Time to change a few old saws

My wife and I were having a conversation last weekend about budgets and the rising cost of just about everything, which is normal, but this time, my 16-year-old daughter was in the room as we were watching the same television program.

We came to the elephant in everyone’s living room, which is gas prices, which of course gets our dander up. It got my daughter’s up, too, but at us.

She went where all liberals, Democrats and denizens of the internet — America’s No. 1 source of “information” — go, which was to blame Putin for the price hikes.

I know, I covered most of this last week, but I had to dredge up that same information for my daughter, while at the same time trying to determine who or what was responsible for her ignorance.

She has a TikTok account — surprise! — and to anyone of that age group, that’s the be all, end all of anything.

Once we enlightened her on the wider scheme of things, such as energy independence, pipeline and drilling permits, shale oil deposits, etc., she became very quiet, and it is my fervent hope that was the seed that will grow into a new process of information gathering.

But right now, though, that’s going to be tough, since kids today are adamant that some drag queen shuffling to some new-age hip hop spouting political has all the right stuff. That’s never going to happen, though, since our vaunted leaders have been tapping into that market for quite some time.

For instance, a couple of weeks ago the White House and the Biden Administration had an invitation-only conversation with TikTok influencers (which is a thing now, apparently) to discuss this highly sensitive national policy matter.

In actuality, the Biden Band played the standard tune of “It’s Not Our Fault” and gave these people their reasons for Putin being the problem, and of course, these influencers commenced to influencing their assembled masses, who now have even less idea about the way the world works.

I find the idea of using internet personalities to sell the lie almost diabolically clever, but ultimately sad. That the administration chose to take the path of least resistance, instead of working with people with facts and figures and reasoned arguments, as well as not trying any avenue to ameliorate the situation for the Americans, but giving us a shrug, is lazy and an abdication of the responsibilities of the office.

Related Articles

Top marks

Livingston NNDCC continues to excel

It’s a shame, really, that the dumbing down of America continues unabated, and the outrage that is now directed at Putin and any other macguffin should be directed squarely at Washington, D.C., and the kind of people, like Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer (who are telling people that the way to cure the deficit is to spend more money).

It boggles the mind that our leaders would not only claim that other countries are responsible for our travails, but then try to get oil from other countries that are just as sketchy, and then give it all to people with little skin in the game and no reason to look harder to pass on to an already uneducated masses.

It shows yet again that our leaders have little interest in what is best — or what is wanted — by the constituents of this government.

So here’s my thinking. There’s an old saying, and I’m paraphrasing here because that there are conflicting reports about its source, that there are lies, damned lies and statistics.

I’m thinking it should be changed to there are lies, damned lies, statistics and TikTok.

Or say, a la Albert Einstein, “The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with joy are goodness, beauty, and the internet.”

I’ll go with Friedrich Nietzsche, who said “Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”

Tony Farkas is editor of the Trinity County News-Standard. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..