time-on-their-hands social justice warriors obsessed with #metoo and #BLM beat the percipience right out of me. Virtue-signaling was a dagger in my heart when it came to forbearance.

I’m different now than I was before the pandemic—but so is the rest of the world. I’m not so sure that our version 2.0 is an upgrade.

As COVID and its concomitant pandemic upheavals unfolded, the institutions to which I devoted my life—academia, the sciences, and the media—distinguished themselves only in terms of infamy. There isn’t a hell hot enough for those who hosed school children over teacher’s union nonsense (and who made flat-earthers look like MENSA). Or those allowing cities to burn over “social justice.” Or those foisting all manner of green and woke madness on half of the world under the guise of dealing with various emergencies.

So yeah, I’m pissed. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I give quarter to anyone who COVID-buggered the world for money, ego, power or a pat on the head. In the past few years, as I’ve struggled to process the enormity of failure associated with the pandemic, I’ve simply become less tolerant of dumbassery. I don’t have the time or patience for any of it anymore. Maybe it’s just innocence lost. Who the hell knows?

I have evolved, and “colorful” barely begins to describe my evolved mindset. A profane world is often best explained with profane language. But my kids are all getting old enough to read this stuff, so I need to wash my mind out with soap. I’m working on it.

As for the bluntness, that’s not getting fixed.

Some good news—cousin DJ is back in town. The best way to explain DJ is as a lost soul who’s been wandering the face of the earth for some time in search of enlightenment. He hasn’t found any. So he’s back here slumming with us up at the 43N, 5150’ llama, motorcycle, grom and guitar ranch.

You think that I’m colorful? Wait until you get a load of DJ. He’s woke antimatter. He’s not too fond of most pop culture either. You’ll need a seatbelt.

DJ isn’t much for writing; he’d rather ‘splain things in person. So he’s going to be hosting some podcasts here on Howlin, all of which will be available in their entirety (with extensive free previews) to paying subscribers. Stay tuned.

Now, onto today’s column.

“The scientists say it will all wash away, but we don’t believe anymore.” - Sin City, The Flying Burrito Brothers.

Toward the end of my vacation last week, I came across a review of former Biden White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s new book, Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines. This comes on the heels of the Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson political tome, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.

I haven’t read either of these, nor do I plan to. I have way better ways to spend time. When it comes to Jean-Pierre’s book, in particular, I’d rather wax my grollies with superglue, a belt sander and rubbing alcohol than waste time I can’t get back on the specifics of what prompted a woke, entitled, clueless product of the Democratic establishment to excuse themselves from the party because it was not crazy enough for them.

Me, being forced to read Independent.

I don’t have to read KJP explaining herself to understand where she’s coming from. I watched her prevaricate from the podium in the White House press room for a seemingly interminable three years. I know where she’s coming from. She’s the essence of what’s wrong with modern progressivism.

It’s not that most of America doesn’t get where KJP and other progressives are coming from. It’s not static or volume or comprehension that obscures their message. The message is coming across loud and clear—it’s just not well received. There’s only so much scolding that most Americans can take over missing the train of boutique progressive nonsense promoted by obvious charlatans.

Being an independent voter can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. It can simply mean unaligned (that’s me). It can mean middle-of-the-road moderate. It can also mean out where the buses don’t run. That’s KJP.

So on KJP’s book, I’ll have to pass. The same may be said for the Tapper-Thompson exposé. The last thing I intend to do with the time and money I have to spend with the four kids in my care is waste any of it on noise and idiocy. If Tapper didn’t know what was going on with Joe Biden—something that most of the rest of the country could plainly see without his access or sources—he hasn’t earned the right for any of my time or attention whatsoever.

The last political book that I purchased to read was The Mueller Report: Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, by special counsel Robert S. Mueller. I obtained this book for several reasons. The first was that I respect Mueller. The second was that I was sure that whatever he had to say would be selectively misinterpreted by both supporters and opponents of Donald J. Trump. And the last thing was that it was bound to relate events with a great deal of nuance. Politicians, the media and many regular citizens don’t do well with nuance. It’s better to discern intricacies for oneself.

Mueller did not disappoint. Although it’s obvious that he despised POTUS 45, he was unequivocal in concluding that there was almost no evidence for Russian collusion having much to do with the outcome of the 2016 election. Mueller is old-school competent. There are not many of those left.

This month marks the 63rd anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was in second grade at a school in South Florida at that time, just 250 miles from where the Soviets were building a site for medium-range nuclear missiles. Even at the age of seven, I was impressed by the seriousness of events. This was, no doubt, influenced by daily duck and cover drills at school. Also, when Walter Cronkite looked sober at 7 pm, you knew that things were getting real.

The first time I ever got into trouble at St. Francis Xavier Elementary was when I told the nun who taught my second-grade class that I wasn’t going to crawl under my desk again because it didn’t do much good for anyone in Japan at the end of WWII. “I saw,” I told her, “pictures in a book in the library about what happens with atomic bombs.”

I thought that reading is fundamental extra effort might earn me some points. Instead, it got me a trip to the principal’s office for a meeting with the board of education. That was the beginning of my disillusionment with intellectual decorum. It’s almost a straight line from that moment to now.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was, even to a seven-year-old, heart-attack-serious. But most of the country believed in our leaders to sort things out. The Kennedys may have been scions of cutthroat capitalists, shady politicians, and bootleggers, but they knew how to negotiate with the Soviets without starting World War III.

Old-school competence and a stiff spine were what the times demanded. The Soviets had their assholes; we had ours. Ours were better.

Think what you will about politics, but the entire Biden administration, fronted by Karine Jean-Pierre, is to crisis management what a naked man is to a freight train. Substitute KJP for Pierre Salinger and Biden-Garland for JFK-RFK and drop them into October 1962, and instead of lighting up Substack, we’re all vitrified beneath a glassy, self-lighting parking lot that will glow in the dark for the next few thousand years.

So no thanks, KJP. With all due respect, I’m not reading your book, much less belaboring others with details about it. You have not earned the right for any serious person’s attention except as a symbol of woke excess and cluelessness. That’s not worth the price of the book, even on Kindle.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on X at @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com.