Well, before I start describing things I don’t understand, please let me “set the stage” as we’d say in literary or acting circles. Yes, I have been an actor, and have written short stories, and have read so many works by acknowledged masters of literature that I could be a collegiate graduate assistant in any area from British Literature to Ancient Mythology.

I have been told, so many times I’ve lost count, that I think like a lawyer. I can see both sides of any argument, and plot the path to resolution for either side. That does not mean that I am totally ambivalent. On the contrary, I have very clear preferences for how things develop. But that leads to the next set of things that are weird, if not unique, about me.

Not only do I have an above average vocabulary in general English language, but I also have a strange array of specialties. I’m a trained US Army Medic who was being fast-tracked to becoming a Physician’s Assistant, so I have a good Medical Vocabulary. Not an MD, but good. In my personal library I have copies of Black’s Law Dictionary, Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, Grey’s Anatomy, several copies of the PDR (Physician’s Desk Reference), Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible, the Oxford English Dictionary (2 volume compact edition), and a few other reference materials. I am well versed in using all of them.

I’m also a person who was among the first to recognize what eventually became known as HIV in the European US Military Medical community. One of my patients in 1981 was a victim – probably of a contaminated blood transfusion.

I’ve always had a gift for being able to see big ideas, and explain them to other people in plain language. So, please take the following – not with a grain of salt, but with the forewarning of a NORAD escalation to DEFCON 1.

I don’t understand why, but The United States is under attack, by cyber terrorists. The terrorists do not hide in the shadows. Instead they act as major platforms of social media and information distribution. Google, Facebook, Twitter, and a dozen other companies.

What they are doing is CAUSING the continuing fracture of our society. Whenever you do a search in one of those services, they automatically search your recent online activity and give you back ONLY the results that feed your world view. In other words, they feed your bias. That is, as far as I can tell, the ONLY reason why the US social fabric has become so incredibly fractured that everyone seems to feel that anyone who disagrees with them (about anything) is nothing less than Satan Incarnate.

It’s one of the oldest military strategies in the books. Divide and Conquer.

There is a documentary you all need to watch. /thesocialdilemma.com thesocialmedia.com

Another thing that I don’t understand is the push to force a national adjustment to the minimum wage law. The current federal law is that the minimum wage is around $7.25/hr. I’ve certainly worked for less, and was thankful for what I got.

But, now we’re being bombarded by people demanding that the minimum wage be increased to $15/hr. Do the people making this demand truly NOT understand the implications of the demands they are making?

There is no corporation currently working in the USA that will increase the wages of their minimum-wage staff by 100% without passing that cost increase on to the people who purchase those products they sell. That is only the VERY ABSOLUTE MINIMUM of the changes which will result from mandating a pay increase to $15/hr.

Do you enjoy $15 pizzas with free delivery? Well, with a $15/hr minimum wage you can expect the price to climb to around $25/pizza for the same product. Do you love the $0.99 value menu at your favorite restaurant? Expect to start paying $2.50 per item unless the quality becomes so poor that it wouldn’t sustain the nutritional needs of a colony of amoeba 5cm square for 12 hours.

This experiment has already been enacted to law in the US State of Washington. The result was that all fast food companies, from McDonald’s to Burger King, replaced all of their minimum wage tellers with computer/robotic tellers that drew no wages at all. 10k people were forced OUT of the workforce because bleeding-heart liberals tried to make their lives better. Can we afford to replicate this on the national scale?