CORPORATE NATIONAL HOLIDAYS #359: Memorial Super Discount Day

It’s an effing beautiful late spring day here in Suckatomato, the festering armpit of Californica’s woke/DEI politics and the weather is mild, pleasant and thoroughly enjoyable, a rare and unusual occurrence in this crucible of summer season heat excesses (a day also eminently exploitable, viewed from corporate America’s perspective that we’re all not so much ‘citizens’ but bipedal consumer units). It’s also Memorial Day, 2025.

Checking my email this AM, I’ve received the usual plethora of junque-email messages from my regular inbox pests, including a heartfelt Memorial Day greeting from my ever-faithful local ROTO-ROOTER guy (with whom we made the mistake of contracting to unplug a sewer line, several years ago; like an elephant, he never forgets us with his excrementally fragrant holiday greetings!), several pornographic, purported female, double-jointed trapeze artistes who remind me that they live only a half-mile from me, are always home alone, diurnally and nocturnally horny and eager to ‘feel me inside them’, etc., a Christian fundamentalist evangelical church group that want me to join them in prayer for Donald Trump, an Irish IRA radical faction that offers to let me join them on the Ulster picket-line, and 47 other equally weird and totally unrequested commercial messages that are patently absurd or insulting to even a three-brain-cell moron.

In short, my daily, early AM ablutions have been completed in and of themselves and Phase II may commence. So I hitched up the pup and we headed out for our regular ante meridian sniff & squirt expedition around the neighborhood. Since that takes us directly past the local kaffeehaus (that’s café, to you Froggie coffee puristas), we regularly stop there…long enough for me to enjoy my usual Doppio Espresso and the girl to gobble her butter croissant (it’s in her contract, I checked), before continuing to micturate (her, not me) on the local plants and flowers in other people’s gardens.

Occasionally, we will run into other dog-people there, with the usual canine menagerie ranging from Czech Shepherd dogs (they look like shaggy wolves and are usually well above 100 pounds in size, as tall as an Irish Wolfhound, and hard to overlook their obvious differences from a teacup-sized Chihuahua) to the just-mentioned, rat-like canine abomination. The smart ones also recognise that certain large dog breeds have a genetic predisposition towards small ‘prey’ animals and keep their bigger ones well-separated from the small ones. Unfortunately, too many of these warm-hearted but empty-headed doggie folks flunked out of the adopt-a-doggie smarts program in school, so we occasionally have minor doggie dust-ups from time to time.

This morning there was a 16-year-old miniature Chihuahua/Pomeranian mix there, but that provoked an interesting conversation with its people that proved enjoyable (it also proved that people can still talk amicably and pleasurably at modern coffee houses, bereft of their smartphones). They were, coincidentally, also former SF Bay Area refugees like me, so it was especially enjoyable discussing the decline and fall of quality coastal life in The City (SFO) and growing accustomed to the air-fryer summers of this berg.

As I sat there sucking up the dark brown Robusta ambrosia in my cup, I found myself reflecting on the latest issue of the US-issue of Britain’s SPECTATOR MAGAZINE, in which several quite interesting articles and commentaries drew my attention. [The issue in reference is marqueed with the front-page byline: “The Reviving of the American Mind” and it is well captioned by any standard that rates the human intellect as crucially important to the overall survival of our species.]

One piece in particular concerns the Roman Catholic Church, which my dutiful father attended as a traditional Irish-American. Despite my having been baptized in the Catholic Church later and confirmed in the Anglican Church that my Austrian-French mother attended after Da died, I left all religious mumbo-jumbo behind in my dust about the same time I hit puberty and never looked back (well, maybe a bit wistfully at Betty-Jo Bioloski who sat in the rear-most pew during communions and speaking of ‘rears’, she had a particularly nice one!).

To my perception, all human faiths, regardless of their chosen ‘Supreme Deities’ are a crock of bovine excrement with their ‘priests’, ‘pastors’ and assorted other holy men. I think I first found myself feeling this way when I watched a 50s vintage Hollywood epic about the early Christians in their efforts to escape persecution by the Romans. Something about the fat, Egyptian castrato priests and vestal virgins that struck me in those epic films, even at that tender age, as manifestations of somehow grossly primitive ignorance, narcissistic human arrogance and evidence of an overblown estimation of the trivial significance of human life in our apparently vast cosmos. But especially on the part of such individuals who claimed to be direct spokesmen for their God (i.e. perhaps the best example in this is the RC Church’s ‘Virg-Mary’, through whom all devout Catholics feel they must seek intercession from God through.

Today, watching all the unbelievably pompous and nauseatingly overblown celebrations (by St. Peter’s minions under the Pope), as the new Pope is invested in that office as the head of the RC Church (and Saint Peter’s immediate, most important disciple), makes me want to retch ‘body & blood’ with disgust and disdain for the base ignorance demonstrated by this adulation of ordinary, befrocked fellow humans.

All that stated, the SPECTATOR article I refer to here was about one of the latest “saints” of that church, a Millennial (now departed) kid named Carlo Acutis, whom the RC Church beautified and was finally ready to elevate to full-blown sainthood, when the recently departed Pope died a few weeks ago.

I won’t bore you with all the details and particulars applicable to the Carlo Acutis sainthood schtick, since it was in all the papers and periodicals, but this whole thing stinks of post-modern pop-relevance, since he has been proclaimed the first saint of the ‘modern’ (Millennial) social media/computer age. YUKKERS!

His body is now on full display in Italy (he died from Leukemia at the age of 15, in Monza, Italy), although what we see through the transparent casket is actually a highly synthetic, lifelike silicone coating over his actual remains, which have been merrily rotting away since 2006. As such, he joins the ranks of such venerated notables as Vladimir Lenin and Kim Ill Sung, whose stuffed corpses also draw the awestruck adulation of crowds in Russia and North Korea.

Ah! Humanity, humanity! No wonder alien life forms (if they do exist, as so many earnestly want to believe) steer a course well clear of this planet of abysmal primitives (that us ‘smarter’ ones regrettably must also share), since where else in our vast and unknown universe exists a race half as easily intoxicated by sheer poppycock fantasies, as here on good old Earth?

Another SPECTATOR article (among many of equal substance and interest in this particular issue) is contributor John Hasson’s commentary on the erstwhile epidemic of ADHD sufferers here in America, a population in which 11.5% of its children have been diagnosed with the disorder (and are receiving medication...mostly Adderall). This ADHD demographic further breaks down into 15.5% of all adolescents, 21.4 % of 14-year-old boys, and 23% of 17-year-old-boys! Holy Distraction, Batman!

ADHD used to be diagnosed (before the latest DSM-5 edition was published) in two categories: 1) ADD, or Attention Deficit Disorder (think 'plain old vanilla'), and 2) ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (think 'vanilla with sprinkles'). When I was an elementary school kid myself, I had ‘undiagnosed’ ADD, although since back then it technically didn’t exist (because it hadn’t yet been formally defined as an affliction in the DSM) students like me (“bright, gifted”) were disparaged and dismissed as merely lazy, undisciplined and/or otherwise ‘under-achieving’ (for unknown reasons) kids.

From my perspective, I knew that I had extreme difficulty studying, taking test and doing assigned homework, not to mention ‘focusing, concentrating, and remaining undistracted’, but I was clueless as to why. And our marginally motivated school psychologists had no real interest in this problem, anyway. We were just the academic ‘outcasts’ who seemed slightly handicapped for reasons unknown and consequently remained largely unstudied.

Of course ADD (attention deficit without concurrent hyperactivity) and also ADHD (attention deficit with hyperactivity) are occasionally ‘outgrown’ as a child moves into adulthood, but I did not outgrow it and it remained with me, being still today something I must contend with as I near 80 years).

“Adult ADHD” itself has been the subject of much controversy for decades, some contending that it isn’t a real disorder and others arguing that it in fact actually is (certainly something those of us afflicted with it will attest to, as mature adults). In my case, despite achieving certain heights of academic and experiential achievement in my life, doing all these things has never been easy. Writing a serious book on chemical and biological warfare, for example (US Chemical Biological Defense Respirators), published in 1999, was one of the most exhausting tasks I’ve ever undertaken, given my high levels of distractibility and need for absolute peace & quiet in which to think and write.

Of course, I was never considered worthy of any significant clinical probing into the circumstances of my own ADD condition and although I never formally took any medication for it (being ‘undiagnosed’ and therefore non-existent, for all practical purposes), when I was an Air Force medic in the 60s, operating a few shifts at our base dispensary late at night in the depths of North Dakota winters, I accidentally discovered Ritalin, a medication that is also prescribed for the ADHD afflicted today.

Ritalin (Methylphenidate) is a stimulant that is commonly used to treat ADHD, but as I found out (while a medic), it also gives you a euphoric buzz. The extant mechanism behind this is that Ritalin prevents dopamine from being reabsorbed into the brain (enabling a surplus of dopamine to accumulate in the brain that mimics cocaine to a certain extent). After long, tedious ORI (Strategic Air Command's dreaded, periodic Operational Readiness Inspection) exercises in the dead of a brutal North Dakota winter, a little Ritalin-induced euphoria was welcome, indeed.

Its apparent effect on me, back then was, by my subjective reckoning, rather remarkable, but since it was strictly unauthorized (and unprescribed for me), my experience with Ritalin was merely anecdotal and accidental. The experience did highlight the fact that I definitely had a condition of this sort and that chemical treatment did seem to have some sort of therapeutic effect on it.

One of the major bodies of contention that arises today in psychiatric medicine circles is that several things are apparent: 1) That the diagnosis of ADHD is WAY overblown, and in fact many kids who have been tagged with that label may in fact simply have idiosyncratic behavioral problems (think: just maladjusted bullies) for entirely other reasons, and 2) the ‘popular’ remedial resolution thrown at them (putting them on controversial prescribed drug regimens) is as highly questionable as the recent Opioid addiction crisis was (a crisis which was largely aided and abetted by physicians writing scripts for opioids with the willingness of Mardi Gras float participants tossing candy and beads to parade viewers).

At present, the whole matter of ADHD and its relevance is under intense scrutiny and the subject is still the focus of hot debate and the occasional doctoral dissertation (thereby likely providing tremendous joy to professional grad-students who are desperately searching for an appropriately 'serious' subject to write on for their PhD).

Wifie, who does not now nor ever has suffered from anything in the way, shape and form of ‘distractibility’, just to cite an amusing nuance of her behavior, comes from a typical Chinese family (mainland), with a relatively large family (prior to Mao’s one-child policy) and was perfectly fine with studying and learning in a high noise-background setting, whether in the classroom or in the chaos and clamor of a family. She can be sitting at the kitchen table at home, surrounded by the chattering commentary from a radio and other loud background and noises and remain perfectly oblivious of all of it. Such is her ability to concentrate without fear of distractions that I sometimes have to go up to her and touch her shoulder to get her attention, being completely closed off to external stimuli at that moment. It’s amusing to me but I can’t help but feel momentary regret to reflect that I have never had nor could ever attain such a perfectly deliberate sense of dampened peripheral awareness as does she. I get the distinct feeling that they could drop bombs on our house and she might remain totally oblivious of it. Of course, back in China, her mother suffered through the atrocities perpetrated upon the Chinese population by the Imperial Japanese Army and Air Forces during WW2 (which included frequent bombing), so perhaps there’s an inherited genetic tie-in to her own developmental circumstances, eh?

As for the causes of ADD (or ADHD), the subject is also hotly debated but a strong theory is that certain food additives (such as artificial food colorings) and perhaps also aspects of diet may disproportionately predispose kids to the affliction. Whatever the causative or environmental influences involved, the problem of ADHD (and ADD) resonates with me. At this late date in my own life, whatever coping mechanisms I cultivated to deal with it have been fully explored and deployed, so it is now merely a matter of academic interest.

One last commentary in the SPECTATOR’s latest issue (June 2025) deals with an even more frightening phenomenon that is all too real and now rather convincingly documented, as well, and that is the dramatic trend towards declining IQs in our population. The author, Sean Thomas, convincingly tracks and lays out all the latest evidence that alarmingly demonstrates what has been idly speculated upon for quite a while: that the mean intelligence quotient of our younger generations is dropping off precipitously.

Not just a trend noted in America (but especially so here), the finding has global significance, since every nation now being similarly measured shows signs of this decline in basic, raw cognitive ability.

Charles Murphy, the social scientist who just a few years back was demonized as the bete noir of leftist, racial-identity/woke/DEI ideologues for his studies of race-tagged IQ data, has recently enjoyed a sort of rehabilitation in the latest findings cited by Thomas. Thomas, for his part, states unequivocally, that one of the principal causes of this severe decline in basic thoughtfulness and applied mental analysis seems to be directly, positively correlated to the popularity and prevalence of our modern techno-gadgets (such as smartphones, computers and more recently AI), which younger people are increasingly dependent upon.

In other words, declining basic cognitive ability appears directly tied to use of these devices and reliance upon them, in the most recent decades.

While to some of us that seems about as obvious as predicting that a boat with a holed hull will sink in the ocean, here is almost inarguable evidence that as traditional reading ability drops, and as the smartphone becomes broadly used that it almost appears to be grafted permanently to a younger person’s senses as a natural extension of them, seeing the actual accumulation of damning evidence to support this dynamic is indeed shocking.

In the so-called ‘high-income countries’, data shows that at least a full quarter of the population has lost the ability to perform the most utterly basic mathematical computation and use simple mathematical reasoning techniques. In America, the percentage of the mathematically incompetent population is estimated at around a startling 35%!

Attention spans, also, have been drastically declining (reference my earlier remarks about ADHD, etc.). In one primary instance, since 1980 18-year-olds were tracked carefully over the course of about 40 years for their ability (self-reported) to think, concentrate or learn. According to researchers, the results of these studies were stable for several decades, until about 2014, when they dropped off precipitously...those subjects being studied reported a discernible inability in cognitive ability.

Further evidence shows that Americans now report a steep decline in personal reading habits. Less than 50% state they still read books. In younger people the results are still being studied among more recent cohorts but thus far it appears that the findings will largely parallel, if not exceed those of the older population. In the UK, 35% of respondents in these studies report being ‘lapsed readers’, who used to read but now do not. In Spain, more than 36% of the population studied report that they never or “almost never” read literature of any kind whatsoever.

In so many words, in the more ‘refined’ Western nations, increasing numbers are passively ‘scrolling’ instead of actively pondering and reacting instead of reasoning. A strong argument emerges that our collective mental agility is slowing down, dangerously. This is especially portentous in America and Europe as China moves forward unabashedly in its declared quest for world-wide economic and social hegemony, although China also has been notably affected by the prevalence of smartphone technology and software over traditional expressions of mass media. 

As Thomas reports it, the implications for our political life are stark. To use his words, “If democracy depends on the Galtonic idea that the electorate is, on average, capable of advanced rational thought, what happens if the assumption becomes no longer true ? What happens when “Ask the audience” is a foolish move?”

Whereas in previous eras, cognitive ability of both leaders and the mass electorate was, all other things being equal, capable of using the democratic processes to consider and resolve matters of national social and economic concern, things have notably changed. Over the past two decades alone, a disturbing and quite apparent diminishment in this context to perceive rationally and analyse matters has become evident. Not only are voters thinking less clearly, their leaders are also!

[I'm sorely tempted here to cite Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as "Exhibit A and B", but at least in Joe's case, his principal problem was advanced dementia and senility, whereas Harris is just a verbal salad-maker...]

Our chief political leaders and spokespeople of the past were largely well-read readers, interested in historical antecedents, intellectually engaged and in many cases noted authors themselves, being quite often acknowledged authorities on various subjects of cultural relevance. To cite but one example, Thomas mentions that Winston Churchill wrote Nobel Prize-winning historical works.

"By comparison, today the political arena flinches under the unforgiving yet trivializing gaze of social media, suffering a comparison with ‘reality TV’ programming in which substance is often mocked and nuance is ridiculed. We are led by people who are often quite vacant, and when they are not, they pretend to be, lest they appear too elitist or smug on Facebook or Instagram", Thomas notes.

Thomas later raises the question yet again, “Why is intelligence declining?” There isn’t a single, simple explanation, although increased migration between nations of people with varying average IQs may be at least a partial causative factor, another often raised contention is that smart people aren’t having enough babies (the obvious inference being that lesser IQ endowed individuals ARE). If the question is advanced “Why aren’t smarter people having babies?”, the answer may arguably be that the ‘smarter’ ones have decided that the pressures, both economic and social, of our modern American society are such that they simply wish to spare themselves the inconveniences implicit in having families (again, the inference is that ‘dumber’ people don’t worry about such things and just continue to merrily impregnate away, without any such intellectual reservations). Still, as Thomas points out, none of these are acceptable blanket explanations that make the collective declining average IQ a more palatable hypothesis.

It is interesting that for many, however, there is one obvious culprit. In 2014, INSTAGRAM ‘exploded’ forth into widespread prominence. There have been similar intersectional vectors (love that term...thank you, woke feminist ideologues!) noted in the past when advanced techno-devices such as cellular phones and advanced scientific pocket calculators came into widespread acceptance and use.

Now, with AI verging on the absolute brink of becoming integrally embedded in almost every nuance of our social lives, the prospects for even further declines in our ability to think analytically and rationalize intellectually may be at the point of becoming altogether close to our extinction! After all, when a smart machine can produce detailed, comprehensive answers in a fraction of a second, why waste ‘valuable’ time thinking through problems at all (this, despite that fact that AI is merely a product of how careful, scrupulous and thorough its programmers have been...AI, after all, continues to make a great many mistakes and errors of assumption!)? Why indeed!

Thomas concludes his depressing chronicle of our intellectual decline, by proposing the following: “As people get inexorably stupider, we could just give up democracy altogether and let the robots do it for us!”

Of course, the true danger of such a drastic bifurcation of natural-versus-artificial-intelligence trails might possibly be that AI, with its supremely superior (human-derived) omniscience, might well decide (as several astute commentators have already observed) that human beings are superfluous, unnecessary entities and do away with us onviously imperfect creatures altogether...

From my perspective as a born-again misanthrope and junior-grade Sartre existentialist, that might actually prove to be the best thing that ever happened to this poor old planet of ours!

But tragically, I strongly suspect that the AI robotic counterpart of Betty-Jo Biolosky would likely never have as cute an ass as she did...and that's no Irish craic!